Brewers' division rival makes fitting offer for top bat of 2025-26 offseason

It figures that the first truly loud offer of the winter in the NL Central would come from…the Pittsburgh Pirates.

According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, Pittsburgh has put a four-year proposal on the table for Kyle Schwarber that “almost certainly is for more than $100 million.”  If Schwarber actually said yes, it would nuke the old franchise record for a free-agent deal — Francisco Liriano’s three-year, $39 million pact from a decade ago — and drag the Pirates into a financial neighborhood they have never visited before.

From a Milwaukee Brewers lens, this is…weirdly fitting. Of course, the one time that Pittsburgh actually claims to be in on a top-tier free agent, they follow it with a low-ball offer that will almost certainly be outshone by an organization from a larger market.

Brewers can smirk while Pirates cosplay as big spenders for Kyle Schwarber

If you were going to pick one bat for the Pirates to splurge on, this is the archetype: left-handed thunder, postseason bona fides, and the kind of “please don’t let him hit this inning” presence Milwaukee fans already know too well. Schwarber just led the NL with 56 homers and ranks behind only Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto in wRC+ over the last few years. The Pirates have been desperate for exactly that kind of anchor in a lineup that too often asks Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz to do all the heavy lifting.

For Brewers fans, the instinctive reaction is twofold. The first is basically, seriously, them? This is the same organization whose biggest free-agent move last winter was barely more than what most of the league spends on a decent middle reliever. Seeing the Pirates suddenly waving around a nine-figure check feels more like a PR stunt than a serious development.

But the second reaction is more begrudging: this actually tracks. Pittsburgh’s entire roadmap is built on a wave of young pitching and pre-arbitration bats. If they’re ever going to spend, it’s now, when they can drop a giant bat on top of cheap talent and hope it all spikes at once. From that standpoint, a four-year Schwarber play is a cleaner fit than, say, a nine-year mega-deal that would outlive half the current core.

How worried should Milwaukee actually be?

Schwarber in that bandbox with 13 games a year against the Brewers is not exactly a soothing thought. At the same time, this is still the Pirates. They’re not suddenly outbidding big-market bullies, and there’s a non-zero chance this is more posturing than actual closing power. Even if they did land him, they’ll need more than one giant lefty bat to run down a Brewers organization that keeps finding ways to pitch, defend, and squeeze value out of every dollar.

But make no mistake: for once, the loudest check-in the NL Central rumor mill isn’t coming from Chicago or St. Louis. It’s the Pirates taking their big swing, and the Brewers may have to treat it like a real one. More likely, however, given the low-ball nature of Pittsburgh's reported offer, the Pirates will be outbid for Schwarber's services by a team that's closer to being a true contender.