The most natural destination for Willy Adames in a trade would be the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are trying to put the finishing touches on the best roster in baseball. Whenever Adames and the Dodgers are linked in trade discussions, the name that pops up is Gavin Lux. It feels almost lazy, since Lux is a Wisconsin native, but there’s also a real fit there. Lux has three years of team control remaining, and despite losing all of last season to injury, he’s a promising left-handed hitter with some big-league bona fides.

After bringing in Joey Ortiz for Corbin Burnes, though, the Brewers don’t necessarily need that profile of player–at least not to the extent that they did a month ago. In addition to Ortiz, they have Tyler Black (whom they hope will be able to stick at third base, and who, like Lux, bats left-handed) on the doorstep, and if you pencil those two in for long-term roles, it leaves just one of the three throwing infield positions to be filled by some combination of Brice Turang, Andruw Monasterio, Oliver Dunn, and Vinny Capra.

That quartet doesn’t contain any player certain enough to be a first-division regular that the Brewers should totally foreclose the possibility of adding another infielder, but with Ortiz on board, they’re a good enough mélange to take the urgency out of the search for an infielder. Besides, the Crew would need to pay Lux fairly handsomely in arbitration in 2025 and 2026 if he had a good season in 2024, and he’d be a free agent thereafter. He doesn’t really open their window wider, the way you’d like an Adames trade to do.

What if, to get a deal done that satisfies that standard, Matt Arnold and Andrew Friedman got a third team involved? The Miami Marlins are in the market for shortstop help, but they’re not taking on the salary owed to Adames, and they don’t want a one-year solution to the position. They do, on the other hand, have controllable starting pitchers they’re willing to move in the right deal–a deal that would bring them a hitter who could fit into the same timeline on which they’re trying to build around the likes of Jazz Chisholm Jr., Luis Arráez, Jake Burger, and more.

In fact, there are active rumors that the Fish could send Edward Cabrera to the Pirates, in a trade that would net them a position player with a blend of team control and established production capacity. Cabrera, who will turn 26 in April, has five years of team control remaining, but will be arbitration-eligible as a Super Two player next winter. Miami has not been able to get the electric stuff Cabrera has under control well enough to make him more than a back-end starter, and the match between his earning power and his performance so far in the majors will be distasteful to a team in transition.

If the Brewers send Adames to the Dodgers, maybe the Dodgers could package Lux and a low-level prospect and send them to Miami, instead of to Milwaukee. In turn, the Marlins could send Cabrera to the Crew, rounding out what would be one of the deepest, highest-upside starting rotations in MLB.

Re-signing Wade Miley, adding Jakob Junis and Joe Ross, and trading for DL Hall already has the Brewers seemingly set, but their current rotation is a little shy on upside. Cabrera would change that in a hurry. His fastball sits around 96 miles per hour, and his changeup is devastating. He only managed a 4.24 ERA last year, because he walked 15.2 percent of opposing batters, but there is some low-hanging fruit in front of him–the kinds of adjustments that could easily turn him into a co-ace alongside Freddy Peralta under the tutelage of Chris Hook.

Firstly, Cabrera needs to better utilize his arsenal. He has a four-seamer and a sinker; that almost-famous changeup; and two breaking balls, a curve and a slider. Last year, he threw all five a fair amount, but the way he mixed them against right-handed batters didn’t make much sense. He threw that changeup against them too often, given that he doesn’t have very good glove-side command of his four-seamer to set it up, and that his sinker has very little movement differential (and not even much velocity differential; he throws the change at more than 90 MPH) from that pitch. Here’s all his offerings against righties last year, plotted according to their movement.