The Brewers may have an opportunity
We’re approaching late January, and the major league deals that the Brewers have handed out this offseason have gone to Elvin Rodríguez, who has made eight major league appearances (none of which were in 2024), and Grant Wolfram, who has never pitched in the majors. Willy Adames, the team’s star shortstop, left in free agency, and there are no internal options that don’t come with major question marks. The only acquisition the Brewers have made to address the giant hole on the left side of their infield was the inclusion of Caleb Durbin, a mid-level prospect who has also never played in the majors, in the Devin Williams trade.
On one hand, it’s not that surprising. The Brewers have adopted an M.O. in which they wait out the free agent market until those disgruntled players who haven’t gotten what they were after decide to settle for less on a short-term deal. Four recent deals illustrate this approach:
- Yasmani Grandal signed a one-year, $16 million deal with a player option on January 14, 2019. He was an All-Star in his lone season in Milwaukee and signed a four-year deal with the White Sox the following offseason.
- Mike Moustakas, who the Brewers acquired at the 2018 trade deadline, signed a one-year, $10 million deal with a mutual option on February 19, 2019. Moustakas played well in 2019 and also signed a four-year deal, this one with Cincinnati, after the season.
- Kolten Wong signed a two-year, $18 million deal with a club option on February 5, 2021. He played well for two years and was traded before that final season, in which he sort of inexplicably flamed out in Seattle.
- Rhys Hoskins, coming off a season lost to an ACL injury, signed a two-year, $34 million contract (the second year being a player option) on January 26, 2024.
All four of those deals were for solid veteran players who, for one reason or another, were not getting what they wanted from the free-agent market. All four were signed in mid-January or later. It is clear that at some point Milwaukee realized that they weren’t going to be competing for the players at the top of the market, and instead would work with the leftovers and hope to get some good production at a cut rate.
The economics of this whole situation are another issue; I had a draft of this article in which I got deep into baseball revenues and all sorts of other stuff I don’t completely understand, but it turned into a less-than-perfectly-informed manifesto about why the Dodgers are bad for baseball and I didn’t feel it was quite ready for prime time. (I may write about why I think baseball needs an NBA-style salary cap someday soon, but this isn’t the place). So instead of getting into why all of that is unfair, I’m going to ask this question:
Should we be talking about Alex Bregman?
Bregman has not signed, which is a clear indication that he’s not getting the types of offers that he wants. He reportedly turned down a six-year, $156 million deal with Houston earlier in the offseason, and I’m not sure they’d offer it again if he asked.
Now, Alex Bregman is not the MVP-caliber player that he was in 2018 and 2019, but he is as solid as they come. He’s earned between 4.1 and 4.9 WAR in each of the last three seasons, he hits with good power (between 23 and 26 homers in each of those three years), he plays good defense at third base, and he should be one of the league’s more patient hitters — this last one is a bit up in the air because he inexplicably had a 6.9% walk rate in 2024 after having been at 11% or higher in each of the previous six seasons (and as high as 17.2% in his 2019 season, a year in which I’d probably have voted for him for MVP).
The Brewers are a reigning division champion with a solid roster in a weak division. They absolutely have postseason aspirations and even if they’re excited about Durbin, they need a shortstop or a third baseman. Theoretically, Bregman is a perfect fit.
However, in a discussion related to the baseball economics one above, the Brewers will not risk signing Bregman to a long-term contract. That, to me, is the major difference between the league’s richest teams and the ones in the middle; it is that the wealthy teams can afford to mess up, and they can afford to pay dead money to bad players at the end of their careers. (This is the crux of my “NBA-style cap” solution: capping max contracts at four or five years means that mid-market teams would be far more willing to get in on the bidding because the risk of long-term damage is greatly diminished.)
Is there a scenario where the Brewers decide that Bregman really could be the difference for this team and they make a run at him as sort of a juiced-up version of the deals cited at the beginning of this article? I’m going to be very clear: I have seen nothing that makes me believe that this owner and this front office are going to be aggressive enough to come up with the money for Bregman even if it’s on, say, a three-year deal with two opt-outs. It’s not how they roll, and I do think a big part of the Brewers’ recent success has been because they’re very careful with how they spend their limited resources. But I think the Brewers probably could afford it if they decided this was the moment to push the payroll a bit and offer Bregman something like three years and $90 million, with opt-outs after the first two seasons.
I still don’t think it has any real chance of happening. But the question that this leads me to is this one: what about Ha-Seong Kim? Kim’s market has been remarkably quiet. After the Giants signed Adames, there aren’t many good teams who need a middle infielder. You could make an argument about Atlanta, and maybe the Yankees. But I don’t think any of those teams need one like the Brewers do.
And Kim just seems like a natural fit with Milwaukee. He’s an exceptional defensive player with some versatility (he’s primarily a shortstop but has played a lot of second base and a little bit of third base in his career), and he can kind of hit; in his last three combined seasons, he’s very slightly over league average offensively. The Brewers can work with that, and compared to the rest of the remaining non-Bregman options, Kim is the only one who would get me remotely excited.
Kim’s market is down because, as stated, there aren’t a ton of teams who are looking for a player like him, and because a shoulder injury suffered at the end of last season means he won’t be ready for opening day, and because his defensive metrics fell off a tad last season. Personally, I’m willing to overlook that last one; he was still good, and he’s only going to be 29 in 2025.
This is where I feel the Brewers should pounce. I don’t think it’s very realistic for the Brewers to get Bregman, but maybe they can get Kim. Maybe on something a little beyond the contract that Hoskins signed last season, something like two years and $45 million with an opt-out.
Will it happen? I have no idea. The Brewers are probably making way less on their TV deal this season than they have been in previous years. But while these numbers are all shrouded in mystery, the internet believes that each team is making about $200 million every season in revenue sharing, before you account for things like gate receipts (the Brewers draw well) and sponsorships, which according to the team are in good shape (“as good as they’ve ever been,” according to president of business operations Rick Schlesinger in a September 30 interview).
If the Brewers really are bringing in $200 million in revenue sharing every season, and if they indeed made a $36 million profit in 2024, (as reported by Forbes), I’m going to be annoyed if they don’t end up with Kim or even Bregman (unless something unexpected, like a trade, happens). This is a good team that should be favored heading into the division race and they have a gaping hole in their infield. I get that there are challenges for small market teams (again, I’ll write that other article sometime), but this isn’t signing Juan Soto; this is signing a guy who had a 96 OPS+ in 2024 who doesn’t have any obvious suitors.
I’m generally pretty sympathetic to those challenges and I get why the Brewers run the team the way they do. I do not think that signing the soon-to-be 31-year-old Bregman to a six-year deal (or longer) would be a smart move for this team and I wouldn’t advocate for it. But it seems like there could be an opportunity to get one of these guys on a shorter deal. Shorter deals avoid long-term risk.
Crucially, I don’t really believe the Brewers are cheap — I just think they’re careful. I might be kidding myself a little, but they extended Christian Yelich, they spend on their player development and facilities, they do these shorter deals when the opportunity arises, and they’re usually active at the trade deadline. But if the Brewers sit out free agency this year and fail to upgrade the infield when they have a golden opportunity in front of them, I might have to rethink my stance. Don’t make me do that, Brewers! Sign one of these guys!