The Brewers Traded Brad Mills To the A's For $1.00
#Athletics acquired Mills from #Brewers for $1. Expected to move into rotation shortly.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) June 17, 2014
Yahoo - Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports had the scoop Tuesday night. Word is, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, the A’s will move Mills into their starting rotation after Drew Pomeranz punched a chair and broke his hand after a rough outing. Mills, 29, has a 7.76 ERA in 53 1/3 major league innings over three stints with the Blue Jays and (for one start in 2012) the Angels. But his numbers at Class AAA Nashville this season have been spectacular: A 1.56 ERA with 77 strikeouts in 75 innings with fewer than one baserunner per inning allowed over 14 games, including 12 starts. With Beane already expecting to go over budget in order to replace the chair, using a significant amount of money to replace a starting pitcher was out of the question. So, as the J-S notes, this really works out: These types of deals aren’t all that unusual. In fact, the Brewers traded catcher Wil Nieves to the Atlanta Braves in July of 2011 for the same sum. Mills’ contract with the Brewers called for the team to receive zero compensation if he wound up being assigned to another team’s active 25-man roster. So whatever the Brewers received – even if it’s $1 – is more than was required.
If you’re Brad Mills, are you pissed by this? That no team wanted to trade anything for you? It’s sort of like the old days in school at recess and my friend Eric would play basketball and the other team didn’t really care that they were playing 6 on 5 because Eric didn’t really count. He was still happy to be playing, sure, but it still kinda stung him a bit. And Brad Mills has been crushing in in AAA this year. Surely the Brewers could have worked them into their rotation instead of giving him away for free? But I guess they are just flying high with their whole 13 games above .500 (did people realize that, by the way? The Brewers are tearing it up this year…don’t tell ESPN!) so they don’t really want to mix things up. So of course the A’s will take a flyer on this guy for free. Total A’s move. Kinda hoping it works out for them too. And then he costs the A’s a chance at the World Series, because that would also be a total A’s move.