Angel Zerpa has struggled to make his changeup an effective pitch. (Charlie Riedel \/ Associated Press)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nZerpa\u2019s slider has always had sharp downward break to it, but it doesn\u2019t miss bats, possibly because he doesn\u2019t have any deception in his delivery. His changeup has been a nonfactor in the majors, and it\u2019s a below-average pitch at best, without much movement in any direction. The Brewers have had success helping pitchers get more run on their changeups, so I wonder whether they think they can do the same with Zerpa. Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff and Jacob Misiorowski all have effective changeups that move more horizontally (relative to the average pitch) than vertically, and Zerpa is at a point where any<\/em> improvement in the changeup will probably produce big marginal gains.<\/p>\nI don\u2019t believe Zerpa can start, even if he gets that third pitch; there\u2019s just no deception here, and he\u2019s never had the control to start or the delivery to think he\u2019ll find the control. He could be a better reliever than he\u2019s been, however, if he\u2019s not so vulnerable to righties.<\/p>\n
Outfielder Isaac Collins made his MLB debut in 2024 at age 27, started 2025 on the Brewers bench, and eventually played so well he ended up a regular, with a .268\/.368\/.411 line for the season. He\u2019s a very disciplined hitter, with strong walk rates throughout his time in the Colorado Rockies and Brewers systems, and posted a chase rate of 18.4 percent last year, putting him among the top 2 percent in baseball.<\/p>\n
Collins is also a plus defender in left, with a below-average arm that keeps him from playing somewhere else. The Royals got absolutely nothing from their outfield last year, and particularly from left field, where Drew Waters and a few others combined for a .224\/.291\/.348 line Collins could easily top even if there\u2019s some regression in his second big-league season \u2014 not that I think there\u2019s a specific reason to expect it in his case. I wish he hit the ball harder, but if he had, he would have been in the majors some time before 2024. A left fielder who gets on base and plays plus defense without power is an unusual profile, but it was enough for Collins to accumulate a 2.6 fWAR\/2.1 bWAR in 441 plate appearances last season.<\/p>\n
Right-handed reliever Nick Mears comes from a very high slot with an above-average to plus slider. He improved his control substantially in the time he was with Milwaukee to turn himself into a capable middle reliever. He\u2019s better against right-handed batters, but his platoon split is small enough that he can go full innings, with more power allowed to lefties last year but not the year prior. If there\u2019s a difference between him and Zerpa, it\u2019s that Zerpa might have some upside remaining with the addition\/alteration of that third pitch, whereas Mears probably is what he is.<\/p>\n
The Royals clearly benefit from this trade \u2014 Collins is easily a two-win upgrade over Waters, and Mears for Zerpa might be a wash.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m surprised the Brewers would make the trade, not just because it looks like a 2 WAR loss on paper, but because Collins\u2019 OBP would have led the entire team if he\u2019d played enough to qualify. (The same is true of Andrew Vaughn, who had 254 plate appearances as a Brewer.) They gave Akil Baddoo a major-league deal for next year, even though he hasn\u2019t hit at all in the majors since his rookie year in 2022, although he did have a Collins-like year in Triple A. Otherwise, I don\u2019t see who gets the playing time in left, and I certainly don\u2019t see who\u2019s going to pick up the offensive slack. This seems like a prelude to another move, but one in which the Brewers appear to have lost some value, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nytimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Milwaukee Brewers and Kansas City Royals lined up for a trade Saturday night, with Kansas City sending left-handed reliever Angel Zerpa to Milwaukee for outfielder Isaac Collins and right-handed reliever Nick Mears. The teams have yet to announce the deal officially, but it has been confirmed by The Athletic\u2019s Ken Rosenthal. I can see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2198217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[43627,37804,25866],"class_list":["post-2198216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-mlb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Royals-come-out-ahead-in-Brewers-swap-netting-Isaac-Collins.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2198216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198218,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198216\/revisions\/2198218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2198217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}