'We like the balance': Brewers acquire Cortes, Durbin from Yanks for Williams

The Brewers traded closer Devin Williams to the Yankees on Friday for one player who can help now in lefty starter Nestor Cortes, another who can help in the near future in infield prospect Caleb Durbin and cash. It wasn’t a payroll dump and it wasn’t a straight deal of a veteran for prospects.

Rather, as one scout who covers both organizations put it, it was an old-fashioned, “good baseball trade.”

TRADE DETAILS
Yankees get: RHP Devin Williams
Brewers get: LHP Nestor Cortes, INF Caleb Durbin, cash considerations

• Analyzing the Williams trade from all sides

“Losing Devin is tough on all of us, certainly," Milwaukee GM Matt Arnold said. “But we’re also gaining an established Major League starter and a prospect we like a lot here that fits us hopefully in 2025. We like the balance of this trade to help the Brewers.”

It’s hardly a surprise that the Brewers parted ways with Williams, 30, even though they’re the two-time defending National League Central champions and he is one of their best pitchers. Williams was the 2020 NL Rookie of the Year Award winner, a two-time All-Star and a two-time NL Reliever of the Year with a changeup so good it has a nickname (The Airbender) and a 39.4 percent strikeout rate that ranks fourth-best all-time.

Williams was on the block because, like former NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes going into last season, Williams has one season remaining before free agency, and the Brewers were motivated to flip him for at least one player who is controllable for multiple years.

They got that player in Durbin, 24, a second baseman and third baseman with a chance to help Milwaukee make up for the departure of free-agent shortstop Willy Adames, while at the same time exchanging free agents-to-be in Williams and Cortes. Swapping them helped answer a need for both clubs.

The Brewers coveted rotation depth behind staff leader Freddy Peralta, and Cortes has a 3.61 ERA in 126 regular-season games (85 starts) for the Yankees over the past five seasons, including an All-Star campaign in 2022. Last season, Cortes was 9-10 with a 3.77 ERA while reaching the 30-start plateau for the first time, though he dealt with a forearm injury that sidelined him from the middle of September until his return in the World Series.

The good news was he didn’t require surgery, and encouraging results from an MRI scan several weeks ago allowed Cortes to begin his usual offseason throwing program on schedule last week. He is in Las Vegas this week celebrating his 30th birthday and woke up Friday morning to a flurry of texts and voicemails informing him he’d been dealt.

“I’m excited about this opportunity,” Cortes said. “You look at the Brewers and they’ve been in contention for a long time. … That’s exciting, especially with the young group that they have. I feel like I can bring something to the table for them.”

That experience, in part, is why the Brewers made the deal.

“He’s somebody that’s been a major piece of a really good, championship-caliber team with the New York Yankees and I think that will fit us really well, especially after the loss of Willy Adames,” Arnold said. “Then when you layer in the stuff and the ability to cover a lot of innings that are super valuable for us, we think a combination of all of those things is going to be a really nice fit for us in 2025.”

The Yankees, meanwhile, picked up one of baseball’s best closers in Williams, who missed the first four months of 2024 with stress fractures in his back before logging a 1.25 ERA and 14 saves in 22 regular-season games down the stretch. He lowered his career ERA to a sparkling 1.83 in 241 career games.

If there’s a knock on Williams he’ll aim to solve with New York, it’s his misfortune in the postseason. In 2020, Williams missed the NL Wild Card Series against the Dodgers with a cranky shoulder. In ‘21, he missed the NL Division Series with a fractured hand after punching a wall in the wake of the team’s division clinch celebration. In ‘23, he surrendered two runs in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the NL Wild Card Series against the D-backs when the Brewers were down a run.

And in ‘24, handed an opportunity to send the Brewers past the Mets in the NL Wild Card Series, Williams surrendered Pete Alonso’s go-ahead, three-run home run in the ninth inning of a Game 3 loss that provided a stunning end to the Brewers’ season.

In that way, Williams and Cortes share something in common -- a role in two epic postseason home runs. It was Cortes, pitching in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series, who surrendered Dodgers star Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam.

The Brewers held a $10.5 million club option on Williams for next season but opted to decline it, since his early-season injury meant he was projected to make less in arbitration. In fact, the two most widely cited projection systems expect Williams and Cortes to earn nearly identical salaries for next season in the $7.5 to $8 million range once the arbitration process plays out.

Just as important to the Brewers as getting Cortes was landing Durbin, who stands 5-foot-6 and grew up so close to the northern Illinois border that American Family Field was his closest Major League ballpark. He was added to the Yankees’ 40-man roster in November in order to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft after finishing last season at Triple-A, then boosting his stock in the Arizona Fall League, where he batted .312/.427/.548 with five homers in 24 games with 29 stolen bases, shattering the previous record of 24, set by Rick Holifield in 1994, when the AFL’s schedule was almost twice as long as it currently is.

“I think he’s a stud, frankly,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said last month. “Great bat-to-ball [skill], elite ability on the bases as a base stealer, a good defender in the middle of the diamond at second base. He’s really started over the last year-plus to create some position flexibility, too. … Really competitive, kind of that hard-nosed, tough player.”

Durbin gives the Brewers plenty of options as they attempt to replace Adames. Milwaukee has two players who could fill that vacancy in Brice Turang, who won the NL’s Platinum Glove last season as the league’s top overall defender, and Joey Ortiz, a natural shortstop who manned third base for Milwaukee last year. Arnold wasn’t ready to say which player the Brewers intend to move to shortstop.

“It happened pretty quick, but in the little time I’ve had to digest it since I heard the news, I’m excited,” Durbin said. “I know that’s a group of guys that is young and hungry, with really good leadership out of [Rhys] Hoskins and [Christian] Yelich. … I’m just as hungry as them. I think it will be a really good fit.”