On Saturday, the Brewers traded outfielder Isaac Collins and reliever Nick Mears to the Kansas City Royals for pitcher Ángel Zerpa. That has a lot of implications for the bullpen, obviously (check out Harrison’s look at Zerpa), but Collins also started almost four times as many games in left field than any other Brewer outfielder in 2025. What does his departure mean for Milwaukee’s outfield alignment? Who is going to take those 108 appearances and 91 starts that Collins made in left? Is the team going to need to look beyond the current roster to fill that hole?
We have covered some of this territory already this offseason, but let’s take a quick fresh look at the Milwaukee outfield in the absence of Collins. Jackson Chourio and Sal Frelick are locked into two of those positions. Historically, the Brewers seem like they’re at their best defensively when Frelick is in right (where he won a Gold Glove in 2024) and Chourio is in left. Chourio is a versatile defensive outfielder; he also rates well in right field, and he ably filled in for much of last season in center field, where he can do the job even if no one is going to mistake him for Jacob Young.
Christian Yelich isn’t really an outfielder anymore. He turned 34 on December 5 (happy birthday, Christian, I’m sure you’re an avid reader), and he did play in 19 games in left in 2025 but his defensive metrics at this point are pretty rough. For a team that values run prevention as much as they do, the Brewers aren’t going to give Yelich anything more than a few cursory appearances in the outfield.
There are five other outfielders on the 40-man roster, and that group doesn’t include Jake Bauers, who is capable of playing in the outfield corners but probably won’t do so with any regularity (he had 19 starts in left and four in right in 2025), nor Tyler Black, who doesn’t seem a viable option unless Bauers gets hurt. Those other outfielders are Garrett Mitchell, Blake Perkins, Brandon Lockridge, Steward Berroa, and newcomer Akil Baddoo.
Perkins and Lockridge profile similarly as ace defenders who don’t offer a whole lot offensively. (Perkins isn’t a complete zero, and Lockridge could conceivably reach somewhat similar production levels with some more reps, but neither is going to solve the Brewers’ offensive challenges.) Berroa is a DFA candidate; I’d be a little surprised if he were still on the 40-man roster at the end of spring training.
Assuming that the Brewers prefer to use Perkins and Lockridge the way that essentially all of their fans would prefer they use them — as defensive specialists who don’t start regularly — that leaves two options: Mitchell and Baddoo.
Baddoo hasn’t had an above-average season in going on five years, but the fact that the Brewers gave him a major league contract suggests they might see something. Baddoo had a great rookie season in 2021 when, at 22 years old, he hit .259/.330/.436 with a 112 OPS+, a bunch of extra-base hits (20 doubles, seven triples, 13 homers) and 18 stolen bases in 22 tries. He earned 2.1 bWAR and looked to be on his way to a good career … but a miserably slow start to the 2022 season led to a demotion, and he found it hard to get regular reps with the Tigers ever since; after an “okay” 2023 season, he struggled badly in 2024 and the Tigers basically gave up — he had only seven major league games played in 2025.
But Baddoo’s numbers at Triple-A Toledo in 2025 were outstanding. He hit .281/.385/.483 with 21 doubles, six triples, 15 homers, and 25 steals in 29 attempts over 103 games. That combination of extra-base power and plate discipline certainly looks like something the Brewers could work with. His defense isn’t going to be a major asset, but he should be okay — he rates about middle of the league in most defensive metrics, but he’s also still only 27 and quite athletic, so you’d think he should be fine in an outfield corner.
The other name here is, of course, Mitchell, and if I had to make a guess about what the Brewers are doing with the outfield to start the 2026 season, it would be that they’ll roll out the same plan they had at the beginning of 2025: Chourio in left, Frelick in right, and Mitchell in center. But the only real conclusion that can be drawn from Mitchell’s short but tantalizing major league career so far is that he just cannot be counted upon from a health perspective. Is there a world where Mitchell plays 140 healthy games in 2026 and becomes a regular outfielder for the next few years? Yes, of course. But frankly it would be foolish to count on that, and the Brewers are a smart enough organization that they’ve brought in Baddoo as a plan B (and, as we saw for long stretches last season, are clearly comfortable starting Perkins regularly and moving Bauers into the outfield if offense is needed).
An interesting question to ponder heading into the 2026 season is whether Mitchell or Baddoo plays more games for the big league club. I suspect Mitchell gets the first crack; remember, less than 12 months ago, MLB Network (somewhat controversially) ranked Mitchell as the eighth-best center fielder in baseball. But if another major injury happens, you get the feeling the Brewers are probably about ready to move on from Mitchell for good.
Could there be an outside option?
I do not see any remaining free agents that the Brewers would bring in to bolster the outfield — it doesn’t make sense from a numbers perspective, both in terms of money (they’re not going to sign Cody Bellinger, even if he would be a great help) or in terms of the roster crunch (bringing in another marginal outfielder to compete with these existing options doesn’t feel like the best use of limited resources).
Trades are certainly plausible. I won’t spend a lot of time here, but I took a pretty deep look into the trade market for outfielders last month, specifically looking for outfielders who would be a clear upgrade over the existing options (which at that time didn’t include Baddoo but did include Collins). In the time since then, it seems that Byron Buxton, at least, has been crossed off that list — indications are that the Twins intend to start the season with him on the roster, which makes a lot of sense. We haven’t heard a lot of noise about the Red Sox’s outfield, but they do seem to have one more guy than they need, and they’re clearly active in the trade market, having already dealt for Sonny Gray and Johan Oviedo while rumors of a potential blockbuster with the Padres are swirling.
I listed several other potential targets but all were purely speculative, and frankly I haven’t heard any indications that the Orioles or Athletics, two other teams that I identified as possible trade partners, have any desire to trade a young outfielder. The Brewers could certainly surprise us: they have before. And there’s definitely smoke around talks involving both Freddy Peralta and Trevor Megill.
Could one of those players net the Brewers a starting-caliber outfielder? It’s certainly possible. (A swap centered around Freddy Peralta and Jarren Duran makes at least a little bit of sense for both teams, and those players will make a very similar amount of money in 2026.) I don’t think Megill would fetch enough to get a clear upgrade for Milwaukee’s outfield, but it’s possible it could be enough to get them an intriguing, not-quite-blue-chip prospect close to the major leagues who could throw their hat into the mix for next year’s outfield, sort of like Caleb Durbin last season.
But for now, I’m going to assume that the outfield options to start the season are going to be more or less the ones that they’ve got on the team. Given that Perkins and Lockridge feel like utility-type players who are on the Brewers to fill a very specific role, I’d expect Mitchell or Baddoo to get the best chance to prove something in spring training. Both are a long way from their most promising days as major league baseball players, but it’s also not all that hard to talk yourself into either one.
