What Brewers Should Have Done At Trade Deadline, Per The Athletic

There's not much to nitpick with the Milwaukee Brewers these days.

Since the last week of May, the Brewers have been running laps around the other 29 Major League Baseball teams. They're 43-16 in their last 59 games, and they now have a three-game lead on the Chicago Cubs in both the National League Central and the race for the best record in the sport.

With how hot they've been, it wasn't shocking to see the Brewers remain mostly quiet at last week's trade deadline. After all, they'd already made two trades that have quickly paid dividends earlier in the season (Quinn Priester and Andrew Vaughn), plus they got new starting pitchers Jacob MIsiorowski and Brandon Woodruff from the minors and the injured list, respectively.

However, The Athletic's Levi Weaver offered one critique of the Brewers on Tuesday. Weaver insisted that the Brewers should have gone after former Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suárez, who was instead traded to the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday night.

"One could (and should) make the argument that Eugenio Suárez would have been a fun power-blaster addition to the run-and-gun Brewers offense. Sure, they have the best record in the sport, but the deadline is about setting up a playoff roster, not just maxing out the fun for the regular season," wrote Weaver.

The Brewers are 22nd in MLB with 112 home runs, and in October, the home run ball can be the difference between advancing to the next round or an early exit. And the Brewers have become all too accustomed to those early exits in recent seasons.

Plus, the Mariners only wound up giving up three solid to mediocre prospects for Suárez, so either the Brewers were being extremely cautious about who they gave up, or they didn't inquire seriously enough about what it would take to get the two-time All-Star.

Still, it's hard to be all that negative right now. Winning will silence even the loudest of critics.