How The Milwaukee Brewers Are Impacted By These 5 CBA Changes

Finally! Baseball is back as the league and players’ union have agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Brewers baseball is back in our lives.

Opening Day is finally set, 40 man roster players will show up at spring training, free agents can sign, trades can be made, and baseball is moving again after a 99 day lockout.

The players came into these CBA negotiations looking to make major changes, and they succeeded on several fronts. Here’s how five of these changes impact the Milwaukee Brewers.

New CBA Rule: Players optioned max of 5 times per year

One of the rules put in place in the CBA that will have the most impact on how the Brewers construct their roster is the new limit on player options mid-season.

Previously, players had three option years where they could be optioned an unlimited number of times during that season and only one “option” would be used. Teams could have players go up and down like a rollercoaster and there was nothing the player could do about it.

Now, players can only be optioned back down to the minor leagues from the 40 man roster a maximum of five times per season before being exposed to waivers. If a player has already been optioned five times in a season when they get called back up they have to either remain on the team the rest of the season or, be exposed to waivers if the team wants to option them again.

On waivers, any other team could claim that player and the Brewers would get nothing in return.

Over the past few years, the Brewers have utilized what has essentially amounted to a shuttle between Milwaukee and Triple-A involving several members of their bullpen. They rotated through arms making sure they had someone fresh for that bullpen to keep it fully stocked. Now, if they continue that with some of those low leverage bullpen arms like Angel Perdomo or Jandel Gustave, they could end up losing them.

David Stearns is going to have to build his bullpen and build his roster with this now in mind. His constant and unlimited shuttling of relievers is coming to an end.

New CBA Rule: Draft lottery

One of the more groundbreaking changes in this CBA is the implementation of a draft lottery.

The players were concerned with teams tanking for the lowest record and getting rewarded with high draft picks, so they pushed for a lottery, like what the NBA has. But it’s not a direct copy of the NBA’s lottery.

The first six picks in the MLB Draft going forward will be determined by the lottery. All non-playoff teams are eligible for the lottery. So let’s say the Brewers fall just short of the postseason, for whatever reason, this year. Instead of automatically getting a pick in the mid-to-late part of the first round, they could end up with a Top 6 overall selection, even potentially the number one overall pick.

For teams that don’t win lottery picks, the order will go as normal, in reverse order of standings with how the previous season ended. Teams in the postseason will still be in order of their regular season and not dependent on where they finish in the postseason like the NFL. Winning the World Series doesn’t mean a team will have the 30th pick in the draft.

The lottery odds will go in reverse order of standings, with the three worst clubs all having the highest chance to win at 16.5%. As a small market, revenue sharing club, the Brewers would be eligible to have back-to-back lottery selections, but not three in a row, should they have a downturn in their playoff fortunes.

But a lottery could help take some of the sting out of missing the playoffs.

New CBA Rule: The International Draft

First, let’s make an important distinction: This change isn’t official yet.

MLB pushed for the implementation of an International Draft as a way to clean up the heavy corruption and abuses that plague the current international free agent system. The players, while they want to clean up the major problems, did not want to rush into agreeing to an International Draft.

There’s a lot more that needs to be discussed and laid out and talked about regarding implementing this before they do it. Rather than continue to delay the regular season while they figured that out, the two sides agreed to push the decision off for a few months.

Tied to the Draft is the Qualifying Offer system. The league will drop the direct draft pick compensation for free agents, meaning teams that sign big time free agents will not lose draft picks anymore. Teams that lose their free agents will still be able to get draft pick compensation, though.

The deadline to agree to the Draft is July 25th. If they cannot find a path forward on it, the Qualifying Offer will return this next offseason and throughout the rest of the CBA. The deadline is placed a week ahead of the July Trade Deadline, which means teams that might trade players who are free agents at the end of the year will know whether they have the QO as a backup if they keep their player as a way to get compensation still.

Now, here’s how this impacts the Brewers.

Over the past few years, the Brewers have had some solid international free agent classes, with a very strong presence in Venezuela. Yet, they still routinely don’t land Top 10 rated prospects from the international market. They opt to spread their bonus money around and bet on a larger number of players rather than putting most of their eggs in one basket.

The draft order would have teams placed randomly into four or five groups and rotate through the top spots in the order. That means that once every four or five years, the Brewers would pretty much be guaranteed a Top 10 prospect from the international market.

The Brewers have had a lot of success on the international market recently, but now their access to that talent is going to change. This last international signing day, the Brewers signed 33 players. Under the draft, there are 20 rounds, and undrafted players can sign for a max of a $20k bonus.

They cannot lock down verbal agreements years in advance like they do now, and they will have to scout a larger number of players in order to prepare for this going forward, if it gets implemented.

New CBA Rule: Expanded postseason

The postseason has expanded yet again, going from 10 teams up to 12. This is leading to a whole new format.

With six teams from each league making the postseason, that means there are the three division winners and then three Wild Cards. The team with the top two records will receive what essentially amounts to a bye.

The division winner with the lowest record and the three wild cards will play a Best-Of-3 series in the Wild Card round. The winners of those series will move on to the LDS to face one of the top two seeds. There is no re-seeding to ensure the top seed will face the lowest remaining seed.

How this impacts the Brewers is simple: It makes it that much easier to make the postseason. The Brewers are the reigning NL Central champions and they won it pretty convincingly last year, but the Cardinals are still full of talent and the Cubs aren’t looking for another long teardown and rebuild. If the Brewers are unable to win the division, the third wild card spot will help give them more of an opportunity to reach October baseball.

If the Brewers are not one of the top two seeds and they have to play in the Wild Card round, they are well positioned for a three game series. Between Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta, the Brewers will have the upper hand in the rotation against any team in baseball.

As we saw in October 2021, the best pitching in the world doesn’t matter if your offense can’t score, but the aforementioned Universal DH should also help the Brewers be better on that front as well.

There were rumors of a 14 team postseason plan, but thankfully that was not agreed to. That would muddy the postseason waters a lot, and even though it would give the Brewers an even better chance of making the postseason, that just makes it that much harder to achieve the ultimate goal of a World Series.

A best-of-3 Wild Card eliminates some of that tough luck you see in the win-or-go-home Wild Card we’ve had over the last decade. That 2019 Brewers squad might’ve been a World Series caliber club if not for the unfortunate luck late in that game against the Nationals.

There are other aspects of the new CBA that makes some changes, but not all of them impact the Brewers or how they operate. The league minimum salary has increased, plus there’s the addition of a bonus pool for pre-arbitration players who perform well.