The addition of Blake Snell (while being odds-on favorites to sign Roki Sasaki, too) leaves the Dodgers with an abundance of talent and depth in their rotation. Can the Brewers leverage the Dodgers’ surplus to acquire one of the game’s highest-upside arms?
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Despite monstrous injury woes in 2024, the Dodgers are expected to have Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, and Bobby Miller available to serve in their 2025 rotation.
While Ohtani likely mandates a six-man rotation, they also will have Emmett Sheehan and River Ryan returning during the season, with more talent at Triple A in the form of Jack Dreyer, Justin Wrobleski and Nick Frasso.
That makes 12 different arms already in their organization, seven of which have MLB experience and will be ready to start the season, with two ready to reinforce upon return from injury and three top-20 organizational prospects at Triple A.
No matter how you skin cats, that’s an extreme level of depth. Heck, they’re even expected to re-sign Clayton Kershaw for another season.
The Dodgers are likely to want strong depth in their system off the back of a 2024 season that highlighted just how easily a pitching staff can be brought to its knees, but they also have other areas of their system that they will want to add some talent, specifically in the outfield.
Andy Pages and Tommy Edman would be the most likely center field candidates to start for the Dodgers next season, none of whom shone defensively last season, while James Outman’s bat put him out of the picture for now. Their defensive runs saved in CF in 2024 were:
- Andy Pages: -8 DRS in 666 innings
- James Outman: -1 DRS in 337 innings
- Tommy Edman: 0 DRS in 188 innings
None of them were famously ferocious with the bat. Although Pages’s 100 wRC+ in his rookie season is commendable, it was also fueled by a quick start before a large dropoff. The Dodgers lack a capable center fielder, and that’s something the Brewers have in excess, with Sal Frelick and Garrett Mitchell available should the right deal present itself.
You could argue that neither side is forced to trade from their stores of depth, but both could be useful in upgrading a hole in the roster.
The Brewers rotation lacks that high-upside pitcher, while the Dodgers lack a capable center fielder. That brings us to Bobby Miller.
Miller may be one of the most talented arms in baseball. Armed with a fastball whose perceived velocity was over 100 mph in 2023 and had above-average induced vertical break, it’s a unicorn pitch. For reference, his four-seamer in 2023 was thrown three miles per hour harder than Paul Skenes’s in 2024, with five inches of additional “rise”.
Here’s how Hunter Greene, Skenes and Miller compare on the fastball in the last two seasons:
He also had a 90-mph slider, with above-average movement for the velocity bracket it sits in, and a changeup that produced a 41% whiff rate in 2024. The stuff he possesses is not in question. How it mixes can be, and he may have a problem with his two-seamer, in that it doesn’t separate much from his four-seam. It’s really more of a four-seamer that he obtains additional run on when trying to get in on the hands to righthanders. However, they slugged .900 against it in 2024. Fastball variations are very attractive for the Brewers, but Miller’s feel for spin and current arsenal may be better served with a cutter in lieu of the sinker.
You can easily see the space where a cutter might do a lot for Miller, in terms of limiting quality of contact against him. I’m not a fan of just advocating a cutter to every pitcher, but Miller’s feel for spin in averaging 2,330 RPM on the fastball and occasionally hitting 3,000 RPM on the curveball should allow him to feel out an average or better offering.
This season’s injury also devastated him. He lost velocity on the fastball and some dip on his breaking pitches, but most of all, he saw his command evaporate.
He went from an 80th-percentile 6.3% walk rate down to a 10th percentile 11.2% rate, putting men on base more often while getting punished more regularly on mistake pitches with the drop in “stuff”:
Miller’s raw stuff makes him a fascinating buy-low target, although the Dodgers’ own pitching development system is sturdy enough that you would expect them to be able to fix him themselves.
In giving up on him, that could indicate that they feel he’ll never truly reach the heights he’s capable of, but in reality they have such an abundance of riches in the rotation that having a sidelined or optioned Miller is less valuable than a Garrett Mitchell patrolling center field.
One other potential target, albeit somewhat less expensive, would be Dustin May.
May had some horrific injuries last year with his esophagus, and is prone to injuries over the rest of his career. May is in his final year of arbitration in 2025, but he showed some electric swing-and-miss ability on his four-seam fastball, cutter, curveball and changeup in 2021-22, while his sinker is a ground ball machine with a gaudy movement profile.
His injury history checkers his value, and there’s no guarantee the Brewers can get a full season of his best production in 2025, but he would be an interesting target.
You can’t acquire top-of-the-rotation upside in trades without handing over a lot of prospect capital, unless that upside comes with some baggage.
Top-tier rotation talent just does not get passed up easily. Bobby Miller has baggage from 2024, but as our supreme overlord Matthew Trueblood noted early in the season:
Injury may have deprived us of the 20-strikeout game, but it shows that while there is risk, there’s also a genuine ace potential here.
If the Brewers can find some way to pry Miller away from the Dodgers, they may benefit for years to come. Further distancing himself from the injury should revitalize Miller’s fastball velocity, shape and command, while there is definitely more in the tank for how he can use his five-pitch mix to create even more swing-and-miss than he already has.
The learning that comes simply from competing in the big leagues is still to come for Miller, and that’s the upside the Brewers would be gambling on in this trade.
Baseball Trade Values (often better as a guideline than an exact resource) does place Garrett Mitchell and Bobby Miller as similar in terms of value.
Delivering a one-for-one of Mitchell for Miller would be risky on both ends, with both having the ability to make their former teams look foolish.
There could even be an add-on, if the Dodgers thought their rotation needed a bona fide closer (it probably doesn’t), by adding in Devin Williams for Alex Freeland—an excellent defensive shortstop with strong bat-to-ball skills and solid pop for the left side of the infield.
