Padres trade Luis Urias and Eric Lauer to Brewers for Trent Grisham and Zach Davies

The San Diego Padres have traded second baseman Luis Urias and starting pitcher Eric Lauer to the Milwaukee Brewers for outfielder Trent Grisham and pitcher Zack Davies.

According to reports from Jon Morosi and Ken Rosenthal, the San Diego Padres have made the first big trade of the offseason.

The Padres fixed a need in the outfield by acquiring Trent Grisham, but in doing so they’ve moved on from once highly-touted prospect Luis Urias.

Urias was a top 30 prospect by MLB.com going into the 2019 season, but over 300 plate appearances in the big leagues he has yet to live up to the hype.

In those 300 plate appearances he’s hit just .221 with a .318 OBP to go along with 6 home runs.

This is a guy they were hoping would be a .280-.300 hitter with a high on-base percentage and close to 20 home runs a season.

He’ll now get a change of scenery to try and prove he can be that player. And it sounds like the Brewers plan to use him as their primary shortstop.

As for Grisham, he was a top 100 prospect back in 2016, but then fell out of favor before a resurgent season in 2019 when he hit .300 with 26 home runs between Double-A and Triple-A.

He ended the 2019 season as the leadoff hitter for the big league club and hit .231 with 6 home runs in 156 at-bats.

Grisham is still really young at 23, and he’s a left-handed hitter, which the Padres desperately needed in the lineup.

Zach Davies is a 26-year-old right-handed pitcher who is under team control for two more seasons through arbitration. He’s expected to make around $5 million through arbitration for the 2020 season.

In 111 Major League starts he has a career ERA of 3.91 in 614.1 innings pitched with 434 strikeouts and a WHIP of 1.30.

This past season may have been his best yet as he posted a 3.55 ERA in 159.2 innings (31 starts) with 102 strikeouts and a  WHIP of 1.29.

Davies is not the top of the rotation starter we were hoping for, but he is a veteran at this point that should be able to eat some innings at the back of the rotation.

The surprise to me was that the Padres also included Eric Lauer in this deal.

At 24-years-old and with five years of control left, I would have thought Lauer had more value. He hasn’t lived up to expectations yet after blowing through the minors with a 2.93 ERA in 178 innings with 195 strikeouts.

With the Padres he has just a 4.40 ERA in 261.2 innings with 238 strikeouts.

I’m not really sure that I  like this deal for the Padres. I thought Urias and Lauer would have much more value than this.

Maybe Grisham has some upside, but I don’t see him as being that different than the outfielders the Padres already have — other than he’s left-handed.

As AJ Casssavell points out, there could be more to this trade, and I sure hope that’s the case for the Padres.

Let us know your thoughts on the trade in the comments below.