Brewers ‘willing to listen to offers’ for Josh Hader

If president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski comes to the conclusion that the 2022 Philadelphia Phillies are good enough to push all of their chips to the center of the table, here’s something to monitor.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today is reporting that the Milwaukee Brewers “have informed teams that they are willing to listen to offers for All-Star closer Josh Hader.”

While there are some who will hear this report and suggest that every team is always willing to listen on every player, do you think Dombrowski and the Phillies would go out of their way to let teams know they were open for business on Kyle Schwarber for the right offer right now? Of course not. That doesn’t mean that if the Washington Nationals offered you Juan Soto for Schwarber straight up you wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat, but the idea that every player is always realistically available, especially in the middle of the season, isn’t correct.

The Brewers have seemingly at least been willing to hear offers on Hader for just about his entire career, and president of baseball operations David Stearns has yet to trade him. With that said, time is ticking, Hader can become a free agent after the 2023 season. The most likely scenario here is that Milwaukee — who leads the NL Central with a 48-38 record — retains Hader for the remainder of the season and tries to make a World Series run.

However, all of this would seem to indicate that the Brewers aren’t especially high on their chances to re-sign Hader, making a trade this winter — if not sooner — feel almost inevitable.

So it would behoove the Phillies, like all contenders, to touch base with the Brewers. After all, the Phillies haven’t had someone consistently close out games since trading Jonathan Papelbon in July of 2015. Hader has converted 26 of 27 save opportunities in 2022, and is likely to find out Sunday that he’s been named an All-Star for the fourth time in his career.

Like we said when discussing Bryan Reynolds late last week, it’s fair to wonder if the Phillies have the prospect capital to pull off this type of trade, and if they would feel comfortable parting with it to acquire perhaps the best closer of this era. Certainly, one would think that the Phillies would need to part with at least one of Mick Abel or Andrew Painter to land Hader. Catcher Logan O’Hoppe will certainly intrigue any team discussing trades with the Phillies in the coming weeks. In this type of trade, you wonder what level of interest the Brewers would have in Alec Bohm and Matt Vierling — who combined in June to hand Hader his lone blown save of the season — as ancillary pieces to what would definitely be a massive haul going back to Milwaukee.

Make no mistake, you would be talking about giving up a ton of talent in a trade like this. But in return, the Phillies would receive a closer whose career on a Hall of Fame trajectory. It would free interim manager Rob Thomson up to deploy Seranthony Domínguez and Brad Hand on whatever the highest-leverage situation is between the starting pitcher exiting the game and Hader getting the ball in the ninth. Such a trade would mean that the Phillies could handle if José Alvarado comes back down to Earth after the All-Star Break. And above all else, the Phillies would turn what has been a disastrous bullpen for much of the last half decade into one of the better units in the league, potentially en route to reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2011.

Again, the Phillies are probably more likely to face Hader at some point in the postseason than have him pitching in red pinstripes at Citizens Bank Park in October. But it can’t hurt to make the call.

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