There's always a reason to make a trade, every day of the season, as you can always get better and there will always be a player out there better than the worst player on your roster who can be had for a price you can afford. So yeah, in that sense there's a reason.

But specific to the current situation? Honestly, I'd argue not really. Not yet. Unless the kind of opportunity shows up that you'd take any day, even with a good bullpen. Only 13 games into the season, bullpen pitchers have between 1 and 7 IP. 2/3 of the bullpen have ERAs way, way above their career numbers. Brewers bullpen currently has a 5.45 ERA. The 9 guys who have so far pitched out of the pen have a 3.66 ERA between them (equally weighted), which for Anderson and Guerra is mostly as starters. That would put them ~12th in the majors as thing stand now. Which isn't amazing, but it's slightly better than average. So you have to ask yourself, is there anything that suggests they won't pitch more in line with their career norms going forward? xFIP (4.18, 91 xFIP-) and SIERA (4.01), the two best publicly available predictive metrics of the kind until DRA is up and running would suggest that improvements are to be expected. It's early days with small sample sizes for those metrics too, but at this point they're still much, much, much better than using current ERA. I don't know what their internal metrics show, but unless they're alarmingly bad I'd have patience. There are still internal replacements to be evaluated, whether in the form of JJ, Nelson, Burnes/Woodruff, Fields, Hart or younger guys like Olczak, Sanchez, Brown. Give it some time to filter out the worst noise, and to try the options that can be used without having to release/waiver anyone or give up any prospects.

Another reason to do that is that the market in April is bad. Yes, trades can be made. But it's very much a sellers market; only the teams that have already given up on the season will be shopping relievers. Others will have to be absolutely blown away by the offer, and that's something we shouldn't be doing. Even the teams perfectly willing to sell will be hesistant, as there will be greater demand later in the season. There will also be an increased supply eventually, as teams drop out of the playoff hunt, but demand will increase earlier than supply does.

It's not that wins in April matters less than at any other point of the year. It's that with these small sample sizes, and the factors unique to March/April (Weather, offseason rust, adjusting to new environments etc) it's much harder to know what's what. Stats and wins and losses are so heavily influenced by individual blowup outings, by the quality and handedness of hitters and pitchers faced, by whether fly balls hit just above or just below a yellow line on a wall, by umpire performance (Could you really read much into the numbers for a pitcher, in either direction, if he'd made his debut with last night's Phil Cuzzi strike zone?), by weather, by which ballparks played in, by not being in the right place mentally after a breakup or the loss of a pet or whatever. Or by many, many other reasons that can be classified as luck or chance or temporary circumstances.

Any money or prospects spent now, is money and prospects not available to use later. None of us knows how much budget room there is, but with an already record payroll I think it's safer to lean towards the lower part of the spectrum than the top end. The later in the season a trade is made, the smaller the prorated part of the salary taken on is. At that point you also know your needs better. While one can argue about whether farm system rankings are too low on the Brewers, it's still not exactly a top system after recent trades and graduations. That needs to be managed properly. A reliever acquired at this point needs to be a "sure thing". It needs to be someone who will frequently see high-leverage situations even when/if the likes of JJ, Nelson, Burnes join the bullpen; improving the performance in low-leverage situations does very little to get more wins. There aren't many of those available out there. And for those who are, thier teams hold all the cards. I would certainly put up a high asking price and not waiver one bit on that until at least June if I was them.

Overall I'd argue that we need to wait a couple of weeks at least before making any moves involving actual prospects or any real money. 1 month is still a very small sample, 1 month of March/April baseball even more so, but at least you can glean *something* from that. At that point we'll have a better idea of where JJ and Nelson are, if some of the early-season struggles are just that or indicative of something else, of which teams might be willing to trade, and about many other things.

I could be underestimating Smith's market too. You just never know. Might take an Erceg or Lutz headliner which would be tougher.