4 budget free agent targets for the Brewers that would help them contend in 2025

Despite the fact that they were shoved out of this year's playoffs earlier than hoped, the Milwaukee Brewers had themselves an excellent 2024 campaign. The club won the NL Central by 10 games, had one of the best rookies in baseball take the field for them every night, and their bullpen was utterly dominant all year long.

With a relatively short list of upcoming free agents, the Brewers aren't going to have many roster holes to fill next year. As things currently stand, Willy Adames and Joe Ross are the only two players that will become unrestricted free agents in the near future.

Outside of that duo, Frankie Montas, Wade Miley and Gary Sanchez all have mutual options that will likely lead to them hitting free agency. Devin Williams, Colin Rea and Freddy Peralta all have club options for the 2025 season but they're all going to be brought back. The only player option belongs to Rhys Hoskins, who recently hinted at his decision regarding that.

The Brewers put together a deep team this year and could lose only a few players to the open market. Their bullpen doesn't need to get touched in free agency, their offense only has a few small holes (outside of shortstop) to fill and their starting rotation could maybe use one more face in the picture in case Brandon Woodruff isn't fully ready once Opening Day rolls around.

Let's take a closer look at the list of upcoming free agents and see which players could fit the Brewers' mold this winter. As we know, the Crew doesn't have a bottomless payroll to work with, so we're going to just say now that Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Corbin Burnes, Alex Bregman, Anthony Santander or Jack Flaherty are not being taken into consideration.

The Brewers are a budget-friendly team, so we're going to focus on some budget-friendly players. Let's dive in and see where we land.

4 budget free agents that could help the Brewers in 2025

Matthew Boyd - LHP

Let's assume the Brewers pick up the options of both Peralta and Rea. This leaves Aaron Civale, Tobias Myers and Woodruff as the remaining names to round out a five-man rotation. Aaron Ashby should be on-hand as a backup as well, but there's a name the Brewers could target that could fill a swingman role with ease at the big-league level.

Boyd, 33, missed the vast majority of this year as he recovered from a 2023 Tommy John surgery. He didn't sign with the Cleveland Guardians until the end of June and he didn't make his first appearance in the big leagues until the middle of August.

What followed, though, was a thoroughly impressive eight-start stretch for the veteran left-hander. He didn't surrender more than three runs in any of his outings and struck out six or more batters five times, highlighted by a nine-strikeout performance against the White Sox in September.

Boyd looked strong with the Guardians, but he's also got a checkered past when it comes to durability. He made just 15 starts in 2021, 10 relief outings in 2022, 15 starts in 2023 and eight more of them this year. It's been a while since he had a full 30-plus-start season, so this is likely going to bring his value down to where the Brewers would be comfortable bringing him aboard.

The 10-year veteran has experience as both a starter and a reliever and could easily be a long-man/sixth starter if he doesn't make the rotation out of spring training. He's not going to cost much and would be coming to Milwaukee as an experienced southpaw who also had one heck of an ALDS this year against the Tigers. That playoff experience has value, and the Brewers should strike if given the opportunity.

Mark Canha - 1B/OF

How about an old friend as well?

As of right now, the Brewers have exactly one player fully guaranteed to be in their 2025 Opening Day outfield: Jackson Chourio. Garrett Mitchell and Christian Yelich will earn spots if they can make it through spring training unscathed, Sal Frelick is going to have a fluid role and Blake Perkins is likely going to be on hand as a true backup outfielder.

With the fair amount of uncertainty in mind, the Brewers should consider bringing Canha back into the fold. He was a Brewer for the second half of last year after coming over as a trade deadlne acquisition. In 50 games, he hit five home runs with 33 RBI, posting a respectable .287 average, .800 OPS and 119 OPS+ along the way.

Canha was under contract for this year as well, but the Crew flipped him to Detroit early in this past offseason and he eventually made his way to the Giants at the 2024 deadline.

Canha is another veteran player who offers a skillset the Brewers should be interested in. He has versatility, being able to line up at first base and all around the outfield, and he's always been rock-solid against left-handed pitching. He could be a cheap lefty-masher who will surely be an under-the-radar free agent once the offseason officially begins.

The odds of Canha landing another deal like the three-year, $36M one he's about to have expire are very, very low. He's 35-years old and not a superstar, so don't expect him to command that kind of money. He should be a low-cost but valuable addition to the Brewers and you won't need to look any further than the second half of last year to see how that'd work out.

Paul DeJong - INF

With the loss of Adames creeping closer and closer, the Brewers are going to need to find somebody to fill the void he'll leave in the lineup. Tyler Black could come up and see time at third base with Joey Ortiz and his outstanding glove taking over at shortstop, but that scenario is far from etched in stone.

Frelick may begin to see time at third base as well, so there's another option the Brewers have in their pockets. Another one could be to target longtime division rival Paul DeJong, who's coming off of quite the bounce-back season.

DeJong, 30, hasn't had an OPS+ north of 100 (league-average) since 2018, but he remains a legitimate power threat who can play some respectable defense at multiple positions. For the vast majority of his time on the Cardinals, he played exclusively shortstop. This year, he logged a ton of time at short and third base for the first time in his career.

That kind of flexibility could be valuable for the Brewers, and his bat furthers that. After an awful 2023 showing split between the Cardinals, Blue Jays and Giants, the eight-year veteran landed a cheap "prove it" contract with the cellar-dwelling White Sox. In 102 games there, he hit just .228 but he also recorded 18 home runs and a .706 OPS which isn't enough to set the world on fire, but his OPS+ fell just one percent short of league-average.

DeJong is not going to be the big needle-mover that the Brewers will need, but he's a great supplementary piece. He had a 92 OPS+ in 37 games with the Royals post-deadline and showed throughout the year that he's got some thump in his stick.

The Brewers aren't going to need a ton of help around the infield, but DeJong will be cheap and can be plugged in all around the infield. Let him come aboard as an oft-used utilityman and keep the rest of the infield picture largely the same as it was this season.