Inside Brewers clubhouse, players grapple with trade that sent away four-time all-star closer Josh Hader

PITTSBURGH — Devin Williams didn’t have much to say, but, really, he didn’t need to.

It was what Williams didn't say with an extended pause and deep inhale before answering questions from reporters that said it all.

He wasn't all too pleased with the Milwaukee Brewers trading Josh Hader.

“I don’t really have a lot to say, to be honest with you,” Williams said. “I don’t know. I was surprised.”

Williams paused again, expressionless. A bit later in the interview, he expounded a bit.

“A lot of things that don't really make sense,” Williams said when asked about the deal that sent Milwaukee's all-star closer to the San Diego Padres on Monday. “I don't know. I want to win. That's the biggest thing to me. I don't really have much to say about it.”

While Williams may have been the primary one openly frustrated with the Brewers' decision to send out a three-time National League reliever of the year while in first place in the NL Central Division with two months left in the year, he was far from the only one still processing it.

“We're a first-place team; we want to win the World Series,” said starting pitcher Brandon Woodruff, a teammate of Hader’s since his MLB debut in 2017. “That's why when I saw it, I didn't believe it at first but as I sat down and thought about it some more, sometimes that stuff's just hard.

"Those decisions in the front office, sometimes they're hard things to do. You may not understand it but it's just part of it.”

Make no mistake -- the Brewers did not punt at this year’s deadline.

They got major-league bullpen help back in the deal in the form of Taylor Rogers and Dinelson Lamet, then traded for Matt Bush from the Texas Rangers to close out Monday. On Tuesday, they traded for Trevor Rosenthal as well.

Off the field, the players will eventually adapt to not having Hader. But, for now, that doesn’t ease the sting of losing out on having Hader around the clubhouse.

And for the man in charge of the inner workings of the Brewers clubhouse, that isn’t a problem.

“I don’t think we should shy away from anybody’s reaction to losing a really important player for the franchise, for losing a really good friend for a lot of people, for losing a great person” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “That hurts. It doesn’t feel good. And I think when 7:10 (p.m.) hits tonight and the game starts, you have a job to do.

“We’ve all learned the lesson: the game doesn’t stop for any of us. It goes on and we have a job to do when it’s game time. But I don’t think we should shy away from those feelings we’re having about Josh.”

The Brewers bullpen may very well not take a significant step back – if at all – but there still remains the lingering feeling, as evidenced by Williams, that any push to win now is hampered by getting rid of Hader.

Woodruff, now the team’s second-longest tenured player, shared how he thought the team would handle any simmering frustration in that regard.

“Everybody can kind of point fingers and get mad, but you kind of take a step back. You look at the trade, you look at what’s going on with it. I’m looking at it as you lose a good friend, a teammate but you see that (business) side of it. And sometimes that’s the hard side. That’s the tough side.

“We’re not going out and bashing each other out. That’s what makes us good too. I think collectively as a clubhouse we have to come together, we have to pull for each other, do the little things and have fun and that’s what makes us good. We’ll continue to do that.”

Christian Yelich, another elder statesman of the Brewers in terms of tenure with the team, was also initially taken by surprise. From the visitors' clubhouse in Pittsburgh, though, Yelich took on the perspective of the organization’s grand scheme.

“(President of baseball operations) David (Stearns), (general manager) Matt (Arnold), (principal owner) Mark Attanasio, they’ve done really well over the last five years,” Yelich said. “I think they’ve earned the trust of everyone in this room and they have the best interests of this team in mind. At the same time, I’m sure it was an extremely difficult decision for them and something I’m sure they didn’t take lightly.

“It’s part of the game and part of the business. These things happen. Most guys get traded throughout their career and you never know when it’s gonna happen. It’s one of those instances.”

This season, Hader had a 4.24 earned run average, but a recent blip in production inflated that number a bit. He leads the league with 29 saves this year, part of a lengthy list of accolades for someone who made it to four all-star games and struck out 541 batters in 316 ⅓ innings with the Brewers.

“He deserves a lot of credit for the amount of games we’ve won here, the amount of success we’ve had here the last five years,” Yelich said. “He won a lot of games for us by himself with how good he was. A cornerstone of this franchise and someone who was one of the best Brewers players of all time.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse grapples with Josh Hader trade to Padres