Josh Hader

The first-place Brewers are moving on from Hader, one of baseball's best relievers in recent years.

The Padres were able to acquire Hader, possibly the game's best reliever over the course of his career, for a package of extraneous players. It's rare to be able to land a potential impact talent -- even in the form of a reliever -- without giving up a player the team will definitely miss. Hader's departure will also free up funds for the Brewers to allocate elsewhere. (That drop, the Brewers front office seems to be banking on, can be offset with Rogers.) Looking for more insight on the Hader trade? Hader had been particularly ineffective as of late, with his seasonal ERA increasing from 1.09 at the beginning of July to 4.24 by month's end.

The Padres have acquired closer Josh Hader in a trade with the Brewers that sends Taylor Rogers and three other players to Milwaukee, a source told ESPN's ...

Injuries and ineffectiveness have plagued him since, and he has a 9.49 ERA in 12⅓ major league innings this season, but a 1.93 ERA with a hefty strikeout rate in Triple-A. "The players we are receiving in this trade help ensure that the future of the Milwaukee Brewers remains bright while not compromising our desire and expectation to win today," Brewers president of basketball operations David Stearns said in a statement. But the presence of that fourth winner, Devin Williams, certainly helped. Hader, who is making $11 million this season, should see his salary jump into the $16 million range in his final year of arbitration next season. San Diego, with a win-now attitude, will replace Rogers with Hader -- and is far from done. Still, San Diego paid significantly for Hader. Rogers may be the most recognizable name in the deal -- he is currently second in the National League with 28 saves -- but he is far from the most important player to Milwaukee. (He will be a free agent after this season.) The 23-year-old Ruiz shredded Triple-A this season, slashing .344/.474/.611, and made his big league debut last month.

The five-player trade would bring to Milwaukee the Padres' closer Taylor Rogers, another reliever and two prospects.

Lamet is a classic buy-low option who's likely to pitch out of the bullpen for now. He struck out 541 batters in 316⅓ innings, a rate of 15.4 per nine. Gasser, 23, was a second-round pick of the Padres last year out of the University of Houston. In 18 starts at advanced Class A Fort Wayne this season, he was 4-9 with a 4.18 ERA and WHIP of 1.26. He is 1-5 with a 4.35 ERA and WHIP of 1.11 in 42 appearances and has struck out 48 in 41⅓ innings. His best season came in the pandemic-shortened 2020, when he went 3-1 with a 2.09 ERA and WHIP of .086 in 12 starts — a performance that was good enough to earn him a fourth-place finish in the balloting for the National League Cy Young Award. He was the first Milwaukee reliever to be named an all-star four times, although he chose not to participate in last month's game in order to be able to spend time with his wife and newborn son. That said, Hader has easily been one of the organization's most popular players since debuting in 2017 and morphing from a multi-inning weapon into one of the game's best closers. In 269 career appearances with the Brewers, Hader went 17-17 with 125 saves, earning three NL Reliever of the Year awards along the way. Hader, 28, is in the midst of a fourth all-star season, one in which he opened by recording saves in each of his first 18 appearances — a major-league record. For the season, Hader is 1-4 with a 4.24 earned-run average, a WHIP of 1.12 and a major-league-leading 29 saves in 34 appearances. But the left-hander hit a rough patch in recent weeks, culminated by a six-run blowup in the ninth inning of an eventual loss at San Francisco just prior to the all-star break. "This mix of present major-league talent and high-level prospects furthers our aim to get as many bites of the apple as possible and, ultimately, to bring a World Series to Milwaukee. Trading good players on good teams is difficult, and that certainly is the case with Josh.

The deal was first reported by ESPN. The Brewers lead the NL Central by three games over the Cardinals but had their reasons to part with Hader, who leads the ...

The difference in the NL Central is just three games and the Brewers and Cardinals meet seven more times. If the season ended today, the Phillies would play the Brewers and the Padres would play the Braves in Best of 3 series hosted entirely by Milwaukee and Atlanta, the higher seeds. There's no big difference between the second and third wild-cards in terms of playoff positioning. San Diego holds the second wild-card and the Phils currently occupy the third and final spot. Hader has been surprisingly homer-prone this season, allowing seven in 37 appearances after giving up only six in 81 appearances the prior two years. The Padres, run by ever-aggressive president of baseball operations A.J. Preller, fill a big hole with Hader. They had been using Rogers as their closer and it worked for two months.

It's not often teams move their top-level closers at the deadline, but the Brewers seem to have faith in their bullpen.

The Brewers got a lot in return for Hader, and this is a poster child for listening on everyone. Either way, they get back an ace closer who can help the Padres in any runs they plan on making this year, which will serve them well. But it's a good return with some MLB talent all the same for Milwaukee. The Padres' second-round pick in 2021, he's posting a 4.18 ERA at the Padres' High-A affiliate Fort Wayne. Hader will be a free agent in 2023, and Devin Williams -- who has been excellent this year -- has three years of arbitration. July was a tough month for the Brewers star, as he posted a 12.54 ERA and had a batting average against of .354.

More trade rumors are swirling around Brewers closer Josh Hader at the 2022 Trade Deadline. Is this the usual smoke? Or is there some fire to it this time?

They’re a first place team trying for a World Series. If they’re trading away an impact player from their big league roster, they need a big league impact player back in return. If the Brewers trade Hader at the Deadline, and that’s a major if, the Brewers will need to get at least one immediate impact offensive player back in return. Hader will receive another big raise in arbitration this winter and will enter his final season of team control before free agency next year. Hader’s value is only going to go down as time as time goes on. The Brewers are not sellers at this Trade Deadline. If there had ever been a season in the last few years where Milwaukee was going to sell, Hader likely would’ve been gone already. The 9th inning will still be well taken care of.

The first-place Brewers traded their closer to the Padres for their closer, a reclamation project of a pitcher and two prospects. Let's sort through the ...

There’s still a lot of time to see more that could help fill in the picture here. And there’s plenty of time for more action that could illuminate this trade even more. Hader is making $11 million this season and is all but guaranteed to command more in his final year of arbitration in 2023. That could be very important if we see more from Preller & Co.—who are far behind the Dodgers in the NL West but are in comfortable possession of a wild-card spot. Instead, this is the team’s first big move of Deadline Week: It trades its All-Star closer away to another playoff hopeful. It has a few games of breathing room, but not a lot, and there are a few clear areas for its front office to address.

The Josh Hader rumors have been a thing for years now, with the Milwaukee Brewers, at some point, purportedly unable or unwilling to pay him his arbitration ...

Meanwhile, the Padres still have all their top trade chips. Ruiz and Gasser are the main pieces of the return – at the back end of the Padres’ top ten, according to BA. Ruiz, 23, is a speedy outfielder who seemed to break out this year at Double-A and Triple-A (primarily on the basis of speed and contact), and Gasser, 23, is pitching well at High-A, and has back-of-the-rotation upside. The Josh Hader rumors have been a thing for years now, with the Milwaukee Brewers, at some point, purportedly unable or unwilling to pay him his arbitration salary.

The Milwaukee Brewers have traded All-Star closer Josh Hader to the San Diego Padres, the teams announced Monday. In return, Milwaukee acquires left-handed ...

He had a 4.18 ERA and 115 strikeouts in 18 starts for the Padres’ High-A affiliate this season. He had a breakout 2020 as a member of the Padres’ rotation, then injuries hampered him. The move gives the Padres a dominant late-game arm for this playoff chase and at least another; Hader is under club control through 2023. The Padres have been after Hader, one of baseball’s top closers, for at least a couple of years. Despite recent struggles, Rogers has been one of the most effective relievers in the sport the last seven seasons. “Trading good players on good teams is difficult, and that certainly is the case with Josh,” Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said in a statement.

The San Diego Padres acquire All-Star closer Josh Hader from Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for four players.

His 0.88 WHIP over six seasons is the lowest in history, and his 15.4 strikeouts per nine inning are the most by any reliever who has thrown at least 300 innings. Hader is not due to become a free agent until after the 2023 season. Hader, a left-hander, has saved a major league-leading 29 games.

The Padres and Brewers are both making bets in an eyebrow-raising deadline deal.

Gasser, 23, was the 71st pick in the 2021 draft by way of the University of Houston. He's spent the season in High-A, posting a 4.18 ERA and a 4.11 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 18 starts. He celebrated his 30th birthday in July, and he's closing in on five full years of service, putting him a year away from reaching the open market. When Lamet has been in The Show, he's shown off a swing-and-miss slider and a mid-90s fastball. Rogers' larger body of work suggests he's an above-average reliever, albeit without achieving the sky-high heights of Hader, and without that additional year of team control. They're also thinking that they can make up for Hader's additional year of control -- a year they were unlikely to ever benefit from directly, anyway -- by coaching up Lamet, Ruiz, and Gasser. Still, there's a fair chance they end up either seeing the Padres in the playoffs or competing with them for a spot, and that makes things awkward. Hader, for those who didn't notice, had a crummy July. He entered the month with a 1.09 ERA on the season and he exited with a 4.24 mark. The Padres don't have to rely on that kind of wide-lens analysis here. The Padres are hoping that Hader's recent trouble is mere turbulence, and not the beginning of the end of his reign of dominance; the Brewers are crossing their fingers that they can get similar production from Rogers the rest of the way, and enough from Lamet, Gasser, and Ruiz to justify bailing on Hader's additional year of team control. He finished that season with a 2.62 ERA, and he's since had successful seasons in both 2020 and 2021, suggesting this could be within his realm of normalcy. As noted in the introduction, this trade is a straightforward one for the Padres. General manager A.J. Preller is betting that Hader's rough July is a blip rather than the early signs of decay. We here at CBS Sports are nothing if not judgmental, and that means offering near-instant analysis on big trades this time of the year.

The Padres added Josh Hader without giving up any of their top-tier prospects.

The Brewers also get three other players back along with Rogers, all of whom should have major-league value now or in the near future. He’s clearly better than Taylor Rogers, who also lives by his slider, throwing a ton of strikes but with worse results from the stretch since the start of last year. The Padres have been linked to everyone in the trade market, as usual, but their deal for Josh Hader feels like a surprise twice over, as it’s not the kind of player I expected them to go after, and they did it without giving up any of their top-tier prospects.

With the trade deadline just over 24 hours away, the Brewers swung perhaps the most stunning deal of the summer. On Monday afternoon, Milwaukee dealt closer ...

In 13 games this season, the 30-year-old has limped to a 9.49 ERA and a 14.5% walk rate. Now the work begins to turn Rogers and Lamet into capable replacements for Hader. In a best-case scenario, this trade improves the long-term outlook of the organization without negatively impacting their chances of winning a World Series this season. Like Hader, Rogers is a left-hander, but his money pitch is a slider that he throws over 50% of the time. The key to this deal is that the Brewers did not receive four prospects in return. The right-hander has always possessed electric stuff and finished fourth in the National League Cy Young Award voting in 2020, but injuries have forced him into a relief role and reduced his effectiveness. If they found a deal to their liking that made sense from both short-term and long-term perspectives, they would pull the trigger. Ruiz, also 23, began his season in Double-A, but a big performance earned him a promotion to Triple-A and eventually the big leagues while boosting his prospect stock. The 23-year-old Gasser is a left-hander selected in the second round of last year’s draft. Some have suspected that Hader’s salary and recent performance played a role in the decision to move him now. Hader was due to become a free agent after next season, and it was all but guaranteed that he would earn a lucrative contract from another club. On Monday afternoon, Milwaukee dealt closer Josh Hader to the San Diego Padres in exchange for Taylor Rogers, Dinelson Lamet, Esteury Ruiz and Robert Gasser.

The left-hander says 'it sucks to leave Milwaukee,' but he understands why he was traded and is eager to start anew with San Diego.

It’s a shock to everybody but it’s part of the business." But I think that back end of the bullpen is still going to stay solid." "We’ve all seen what Devin has done over his career with the Brewers and how he’s gone about his business and what he can do and provide for the team," Hader said. As a fan base, they have to trust in what they’re doing and continue to support the Brew Crew. Trying to involve evolve my pitches — my slider and my changeup — and just trying to become a better pitcher in that aspect of things. "We’ve seen Rogers as well with the Padres and how he handles his thing. The culture here is always fun, it’s always a pleasure to be around each other every day. "They obviously have a vision for what they think the team is to win a World Series. Obviously, the fans could be a little shocked because it’s something different. Phillips was one of the pieces that ultimately brought Mike Moustakas into the fold in 2018. "That’s why the front office does what they do," Hader said. It sucks to leave Milwaukee and everybody here and all the relationships that I've built over the years. "I would say more overwhelmed just on the sense of logistics-wise but I mean, I had an idea," he said when asked for his initial thoughts on the deal.

So the Brewers did the logical thing and … traded Hader? To the San Diego Padres, who needed a closer badly? Yep. Not a typo. He had one year left on his deal, ...

Gasser is a top-10 prospect in the Padres’ organization. Hader can be a free agent in a year, so get something for him, right? So it made sense for the team to go shopping for bullpen help.

Moments after the acquisition was made public, David Stearns, the Brewers' President of Baseball Operations, issued a lengthy statement that elaborated on the ...

“The players we are receiving in this trade help ensure that the future of the Milwaukee Brewers remains bright while not compromising our desire and expectation to win today. The Brewers’ decision to trade Hader comes as a bit of a surprise, given the club is sitting atop the NL Central with a three-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. “Trading good players on good teams is difficult, and that certainly is the case with Josh. We also recognize that to give our organization the best chance for sustained competitiveness, to avoid the extended down periods that so many organizations experience, we must make decisions that are not easy,” the message concluded.