The Milwaukee Brewers pitching staff was like an overinflated balloon. They couldn’t blow more air into it without letting some out. The escapee is Aaron Civale, who was dealt to the Chicago White Sox for Andrew Vaughn after requesting a trade.

Aaron Civale

The Brewers were counting on Civale to be an innings eater in the middle of their rotation this season, but he strained his hamstring in his first start on March 30. He returned from the injured list in May and has made four more starts since then with mixed results. All told, he has a 4.91 ERA over 22 innings with five home runs allowed, and his 2.7 strikeouts-to-walks ratio is the lowest of his career.

Milwaukee has benefited from good fortune with their starting pitching so far. Nearly all of them have ERAs that are better than their advanced metrics indicate they ought to be, and a case could be made that many of their best pitching options were in Triple-A rather than the major leagues. That started to change when they called up top prospect Jacob Misiorowski, who threw five no-hit innings against the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday in his MLB debut.

Over a seven-year career, Civale has made 122 appearances—all as a starting pitcher—with a 4.06 ERA. On the day of Misiorowski’s first outing—which happened to be Civale’s 30th birthday—the veteran was informed he would be moved to the bullpen for the first time in his professional career. This led to him requesting a trade.

Civale has an $8 million salary this season and will become a free agent at the end of the year. The White Sox are 23-47 so far, and they set a modern record with 121 losses last season, so their pitching options are significantly more sparse. It’s safe to say he is in no danger of losing a rotation spot in Chicago.

The White Sox are hardly considered buyers right now, so it’s curious that they decided to add a veteran starter who is a pending free agent. Finances are not a factor. Vaughn is earning $5.85 million this year, and Milwaukee is including cash in the deal to offset the difference in salaries. It’s possible that Chicago is not his final destination, and that he could be moving again before the trade deadline at the end of July.

Andrew Vaughn

Vaughn is a right-handed-hitting first baseman and former vaunted prospect who hasn’t lived up to expectations. The third overall pick in the 2019 draft was universally considered a top-25 prospect before the 2021 season. He produced a 101 OPS+ from 2021-2024, indicating his offense was just 1% above the league average—not nearly good enough for a defensively-limited player.

The bottom fell out this year, as he was hitting only .189/.218/.314 before the White Sox demoted him on May 22. In 14 games with Triple-A Charlotte, he batted .211/.328/.351, which is hardly the kind of batting line that demands a call back up. The Brewers are sending him to their Triple-A affiliate in Nashville.

Aaron Civale is now with the White Sox—at least for the time being—and it appears to be a satisfactory solution for everyone involved. He gets to stay in a major-league rotation, Vaughn gets a change of scenery, the Brewers get flexibility to let Misiorowski show what he can do, and Chicago gets an established starter and potential trade chip.