Brewers 2024 Winter Meetings: Full Details and Matt Arnold's checklist heading in

#3 - Pick out an under the radar starting pitching addition

The Brewers aren't going to be able to afford the top of the market starting pitchers. We've seen Luis Severino sign with the Athletics for three years and $67 million. If Severino is pulling that kind of money, even though the A's have to overpay players to get them to sign up to play in Sacramento for the next three years, the pitching market is going to be pricey.

That's what made it all the more surprising to see the Brewers move on from Colin Rea and his reasonable $5.5 million salary for 2025. Finding another player for a comparable salary that they can rely on to eat up innings like Rea did will be difficult.

The Brewers starting pitching depth has taken a hit this offseason as several pitchers are in free agency. Rea, Joe Ross, Wade Miley, Bryse Wilson, and Frankie Montas combined for 59 starts last season. Montas is already gone as he's signed with the Mets on a two year deal.

Milwaukee is going to need to add at least one more starting pitcher this offseason because they truly do not know what Brandon Woodruff can bring next year, Tobias Myers will be hard-pressed to repeat his rookie breakout season, and the final spots are currently slated to be covered by major question marks in Aaron Ashby and DL Hall, plus a number of unproven prospects with no MLB experience.

Finding hidden diamonds in the rough has been a specialty of the Brewers front office in recent years, and Colin Rea was one of those diamonds. Now it's time to find the next one and striking their top target early before too many other teams jump into his market should be a priority for Matt Arnold. The Brewers will have researched each of these free agents and they have an idea on which ones they can help improve and can help this team at an affordable price.

If Matt Arnold can accomplish all three of these things, it will be a successful and winning Winter Meetings. It may not make the national headlines as a winning Meetings, but these are the major roster construction moves Arnold has to make and this is the best time for him to get all of these done.