NL Central Notes: Schwarber, Brewers, Liriano

Injured Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber probably isn’t going anywhere this summer, as Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times reports. President of baseball operations Theo Epstein gave strong signals that he’s got little interest in seeing Schwarber return from his knee injury in another uniform. While there’s always plenty of posturing this time of year, Epstein certainly made clear that there’s a higher-than-usual barrier to a trade involving the catcher/outfielder.

Here’s more from the NL Central:

• The Brewers are winding up for what looks to be an important trade deadline, as MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy reports. Milwaukee has several notable names that rate amongst the top twenty trade candidates this summer, but few represent straightforward decisions. GM David Stearns says that “the calls have picked up over the last week to ten days,” though it’s “still largely informational.” Right now, the club is getting a feel for the teams it is looking to target in reaching agreements over the coming month. “You try to get a sense of what other clubs are doing, where you might have fits, so you can begin to do additional target work on certain target organizations,” says Stearns. “At this point, we feel well-prepared in terms of organizations we’re likely to have serious discussions with.”
• Selling was never in the plans for the Pirates, but the club increasingly looks to be in a tough spot — in no small part due to the struggles of lefty Francisco Liriano, who owns a 5.33 ERA with 9.0 K/9 and 5.9 BB/9 on the year. Manager Clint Hurdle tells John Perrotto of the Beaver County Times that Liriano is still failing to command the ball with consistency. “Sometimes, it’s hard to pitch when you aren’t feeling the way you’ve felt when you’ve had success,” Hurdle said. “We’re going to continue to peel back the layers and try to push through this. We’ll continue to look at video. We’ll see if we can find some answers.” We have heard at least some suggestion that there’d be interest around the league in the talented lefty, who had turned in three-straight stellar campaigns heading into 2016. But he’s owed $13MM both this year and next, and surely any acquiring team would be looking for a buy-low opportunity.