{"id":803151,"date":"2026-08-05T05:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/803151\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T05:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:16:08","slug":"brewers-offered-luis-pena-as-headliner-for-skubal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/803151\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewers Offered Luis Pe\u00f1a As Headliner For Skubal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brewers were generally viewed as the top challenger to the Dodgers when the Tigers were shopping Tarik Skubal<\/a>. Milwaukee has the sport\u2019s best record and arguably its top farm system, and ownership was willing to assume<\/a> the remainder of Skubal\u2019s $32MM salary.<\/p>\n

Skubal is on the mound in Dodger blue tonight after Detroit dealt him to L.A. for three prospects: outfielder\u00a0Zyhir Hope<\/a> and right-handers River Ryan<\/a> and\u00a0Brady Smith<\/a>. Adam McCalvy of MLB.com<\/a> sheds some light on Milwaukee\u2019s conversations with the Tigers. McCalvy reports that the Brewers also offered a three-prospect package which would\u2019ve been led by 19-year-old shortstop\u00a0Luis Pe\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the MLB.com report, all three prospects (at least in Milwaukee\u2019s initial offer) were position players. The identity of the other two players isn\u2019t reported, though McCalvy writes that at least one more was a Top 100 caliber prospect.<\/p>\n

The Brewers were never going to give up the sport\u2019s top minor league talent, Double-A shortstop\u00a0Jes\u00fas Made<\/a>. They\u2019ve signed shortstop Cooper Pratt<\/a> and outfielder\u00a0Luis Lara<\/a>, both of whom are on the MLB roster, to extensions. That technically doesn\u2019t rule out a trade, but dealing either within a couple months of signing them to long-term deals would\u2019ve been unprecedented.<\/p>\n

Josh Adamczewski<\/a>,\u00a0Braylon Payne<\/a>,\u00a0Jett Williams<\/a>,\u00a0Brady Ebel<\/a>,\u00a0Alexander Frias<\/a> and Jeferson Quero<\/a> are the other Milwaukee hitters who appeared among the Top 100 prospects on a list from at least one of Baseball America<\/a>, FanGraphs<\/a>, The Athletic<\/a> and MLB Pipeline<\/a>. The Brewers wound up trading Frias to St. Louis as one of two prospects for starter Dustin May<\/a> and lefty reliever\u00a0JoJo Romero<\/a>. They clearly considered him expendable in the right deal, though that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they included him in the Skubal offer.<\/p>\n

Pe\u00f1a would\u2019ve been a compelling headliner. The aforementioned lists all have him as one of the 25 best prospects in the sport. He lands above Hope on all those lists and ahead of Ryan on each aside from the FanGraphs rankings.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not worth overrating the specificity of those placements. Most prospect rankers don\u2019t have a huge division between, for example, prospects 25 and 75. They could all be in the same tier and will be ranked differently on public lists and internally by teams. That\u2019s especially true for a player like Pe\u00f1a who has yet to advance beyond High-A, where evaluations are still heavily weighted toward more subjective scouting reports instead of a huge statistical r\u00e9sum\u00e9.<\/p>\n

The broader point is that Pe\u00f1a would\u2019ve been a perfectly reasonable starting point, though he has missed some time with physical issues this year. He collapsed in the dugout in a game in April due to dehydration and lost a month. He also missed a couple weeks in June with a hamstring strain. Pe\u00f1a has hit .297\/.382\/.407 with two homers and 20 steals in 42 games in High-A.<\/p>\n

Detroit evidently preferred the Dodgers\u2019 offer, which included a big league ready starter in Ryan who could step into the rotation later this month. Pe\u00f1a wouldn\u2019t have been a factor for a couple seasons. We don\u2019t know the identity of the secondary pieces Milwaukee put on the table. The Tigers also have their franchise shortstop in\u00a0Kevin McGonigle<\/a>, though teams can never have enough shortstop talent in the farm system. Those players can easily bounce to another infield position and typically are athletic enough to play the outfield if needed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll make for an interesting footnote as the careers of Hope, Ryan and Pe\u00f1a play out. Milwaukee\u2019s interest in Skubal was well known, and there\u2019s a decent chance they\u2019ll find themselves in an NLCS rematch with the Dodgers. The teams will meet next week in a four-game set at Dodger Stadium, where the top seed in the National League could be on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers were generally viewed as the top challenger to the Dodgers when the Tigers were shopping Tarik…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[196008,99,4706],"class_list":["post-803151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-luis-pena","tag-sports","tag-tarik-skubal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}