Milwaukee Brewers expected to be “strongly in play” for Manny Machado, per report

One of the trade season’s hottest trade candidates could be directly in the Milwaukee Brewers’ sights. How do you feel about adding Manny Machado to the Crew’s infield?

According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, rival executives expect Milwaukee to be one of several teams making a strong push for the all-star third baseman and shortstop.

Milwaukee is expected to have plenty of competition for the 25-year-old shortstop. Many officials expect the Los Angeles Dodgers to be the landing spot, while St. Louis and Philadelphia could be contenders as well.

There’s no doubt Machado would help Milwaukee. Not only is he an excellent defensive shortstop, but he currently has the highest OPS of his career of .923 with 19 homers. Meanwhile, Orlando Arcia is hurting the team daily with his awful performance. He’s already been sent down to AAA once this season and has lost playing time to teammates Brad Miller, Hernan Perez, Eric Sogard and Tyler Saladino.

The biggest downfall of adding Machado is his impending free agency at the end of the season. It’s highly unlikely that Manny would sign with Milwaukee, many people expect he’ll head to the New York Yankees, his dream team.

It’s worth noting that Ken Rosenthal reported just 10 days ago that the Brewers would be going the other direction on Machado and weren’t expected to be heavily involved in the bidding, but would instead be focusing most of their attention on the pitching market. The team has also recently added infielder Brad Miller to the fold and in his first 11 plate appearances he has three hits - including a home run - and three walks. Tyler Saladino is also set to begin a rehab assignment with Class-A Wisconsin later this week, so the infield situation may not be quite so dire before long. The team also apparently keeping tabs on utiltyman Derek Dietrich of the Marlins, and Slingin’ Stearns doesn’t seem likely to get involved in a bidding war for a rental like Machado. It’s probably more likely that the org only becomes active in talks if the interest and price for Manny winds up being lower than expected.

But we learned in the offseason that there’s no guessing what exactly David Stearns is going to do with his assets. I think it’s pretty obvious that this trade deadline is going to be very exciting.