Is this the year Brewers go big at Trade Deadline?

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ANAHEIM -- This will be Christian Yelich’s ninth Trade Deadline with the Brewers and he’s seen the team make plenty of deals. The 2018 acquisitions of Mike Moustakas and Curtis Granderson stand out to Yelich among the best for the way they lifted the clubhouse culture, and the 2019 trades for Jordan Lyles and Drew Pomeranz were the most impactful midseason additions to the pitching staff.

Those were all productive trades, but they weren’t the big trade. The Brewers have not reeled in the big fish at midseason -- the best available player or pitcher -- since CC Sabathia in 2008.

Maybe this is the year.

“It’s a little different in the sense of, ‘Maybe we’ll get that guy,’” Yelich said. “Usually we’re not connected to those guys. We’ll see what happens. So much of that is out of the control of the players.”

The real action doesn’t begin until about 48 hours to go, Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said a couple of weeks ago of Monday’s 5 p.m. CT MLB Trade Deadline. After all, there’s nothing like a Deadline to spur action in baseball. And as of Saturday evening, that 48-hour clock starts ticking.

The Trade Deadline is two days away, and nothing has changed in the past 10 days since Arnold declared to MLB.com that “we’re definitely active.” The Brewers continue to chart a more aggressive approach to trade talks compared to recent years, according to sources familiar with the brain trust's thinking, though they are unlikely to part with top prospects Jesús Made (MLB’s No. 1 overall prospect, per MLB Pipeline), or Luis Peña (Brewers No. 2, overall No. 18) in any deal.

Two-time reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal remains the biggest prize on this year’s market, and the Brewers have enough depth in their top-ranked farm system to be very much in the running as they began a three-game series against another potential seller, the Angels, on Friday evening in Anaheim. The Angels have two of Milwaukee’s starting pitchers of interest in left-hander Reid Detmers and José Soriano, who are each solid innings-eaters. Barring a change, Soriano is scheduled to start against the Brewers on Saturday night, but Milwaukee’s coaches were prepared to pivot should the Angels announce a change.

The Reds’ Hunter Greene and the Tigers’ Casey Mize (who was scratched from his scheduled start on Friday) are among the other top starters who could be moved once the Skubal domino falls, and that makes them other possibilities for the Brewers, who sit in first place in the NL Central with the second-best run differential (+132) in the Majors entering Friday. That’s another reason for the front office to believe as the Brewers began another grueling stretch of 17 games in 17 days that covers two West Coast trips which will test the pitching depth to its limit.

Arnold and his team are intent on adding help and have been aiming big. Available arms don’t get bigger than Skubal, whose interest has come everywhere from a fellow small-market team in the Rays to the biggest spenders of all, the Dodgers. In a sign of the Brewers’ seriousness, The Athletic reported Friday that the Brewers are willing to take on all of Skubal’s remaining salary this season in a deal. He’s due more than $10 million for the remainder of this year after earning a record-setting $32 million salary in his final year of arbitration.

Club officials occasionally ask Yelich for insight along the lines of, “What have you heard about this guy?” he said, but never go so far as to give him advance notice of when they are close to acquiring a specific player, or when a deal is done.

That means he’s just like the rest of us, scanning the news to see what happens.

“So much of it is out of your control, so you just wait and see,” Yelich said. “That’s the reality at this time of year. But we’re not the ones making the moves, so you’re kind of in a position like everyone else is. You wait to see where everybody goes.”

And even then, nobody knows whether those trades will pay off.

“That’s the thing about pro sports, right?” Yelich said. “There’s no guarantees in anything.”