Brewers trade Mears, Collins to Kansas City for Ángel Zerpa

Another shoe has dropped in the wake of the Brewers’ signing of Akil Baddoo: Isaac Collins, last year’s primary left fielder for much of the season, has been traded to the Kansas City Royals, along with Nick Mears, who pitched 76 times for the Brewers since arriving at the 2024 trade deadline. Coming back to Milwaukee is left-handed reliever Ángel Zerpa.

Arguably, the Brewers’ greatest strength at this moment is depth at almost every position on the diamond. But at some point, that depth creates logjams; after Baddoo signed, the Brewers had nine different outfielders on the 40-man roster who played in the majors for at least a little bit last season. Collins had a magical summer and a few unforgettable moments in a Brewer uniform, but faded badly down the stretch and barely played in the postseason. Mears was leaned on heavily by Pat Murphy last season — he tended to be the go-to guy to get out of ugly jams — and pitched reasonably well, with a 3.49 ERA (119 ERA+) and 3.86 FIP in 63 outings. But Mears has had issues with the long ball since coming to Milwaukee, and he was never quite able to live up to the tantalizing peripherals that accompanied him from Colorado.

So, the Brewers have consolidated Collins and Mears in a deal for Zerpa, who throws a hard sinker (96.5 mph average velocity last season, 84th percentile) and gets a ton of ground balls: his 63.7% ground ball rate was in the top percentile of the league last year. With the Brewers’ excellent infield defense, there’s a good chance that the split between Zerpa’s 4.18 ERA and 3.86 FIP in 2025 (eerily the exact same FIP as Mears) flips in the other direction next season. Zerpa pairs that sinker with a slider that grades nicely in the “Stuff+” stat (126), and occasionally mixes in a four-seamer and even more occasionally a changeup.

Despite interesting stuff and high velocity, Zerpa hasn’t been a high strikeout pitcher in his major league career. In the two seasons he has pitched as a high-volume reliever, he’s posted nearly identical strikeout and walk numbers (8.2 and 8.1 K/9 to 3.2 and 3.1 BB/9 in 2024 and 2025, respectively). Home runs have been a little bit of an issue, as Zerpa’s career home run rate is 1.1 per nine, and he’s never had a season in which he allowed fewer than one homer per nine innings (barring the five shutout innings he threw in his debut — and only — appearance in 2021).

Zerpa has made 148 appearances since that debut. He’s in his first year of arbitration in 2026; Spotrac predicts his salary to come in around $1.25 million, which is marginally less than the $1.5 million it predicts for Mears. With Collins going out as well, the Brewers will save somewhere around a million dollars.

Zerpa is also left-handed and gives the Brewers another option from that side of the mound to go alongside Jared Koenig, Aaron Ashby, and the grab bag of DL Hall, Rob Zastryzny, Robert Gasser (if he isn’t starting), and Sammy Peralta.

This could be viewed as an underwhelming return for the Brewers, but it’s clear that they see something they like in Zerpa, and this suggests they think that end-of-the-season Collins was more real than July-and-August Collins. We’ll see how it works out, but at this point, the Brewers’ pitching scouts have probably earned the benefit of the doubt. According to Curt Hogg, more could be coming: