Earlier this week, I took a look at players outside of the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization that could be potential fits with the team this offseason. While the news that Brandon Woodruff accepted the qualifying offer and will be returning to the team next year is an exciting prospect for fans, it did mostly render those nearly 3,000 words moot, but that’s okay!
Today we’re going to continue that exercise with a group of players that’s even more difficult to get a handle on: relievers. Relief pitchers are notoriously difficult to project from one year to the next given their relatively small sample sizes, and there are so many of them across the league that making guesses about who could, for example, be a trade target is a tricky thing to do unless you think your team is targeting one of the very top relievers.
As we did with starting pitchers, let’s examine the landscape of the position within the Brewers and then look at some potential options both in the free agent market and on the trading block.
Unlike last season, after the Brewers dealt incumbent closer Devin Williams to the Yankees, the Brewers — barring an unexpected trade — do not figure to be losing any major pieces of their bullpen. Trevor Megill, who spent most of the year closing before an injury and the subsequent recovery moved him into a more auxiliary role at the end of the season and in the playoffs, has two more years of team control as he enters his second arbitration season (and is projected for a salary around $6.5 million, according to Spotrac). Abner Uribe, who had a fantastic 2025 season and moved into the closer role when Megill was injured, has just over one year of service time and doesn’t figure to reach arbitration until 2029. The bullpen’s third big returning piece, lefty Jared Koenig, isn’t arbitration eligible until 2027.
While I wasn’t lying when I described relievers as difficult to project, we should feel pretty good about these three guys. Megill now has two consecutive years of reliable data and a whole lot of encouraging metrics that suggest that he’s an excellent pitcher. Uribe has always had the stuff that had people referring to him as a future closer. Koenig has been a huge part of Milwaukee’s bullpen two years in a row, and like Megill, he has a lot of red on his Statcast page.
These three give the Brewer bullpen a backbone: Megill as the closer, Koenig as the lefty (he was a lot better against lefties than righties in 2025) and Uribe as the right-handed closer-in-waiting. (Uribe, unlike Koenig, gets everybody out, and was actually slightly better last year against left-handed batters than righties.) Who comes in line after those three?
The Brewers had three other high-usage relievers who are all slated to be back in 2026. Grant Anderson, acquired for essentially nothing before the 2025 season, had a solid year, with a 3.23 ERA in 66 outings (and he was especially tough on right-handers). Nick Mears had an up-and-down season but was a favorite of Murphy’s to put into difficult situations, and he appeared in 63 games for the Brewers. Aaron Ashby didn’t make his season debut until late May, but Murphy used him a ton (in the playoffs, too), and he was extremely effective, with a 2.16 ERA, 2.70 FIP, and 10.3 K/9 in 66 2/3 innings. It also might be a coincidence, but the Brewers turned their season around right about the exact time that Ashby arrived in Milwaukee. The Brewers will also need to figure out a role for DL Hall, a former top 100 prospect who hasn’t been able to stay healthy in Milwaukee since coming over as part of the Corbin Burnes trade. It’s not out of the question that Hall or Ashby could start games in spring training and present themselves as rotation options, but the Brewers do seem to be pretty well stocked in that department.
The Brewers are carrying a few other guys on the 40-man roster who could be options in the bullpen. Tobias Myers started for the Brewers two years ago but was edged out of that role last season, and did some solid relief work late in the season; he could be an option as a long man. Milwaukee may also need to figure out what to do with whatever healthy young pitchers don’t end up in the rotation; with Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, and Quinn Priester back, you figure that only two of Jacob Misiorowski, Chad Patrick, Robert Gasser, Logan Henderson, and Myers will be in the starting rotation. Whoever is not could be a bullpen option, and as we saw with Misiorowski and Patrick in the postseason, they could be extremely potent bullpen options.
Beyond those guys, the Brewers are also carrying some less proven pitchers on the 40-man roster, some of whom may not make it past Friday’s non-tender deadline. Those pitchers include Craig Yoho, who remains intriguing despite being unable to gain Pat Murphy’s trust in 2025; Rob Zastryzny, who has done nothing but get outs in limited time as a Brewer; Easton McGee, who got a cup of coffee in the big leagues last year; Coleman Crow, who was recently added to the 40-man roster and could pitch himself into that depth starter/long reliever hybrid role if he builds on his strong 2025 minor league season; and Sammy Peralta, the 27-year-old lefty who the Brewers claimed off waivers from the Angels last month, and who could be 2026’s candidate for Brewer pitching development system surprise.
My guess is that the Brewers probably carry five starters, one swingy type (to keep the mileage off Woodruff), and seven relievers in 2026. If you give spots to Megill, Uribe, Koenig, Anderson, Mears, and Ashby and maybe pencil in either Myers or Hall as the swingman, that leaves maybe one spot open, and that leaves out players like Zastryzny, Yoho, or some of the other leftover starters. There isn’t an obvious need for more players at this position. But the Brewers could use one more bullpen arm that they feel really good about, and even if they don’t make a splashy acquisition, they’re always looking for bargains in this area.
First, let’s look at some of the crop of available free agents. The Brewers, hypothetically, have at least a little bit of money to spend, but it’s not clear in what area of the team they might be interested in spending it. There could be more need on the position player side but there’s no obvious match for the Brewers to spend a bunch of money in free agency, and given some financial flexibility, the Brewers could opt to spend a little bit on a short deal for a bigger name reliever. Since that’s the case, I’ll take a look not just at fringier guys (which fits the team’s M.O.) but at a few of the splashier ones, as well.
The first name is splashier, but also familiar. What about a reunion with Devin Williams? Things went quite badly for Williams in the Bronx, and he might be in a position where he feels he needs to rehabilitate his reputation for a year before cashing in for a bigger deal. I’m not sure that every Brewer fan would be stoked to welcome him back, but Williams undeniably had success in Milwaukee even if his reputation as a postseason performer is less than stellar here in Wisconsin. Given his struggles in 2025, Milwaukee might be able to get him at a somewhat discounted number, too. This could go sideways, but it could also be a deal that works out for everyone.
Another former Brewer who has had consecutive seasons in which he struggled but who has underlying numbers that suggest something might still be there is Hoby Milner. Milner was solid in 2022 before having a breakout season in 2023, but his ERA went up by almost three full runs from 2023 to 2024 even while his FIP went from 3.13 to 3.14. In Texas in 2025, Milner again had some tough batted ball luck and had an ERA that was about half a run higher than his FIP. He should come cheap, he’s another guy the organization knows, he’s left-handed, and there are some reasons for tempered optimism.
I’m intrigued by righty Phil Maton, who started 2025 in St. Louis and finished the year in Texas; he’s pitched for five different teams in the last three seasons, and he’s had mixed success, but the underlying numbers were excellent in 2025: despite a difference of over a run in ERA between the Cardinals and Rangers, his FIP stayed basically consistent, and his Statcast page lights up with positive indicators despite an average fastball velocity under 90 mph. It’s a weird profile, but he’s an interesting pitcher who hitters were utterly unable to square up in 2025.
It feels like he’s been around forever, but Gregory Soto is still only 30 years old. He’s struggled to find success the last couple of years, but he still throws a hard sinker that once got him into consecutive All-Star games for the Tigers in 2021 and 2022. I’m not sure if there’s a whole lot here, and he’s had an ERA+ below 100 in three consecutive seasons, but it does seem like a skillset that the Brewers could work with.
I’m not sure he fits the Brewers’ preferred profile, but José Leclerc was an important member of the 2023 World Series champion Rangers but had a tough (unlucky) season in 2024 and then barely played in 2025 due to a shoulder injury that required surgery. Presumably he’ll be ready for the beginning of 2026, but his health is a pretty major gamble at this point. That could lead to a contract significantly below the one-year, $10 million one he got to pitch 10 games for the Athletics last season, and if he can find his Rangers form, he could be a bargain.
In all likelihood, though, the Brewers will pick somebody up who none of us have ever heard about who has some sort of funny delivery and has a career ERA over six, and then they’ll appear in 64 games in 2026 and pitch better than they ever have at any level of professional baseball. It’s kind of what we do here.
I have no idea if the Brewers would even consider trading for any of these guys. They have way more data on the huge number of relievers across the league than I do and they get paid a lot more to know about them than I do! But I’ll take a look at a few interesting guys who conceivably could be available for trade for one reason or another.
I wonder if the Rays would already give up on Griffin Jax? Last season was sort of a nightmare for the guy who many thought was poised to become one of the league’s premier relievers last season — he had an ERA+ under 100 for the Twins before they shipped him to Tampa at the trade deadline, where he was better, but still not great. But Jax’s ERA was about 1.75 runs higher than his FIP, and he still ranked in the top two percent of all pitchers last season in chase percentage, whiff rate, and strikeout percentage. He’s a nearly unhittable pitcher …except when he’s not, and last season he not only allowed a career-worst (as a reliever, at least) 1.0 home runs per nine, but his BABIP was .375, 76 points higher than in any other season of his career. There’s a good chance he regresses positively next season, and he could be right back to being one of the league’s dominant relievers, as he was in 2024. Of course, Tampa is smart enough to know this, too, but they’re a team that is loath to spend money, and as an arb two player, Jax is slated to make somewhere around $3.5 million. Hardly a big number, but that’s a lot for the Rays, I guess.
If the reports that the Pirates are trying to sign Kyle Schwarber are true, then they’re probably not going to trade the guy who finished last season as their closer. But Dennis Santana is only one year from free agency, and he has a spotty track record; he really didn’t find any sort of real MLB success until he was waived by the Yankees and Pittsburgh picked him up in June 2024. But he’s been nails since joining the Pirates, pitching to a 2.18 ERA in 70 1/3 innings for them last season, and he saved 16 games after David Bednar was traded to New York. I’m skeptical he can keep this happening, and honestly the Pirates would probably be smart to trade him while his value is high, but he’s had a year and a half of good results at this point.
Last year, Anthony Bender’s ERA far outperformed his FIP (2.16 to 3.62). In 2024, it was the other way around (4.08 to 2.92). Such is the world of trying to predict what you’ll get from a reliever. Bender throws pretty hard and gets a lot of ground balls, but he walked a lot of guys last season and didn’t strike many out. The strikeouts might bounce back, but there are some red flags here. Still, he had a good 2025 season, and the Marlins probably don’t want to pay his salary, which will probably be around $3 million.
Reid Detmers was once a top 30 prospect but he has struggled to put it together in the big leagues and after a disastrous 2024 season, the Angels moved him to the bullpen last year. He was … okay, and wasn’t helped much by the Angel defense, but at this point Detmers has thrown almost 450 career innings with an ERA+ of 89. But there’s still a lot of swing and miss in his stuff, and he’s decent at getting ground balls, a skill that the Brewers might be able to hone. Detmers is in his second arb year but as a super-two player has three more years of team control, so this might be an interesting project.
In 2024, the Brewers rescued Nick Mears from the thin air of Denver. Maybe they could do the same with Jimmy Herget? Herget actually had nice numbers last season and I’m not sure he’s got the profile I’d want the Brewers to spend prospect capital on, but he’s getting a bit older and running out of team control. I also know that Seth Halvorsen’s name has come up on this website: Halvorsen throws as hard as anyone in the league, and he gets a ton of ground balls, but he’s allowed nine homers in 52 career innings, and last year he walked almost five batters per nine innings. Given the potential and the years of team control left, Halvorsen would probably take a lot to pry from the Rockies, but it would be an exciting acquisition.
There are surely a ton of other potential trade targets out there, but predicting the relief pitcher market is as foolish as predicting what a middle reliever will do in a given season. Anyone you’d like to see the Brewers go after in the relief market?
