What should the Brewers do with Ryan Braun?

The Milwaukee Brewers have been bad, or worse, going on a half-decade now. David Stearns, who replaced Doug Melvin as general manager about 18 months ago, is working on that.

Since taking over in September 2015, Stearns has not only jettisoned veteran studs, like Jonathan Lucroy, and valuable role-players, like Will Smith and Jeremy Jeffress, to rebuild the ghastly farm system he inherited, but he's also done a terrific job stockpiling promising growth assets for the active roster, like Jonathan Villar and Hernan Perez and Andrew Susac, deemed disposable by their former organizations. He even repatriated Eric Thames, the washout-turned-Korean-league-star nearly five years removed from his last big-league at-bat, because he saw an opportunity for surplus value that contained little risk and was future-oriented.

"We want to continue to add to that core group of young players who can grow with this organization and lead us back to consistent competitiveness," Stearns recently told Andrew Wagner of the Wisconsin State Journal. "That's the goal for this team and it can take shape in a number of different forms. It can be players at the major league level who take a pronounced step forward. It could be a player who gets his first taste of major league experience and shows his abilities can translate from the minor leagues to the major leagues."

You know who isn't young (at least, by baseball standards), and ain't gonna grow anymore? Their best player, Ryan Braun, who, at 32, led the Brewers in WAR (3.2) while hitting .305/.365/.538 with 30 homers and 16 stolen bases in 135 games. He isn't the seven-win superstar he was five years ago, and he hasn't played in more than 140 games since 2012, but the former MVP has been at least 30 percent better, offensively, than league-average in three of the last four seasons. Over the last two summers, Braun has been more valuable than Ben Zobrist, Carlos Gonzalez, and Jose Bautista. The dude can still play.

Logically, then, the Brewers ought to move Braun to fulfill the mandate Stearns outlined. His name constantly popped up in trade rumors last season, after all, and the Los Angeles Dodgers were reportedly 20 minutes away from landing him at the Aug. 1 deadline. It's inevitable, isn't it? Well, hold up.

Even without Lucroy and Jeffress and Smith, who combined for 6.2 WAR in 2016, the Brewers are projected for a better record (76-86) than they managed last year (73-89), according to Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system. Though none of their offseason additions, be it Thames or Travis Shaw or Neftali Feliz, are going to improve jersey sales, it looks, empirically, like the Brewers are improving at the major-league level, and there's a wave of high-end prospects expected to augment their young core in the very near future, too. Bolstered by the recent additions of Lewis Brinson, Luis Ortiz, and 2016 draftee Corey Ray, the Brewers boast either the sixth-best or eighth-best farm system in baseball, depending on who you ask - and Stearns deserves tons of credit here; Baseball America tabbed the Brewers' system as the game's second-worst in 2014 - and most of their top prospects are expected to reach the majors no later than 2018.

For the first time in a long time, the Brewers have both an enviable collection of assets and a reasonable expectation that their major-league team can be contending soon - maybe not for a division title, what with the Cubs set to become a dynasty, and all, but certainly for a wild-card berth. Maybe, then, it makes sense to hang onto Braun, even with an expectation of diminishing returns, to stabilize that lineup of the future. He could fetch a nice haul in a trade, especially if the Brewers are willing to eat a large portion of the $80 million he's owed over the next four years, but the Brewers aren't that far away from being a team that, as a potential wild-card contender, needs marginal wins more than they need to grow their asset base.

Projected 2018 lineup

That could be a pretty solid lineup, albeit one largely contingent on meaningful contributions from young players, possibly even rookies. Replace Braun with another kid and it's likely a bit too pie-in-the-sky to hope for this lineup to be good.

Further complicating any possible trade, meanwhile, is Milwaukee's tight timeline to broker a deal. If the Brewers aren't able to find a trade partner before early May, Braun's 10-and-5 rights will kick in, giving him full no-trade protection and effectively destroying any leverage Milwaukee would have on the market.

"If I get traded," Braun said in September, "it's got to be a team that wants to win now, and where I really want to go."

The Brewers don't want to win now. Their front office has been unambiguous about that. But that approach could change as soon as next season. If it does, and they're serious about contending for their first playoff berth since 2011, they'll need some Braun.