Author: Anthony Franco

The Brewers retained one of their top starters on the qualifying offer. They traded their other veteran ace as he enters his walk year. Milwaukee was active as ever on the trade market — many of which were forward-looking moves — but they’ll expect to compete for another NL Central title.

Major League Signings

• RHP Brandon Woodruff: One-year, $22.025MM qualifying offer
• 3B Luis Rengifo: One year, $3.5MM (including buyout of ’27 mutual option)
• C Gary Sánchez: One year, $1.75MM
• OF Akil Baddoo: One year, $1.25MM (split contract paying $845K in the minors)

2026 spending: $27.025MM
Total spending: $28.525MM

Trades and Claims

• Traded RHP Freddy Peralta and RHP Tobias Myers to Mets for RHP Brandon Sproat and minor league SS/OF Jett Williams
• Traded 3B Caleb Durbin, IF Andruw Monasterio, 2B/C Anthony Seigler and Competitive Balance Round B pick (#67 overall) to Red Sox for LHP Kyle Harrison, IF David Hamilton and LHP Shane Drohan
• Traded OF Isaac Collins and RHP Nick Mears to Royals for LHP Angel Zerpa
• Claimed LHP Sammy Peralta off waivers from Angels

Option Decisions

• Exercised $8MM option on Freddy Peralta (later traded to Mets)
• RHP Brandon Woodruff declined $20MM mutual option in favor of $10MM buyout (returned via qualifying offer)
• Team declined $12MM mutual option on C Danny Jansen in favor of $500K buyout paid by Rays
• Team declined $12MM club option on C William Contreras in favor of $100K buyout (retained via arbitration)
• Team declined $18MM mutual option on 1B Rhys Hoskins in favor of $4MM buyout
• Team declined $15MM mutual option on LHP Jose Quintana in favor of $2MM buyout

Notable Minor League Signings

• Jordyn Adams, JB Bukauskas, Gerson Garabito, Jacob Hurtubise, Greg Jones, Eddys Leonard, Reese McGuire, Drew Rom, Peter Strzelecki, Jacob Waguespack

Extensions

• None

Notable Losses

• Freddy Peralta, Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, Nick Mears, Tobias Myers, Rhys Hoskins, Jose Quintana, Danny Jansen, Andruw Monasterio, Shelby Miller, Erick Fedde, Anthony Seigler, Connor Thomas, Jordan Montgomery

The Brewers were MLB’s best regular season team in 2025. They won a league-high 97 games and were comfortably in charge of the NL Central throughout the second half. After defeating the Cubs in the Division Series, they were blanked by the Dodgers in the NLCS. The front office was faced with the usual challenge of maintaining that level of success with a bottom half payroll and their two best pitchers at or nearing free agency.

Milwaukee’s first significant decision was whether to issue a $22.025MM qualifying offer to Brandon Woodruff. The two-time All-Star had an excellent 12-start run in his return from shoulder surgery. His velocity was down a few ticks from pre-surgery levels. Even more alarming is that he suffered a lat strain during a September bullpen session that wound up ending his season.

A qualifying offer would nevertheless have been an easy call for a team running a $200MM+ payroll. Woodruff’s track record is so strong that he’d be great value at that price point if a team knew he’d stay healthy. It’s a much bigger roll of the dice for a club that opened last season with a $115MM payroll. Woodruff could realistically account for 20% of their spending on players.

The Brewers took the upside play and issued the offer. Woodruff accepted and will be back for a ninth season. The Brewers may have been a little surprised that he took a one-year offer, but it certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. The team wouldn’t have issued the QO if they feared it’d cripple them financially.

At the same time, it immediately ramped up speculation about Freddy Peralta’s future. Exercising an $8MM club option was the easiest decision the team made all winter, but that didn’t preclude a trade. (Woodruff, by contrast, couldn’t be traded without his consent until June 15 as a major league free agent signee.) President of baseball operations Matt Arnold initially downplayed the possibility of dealing Peralta, but those conversations would pick up steam in the second half of the offseason.

Milwaukee reportedly discussed Peralta with the Yankees, Astros, Dodgers, Braves, Padres and Twins (presumably among others). The most natural destination, however, always seemed to be the Mets. New York front office leader David Stearns knows Peralta well from his time running baseball operations in Milwaukee. The Mets’ rotation lacked an established headliner alongside touted rookie Nolan McLean. They had a deep enough farm system that it made sense for them to push in some chips below their top prospect tier in a consolidation trade.

The Brewers were probably willing to carry both Woodruff and Peralta on the payroll, but this kind of trade is par for the course. They simply weren’t going to spend what it took to keep Peralta off the open market. They could hold him until free agency and make the qualifying offer, as they did with Willy Adames, but they’d surely get a more valuable trade return than the compensatory draft pick.

The question was whether they were getting enough back that it outweighed the hit they were taking to the 2026 roster in trading one of the National League’s five best pitchers. The Brewers never operate as clear-cut buyers or sellers. They weren’t kicking off a rebuild one year after winning 97 games. As was the case with the Josh Hader, Corbin Burnes and Devin Williams trades, they needed to feel the package itself was too strong to ignore.

Each of those previous three deals netted cost-controlled major league players. That’s a clear priority for a team trying to remain annually competitive. Arnold eventually pulled the trigger on a deal that sent Peralta and swingman Tobias Myers to Queens for rookie starter Brandon Sproat and top infield/outfield prospect Jett Williams.

Sproat is a 6’3″ righty who sits in the 96-97 mph range and has a five-pitch mix. He made his first four MLB starts last September. The command is a work in progress, but he’s around the strike zone enough to project as a starter. He has mid-rotation caliber stuff and is competing for a rotation spot this spring.

Williams, a 5’7″ utility player, is coming off a .261/.363/.465 showing with 17 homers and 34 stolen bases in the upper minors. He’s a plus athlete with good strike zone discipline and more power than one might expect based on his height. There’s some swing-and-miss to his game and questions about his position, but he fits well in a group that emphasizes defensive versatility and aggressiveness on the bases. Williams has yet to reach the majors but should be up this year, perhaps as soon as Opening Day.

The trade almost certainly makes the Brewers worse in 2026. They were never going to get a McLean-level prospect for one year of Peralta. Myers is overshadowed in the bigger picture but had developed into a nice swing option in his own right over the past two seasons.

It’s similar to the 2024 Burnes trade, which also netted two MLB-ready pieces who’d recently been at the back of Top 100 prospect lists (DL Hall and Joey Ortiz). They didn’t get much out of either of those players last season, but Ortiz had a 3-WAR campaign as Milwaukee’s third baseman in 2024. Getting that kind of combined value from Sproat and Williams this year would go a long way toward keeping them competitive while stockpiling long-term value.

Ortiz was the most vulnerable position player in the starting lineup entering the offseason. He moved seamlessly (from a defensive standpoint) to shortstop to replace Adames but didn’t perform offensively. His .230/.276/.317 line was third-worst among hitters who tallied 500 plate appearances. Top prospects Cooper Pratt and Jesús Made figure to eventually push Ortiz off the position, but neither player is likely to get consideration for the Opening Day roster.

Williams has a better chance of taking over shortstop within the first half of the season. If Ortiz bounces back enough offensively to hold the job, they can use Williams as a multi-positional piece. That could include work in the outfield or at third base, where the Brewers made potential sell-high trades on unheralded prospects coming off strong rookie seasons.

That started in mid-December when Milwaukee dealt left fielder Isaac Collins and middle reliever Nick Mears to Kansas City for lefty sinkerballer Angel Zerpa. Collins finished fourth in Rookie of the Year balloting behind a .263/.368/.411 line across 441 plate appearances. He’d been a good Triple-A hitter as well but surprised evaluators with that kind of performance in his age-27 season. His batted ball metrics weren’t as impressive. There’s a decent chance he’s closer to a league average hitter moving forward.

Mears is a power arm who had a career-low 3.49 ERA last season. His strikeout rate was down more than eight percentage points relative to 2024, however, and he’d fallen out of favor as he struggled and battled injuries in the second half.

The Brewers will try to coax more out of Zerpa, who has an ERA right around 4.00 in 177 big league innings. He throws hard and has one of the highest ground-ball rates in MLB. Zerpa doesn’t miss bats at a high level and has gotten knocked around by right-handed opponents (.282/.340/.470 in 488 career plate appearances). Although Milwaukee has left the door open to building him up as a starter, the platoon issues suggest he’s better served in a relief role. He’s pitching out of the bullpen in Spring Training and should replace Mears in that spot.

Collins felt a little superfluous in a Milwaukee outfield that also includes Jackson Chourio, Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell and Christian Yelich on occasion. Blake Perkins, Tyler Black, Brandon Lockridge and offseason signee Akil Baddoo are all depth options on the 40-man roster. (Collins is a more decisive upgrade for a K.C. team that had arguably the worst outfield in the league.)

That wasn’t the case for the other second-year position player whom the Brewers surprisingly traded away. Caleb Durbin would have been Milwaukee’s everyday third baseman. Acquired from the Yankees in last offseason’s Williams trade, the 25-year-old Durbin hit .256/.334/.387 with 11 homers and 18 steals over his first 136 big league games. He placed third in Rookie of the Year voting. Durbin is small and doesn’t hit the ball hard, so he was never a marquee prospect. Yet he commands the strike zone, puts the ball in play, and has the athleticism to play a quality second or third base.

It stands to reason the Brewers didn’t enter the offseason looking to trade Durbin, whom they controlled for six more seasons. With the number of higher-ceiling infield prospects they have coming through the farm system, he’s also not someone they’d refuse to discuss. They wound up working out a deal with the Red Sox — who felt that his right-handed bat could play up at Fenway Park — centered around Durbin and left-hander Kyle Harrison.

There’s a clear parallel between the Durbin trade and last spring’s deal with Boston for Quinn Priester. Harrison is a former top prospect whose stock had seemingly dropped within each of his two previous organizations. The Giants included him as part of the Rafael Devers trade. The Red Sox shied away from calling him up for most of last season even as they navigated rotation injuries and stuck with a struggling Walker Buehler for the majority of the year.

Harrison has a 4.39 ERA with league-average strikeout and walk rates in just under 200 big league innings. He’s 24 and still has a minor league option remaining. He struck out roughly 26% of Triple-A opponents a year ago but has had inconsistent command. The Brewers control him for at least five seasons. It’s not easy to convince teams to trade controllable starting pitching. The Brewers got the higher upside end of the deal but are taking a risk in trading a solid everyday infielder for more of a developmental pitching play.

It wasn’t a direct Durbin/Harrison swap, though they’ll very likely be the players whose careers determine which team got the better end. The teams also exchanged utility infielders. Milwaukee reacquired speedster David Hamilton (a former Brewer draftee who was traded to Boston in the deal for Hunter Renfroe) while sending Andruw Monasterio, Anthony Seigler and the #67 pick in this year’s draft to Boston. Depth starter Shane Drohan, a 27-year-old who has yet to make his MLB debut, also landed in Milwaukee.

The Brewers needed to backfill an infield spot after the Durbin trade. They took a $3.5MM flier on Luis Rengifo, who is coming off a replacement level season for the Angels. Rengifo didn’t hit at all last year but turned in a .273/.323/.431 line in more than 1200 plate appearances between 2022-24. He can move around the infield but won’t provide strong defense anywhere.

Rengifo is the favorite to start at third base on Opening Day. That’s fine as a stopgap, though the Brewers are hoping he’ll be pushed into a utility role by someone from within the farm system (Williams, Pratt, etc.) before long.

The right side of the infield is more settled. Brice Turang is one of the game’s steadiest hands at second base. Andrew Vaughn played his way to the everyday first base job with his monster second half. Milwaukee tendered a $2.7MM arbitration contract to Jake Bauers as a left-handed bench bat, while Black could also hit his way into the mix.

Vaughn’s emergence made it an inevitability that the Brewers were moving on from Rhys Hoskins. They paid him a $4MM buyout on an $18MM mutual option. Milwaukee also bought out veteran starter Jose Quintana and backup catcher Danny Jansen.

William Contreras plays as often as any catcher in MLB. The backup catcher role in Milwaukee isn’t a huge priority. Jansen, who commanded a two-year deal from the Rangers, was overqualified. The Brewers want to allow prospect Jeferson Quero to continue playing regularly in the minors, so they needed to make a cheap depth move behind the plate.

Milwaukee circled back to old friend Gary Sánchez on a $1.75MM contract. He hit 11 homers in 89 games for them two seasons ago. Sánchez commanded $8.5MM from the Orioles the following winter, but his lone year in Baltimore was tanked by wrist and knee injuries. He only got into 29 games. The Brewers have some insurance in the form of minor league signee Reese McGuire.

Aside from the Woodruff qualifying offer, Milwaukee stayed away from the free agent pitching market. Sproat and Harrison will be in the mix, but they’re relying heavily on their collection of talented in-house arms to step up behind Woodruff.

Priester has a rotation spot once healthy, though he’s delayed by a wrist issue this spring and could start the season on the injured list. Manager Pat Murphy said today that right-handers Jacob Misiorowski and Chad Patrick are in the rotation (via MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy). Righty Logan Henderson and lefties Robert Gasser, Aaron Ashby and DL Hall are all in the conversation. The Brewers have a lot of flexibility to shuffle pitchers up and down from the minors. Woodruff is their only starter who can’t be sent down.

There’s a similar level of flexibility in the bullpen, where Rob Zastryzny is their only out-of-options arm. The Brewers already had one of the best relief groups in MLB. Aside from the Mears/Zerpa swap, they didn’t need to do much at the back end.

Milwaukee took calls on closer Trevor Megill, who is down to two seasons of arbitration control, but didn’t find an offer to their liking. He’ll probably be traded next offseason as part of the team’s usual operating procedure. They’ll hold him for now alongside Abner Uribe, Jared Koenig, and Zerpa. Ashby and Hall will be in the bullpen if they’re not starting. Milwaukee’s relief pitching should once again be a strength.

The Brewers also took care of some administrative business at the beginning of Spring Training. Murphy, who was entering the final season of his contract as manager, signed a new three-year deal that guaranteed him nearly $9MM. Murphy’s job security obviously wasn’t in question after consecutive Manager of the Year wins, but he’s now locked in for the foreseeable future.

There hasn’t been any reporting about extension talks with players this spring. It’s likely too late to get anything done with Contreras — as with Megill, he’s a likelier trade candidate headed into his walk year next winter — but the Brewers are happy to lock up pre-arbitration players long term. They’ve done so with Peralta, Chourio and Ashby in recent years.

Chourio’s was a pre-debut extension, and it stands to reason they’ll be open to that possibility with Made soon enough. Speculatively, any of Misiorowski, Frelick or Priester would stand as potential targets. Turang is earning a little over $4MM as a Super Two player and will go through arbitration four times. This spring might be the last one in which an extension could be within Milwaukee’s financial comfort zone.

That would cap off a very Brewers style offseason. They made one big trade that was widely expected and a couple more that almost no one saw coming. They’ll rely on internal development and a few of their upper level trade pickups to try to claim a fourth straight division title.