The Brewers Become the First Division-Leading Team to Have to Put Out a Statement Defending a Trade After Getting Rid of Josh Hader

This is certainly a first for me. I don't ever recall a first place team making a trade at the deadline and having a statement ready to go, knowing fans were going to lose their shit.

You would think a team putting out a statement trying to assuage fans after getting rid of a star player would be one in last place who had to make the difficult decision to get rid of a franchise cornerstone, but the Brewers are three games ahead of the Cardinals in the NL Central. Executives certainly shouldn't make decisions based on fan reactions, but putting this statement out wouldn't inspire confidence in me if I was a Brewers fan. It reads like the ramblings of a poverty franchise.

And the dumbest part of this press release is that Milwaukee actually got a pretty good return. They replaced Hader with a serviceable MLB reliever in Taylor Rogers, got a prospect in Esteury Ruiz who tore it up in Double- and Triple-A before being called up to the big leagues this season and added Dinelson Lamet, who has proven to at least have the stuff to potentially put up an elite MLB season like he did in 2020. Milwaukee also has an All-Star in Devin Williams — who has a 1.59 ERA this season — ready to presumably take over the closer role. Sure, getting rid of Hader sucks, but the Brewers may very well end up winning this deal.

If you make a trade, stand by it. None of this "get as many bites of the apple as possible" nonsense. What does that even mean?

If the goal of this statement was to have fans feel better and make it seem like the Milwaukee front office was confident in its decision-making, I'd say it did quite the opposite.