4 most realistic offseason trade partners for Brewers All Star closer Devin Williams

#4 - Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers won the World Series in 2023 and instead of making a serious bid for a repeat, they fell way short of the postseason in 2024. A large part of the problem was a lack of pitching. Injuries ravaged the staff, with Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Tyler Mahle unable to be relied upon in their rotation and the bullpen was seriously lacking.

The bullpen is also losing a ton of its depth to free agency as Jose LeClerc, Kirby Yates, and David Robertson are on the open market. The current Rangers bullpen has Roansy Contreras slated to be in the closer's role. Contreras was just claimed off waivers this offseason and there is just one Rangers reliever who tallied a save in 2024 that's returning and that's Grant Anderson, who had an ERA north of 8.00.

If the Rangers are going to get back into the postseason, they'll need to re-load their bullpen and adding an elite closer in Devin Williams would be a great way for them to do it.

Texas has their starting infield largely set with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien both locked into long term deals up the middle and Josh Jung locked in at third. That leaves young, MLB ready infielders like Josh Smith, Ezequiel Duran, Jonathan Ornelas, and Justin Foscue on the outside looking in for a starting job. The Brewers could likely get their pick of the litter from that group to center around a return for Williams.

It's likely the Brewers would need a little more than that for Williams and could also look to target one of the Rangers young pitchers. A framework for a Williams deal is likely to be similar to what the return for Corbin Burnes was, except perhaps slightly lower in the quality of the prospects as Williams has less value as a reliever than a starter like Burnes has.

All four of these teams are going to be motivated to upgrade the back end of their bullpen and would be a logical trade partner for the Brewers and Devin Williams. Rumors may try to say that Milwaukee is looking to hold on to Williams, but there's going to be a ton of interest. They broke their mold to keep Willy Adames for a final year, and I'm not sure they're going to break it again for Devin Williams.