Were Brewers secret winners of bizarre 3-team Sean Murphy trade?

The Atlanta Braves were recently involved in a three-team trade for catcher Sean Murphy, one of the most bizarre trades in baseball, and the Brewers may have gotten the best outcome.

The Atlanta Braves have been undergoing some serious roster construction to stay a winning team over the past few years, so there’s no surprise in the fact that they involved three teams in a trade for catcher Sean Murphy.

Of course, the Braves and the Oakland Athletics were involved. However, in order to pull such a deal off, the Milwaukee Brewers became involved as well, ultimately giving up Esteury Ruiz to the Athletics in return for a mix of Braves and A’s players.

In the deal:

• Braves got Sean Murphy
• Brewers got William Contreras, Joel Payamps and Justin Yeager
• Athletics got Kyle Muller, Freddy Tarnok, Royber Salinas, Manny Pina and Esteury Ruiz

While the Braves got a great quality player and the Athletics got an abundance of talented players, the Brewers were the true winners of the deal as they gained three players, including star Contreras, for just Ruiz. Ruiz was a trade during the 2022 regular season and he only played three games for the Brewers in the majors.

They got a great outcome with minimal loss.

The Brewers had the best luck of the Sean Murphy trade

Contreras is a solid catcher, better than Murphy in some areas. Contreras ranks higher than Murphy in several percentile rankings, including average exit velocity (76th), max exit velocity (97th), hard hit (84th), xwOBA (82nd), xSLG (90th), barrel percentage (91st), walk percentage (77th), chase rate (54th) and sprint speed (42nd).

Since he’s comparable to Murphy, he should’ve been much more difficult to trade for than just offering out Ruiz. Under normal circumstances, he probably would’ve been. However, the Brewers weren’t the focus of this trade, the Braves and the Athletics were. They flew under the radar and got greatness in return.

The Brewers needed it, too. They’ve never won a World Series, and their last appearance was in 1982. Of the 53 seasons of their franchise, they’ve only been to the playoffs eight times, half of which were 2018-2021. They missed the playoffs this past season, but they ranked second in the NL Central and finished above .500, proving they’re not a bad team.

With Contreras, they’re likely to do even better next season. While everyone was focused on the Braves landing Sean Murphy and the Athletics getting several talented players, the Brewers snuck in with one of the greatest deals possible.