As Crew ekes out win, Miley shares thoughts on Deadline

CHICAGO -- Last year, he predicted the Brewers would trade for Carlos Santana and Mark Canha weeks before they arrived in Milwaukee and helped carry the club to a division title.

This year, with only a week to go before the July 30 Trade Deadline, Wade Miley’s crystal ball isn’t offering the same clarity.

“I haven’t been nearly as ‘on it’ because it doesn’t seem like we’re doing anything,” the injured Brewers left-hander said Tuesday before Brice Turang’s eighth-inning RBI single and high-pressure pitching from Colin Rea and four relievers saved Milwaukee after an 84-minute rain delay for a 1-0 win at Wrigley Field. “That’s not any inside info, just a feel.”

There might not be another player in baseball more engaged with the Trade Deadline than Miley, who has time to think this one through because he’s out for the year with an elbow injury. He’s been traveling with the Brewers to mentor the team’s young pitchers, to dip his toes into the coaching pool and even to sit in on some meetings with front office officials.

Here’s Miley’s thinking: The Brewers just reinstated from the injured list lefty reliever Jared Koenig, this year’s bullpen breakout story who emptied the tank for 30 pitches in a tense eighth inning Tuesday. Backup catcher Gary Sánchez is expected back for Wednesday’s series finale. The reigning National League reliever of the year, Devin Williams, isn’t far behind. So is a “length” option for either the rotation or the bullpen, right-hander Joe Ross. Left-hander DL Hall has also restarted his rehab assignment.

Williams, Ross and Hall are on the 60-day IL, meaning they will require spots on both the full 40-man roster and the 26-man active roster. The Brewers’ Trade Deadline calculus must account for that, since any import will require a corresponding export.

“Getting Devin back is a huge pick up and Joe Ross is another starting pitcher who I think is phenomenal,” Miley said. “I truly believe Joe Ross is capable of coming up here and throwing some huge, quality innings for us.”

That’s the key word: “Innings.” The Brewers’ pitching depth was stretched to the limit in the first half and GM Matt Arnold is shopping for sensible reinforcements like starter Aaron Civale, whom he acquired from the Rays in an early trade on July 3.

Should Arnold go shopping for position players, a key attribute might be “experience.”

Often this season, and especially during this series against the Cubs, Brewers manager Pat Murphy has frankly assessed the hitting and baserunning decisions of his young players like Turang, who bunted in a 3-0 count with a runner in scoring position when Tuesday’s game was still scoreless in the sixth. Or Garrett Mitchell, who slid to the wrong side of home plate later in that inning and was tagged out. Or 20-year-old Jackson Chourio, who was out by a mile trying to stretch a single in the eighth before Turang, fighting a 4-for-45 funk, saved the night with a two-out single. Or Joey Ortiz, who popped out on a bunt in the ninth.

Murphy even took the rare step of approaching that wing of the clubhouse on Tuesday night, with reporters still in the room, to deliver pointed instruction and a promise that there will be a follow-up discussion.

“This one would really have hurt,” Murphy said. “There's a lot of teaching points to bring up.”

But if Arnold does seek to add a tested hitter a la Santana or Canha, where would he add? The Brewers’ position-player group is relatively deep and has been mostly healthy so far. In a different year, shortstop (and free-agent-to-be) Willy Adames might be a candidate to be traded for pitching, but the Brewers say they intend to keep Adames all the way to free agency, valuing both his performance and his mentorship of Chourio.

Miley said he’s “intrigued” by the difficult questions to be answered over the next week, but Murphy says he’s staying out of it.

If Civale is the big midseason add, the manager seems content.

“[Arnold] knows what he’s doing,” Murphy said. “They’ve been through this for many, many years. There’s ups and downs to [trade talks]. There’s tricks to it. There’s the question of availability. There’s, ‘What are our real needs?’

“When you’re talking to me, who’s ‘in the bus,’ I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s go with who we’ve got.’ If we’re going to add, it had better be someone like [Civale]. Maybe there’s another guy who’s a great fit who I’ll welcome here.”