The Brewer rotation is Jhoulys Chacin, Junior Guerra, Chase Anderson, Freddy Peralta, and Zach Davies. Those 5 have beat their FIP by .45, .70, 1.31, -.18, and .07 respectively. The Brewer infield UZR this year: 1B: 2.1 - no deadline change 2B: -0.9 - going from Sogard/Villar/Perez to Shaw SS: 3.6 - going from Villar/Saladino to Schoop(a career -1 UZR 2B) 3B: 5.0 - going from Shaw to Moustakas They're making themselves actively worse defensively in the middle infield to get Schoop(.306 wOBA, .320 career) and Moustakas(.325 woBA, .316 career) into the lineup. If you want to call it wish-casting to be baffled that they're doing this when their rotation offers only hope for regression instead of improvement even before the defensive changes, that's okay. These are just objectively baffling moves though. Stearns has made some real bright moves, and his aggressiveness has helped stave off the regression that was coming from Santana, Thames, and Braun, but just like you literally said Theo has had a bad year of making moves and still probably think he's pretty good, Stearns squandered this trade deadline. "They potentially got worse defensively at 2 IF spots" does not equal "they got worse as a team." Luckily for us, our head start on our roster+ our market size means that their moves are likely not enough. But a lot of the "oh hoh hoh it's cute how the brewers are trying" stuff is falling real flat as it appears that they actually have a good team and a good GM.