Brewers free agent starter finds new home with Milwaukee's old GM in New York

The Milwaukee Brewers acquired Frankie Montas from the Reds during the July trade deadline, sending Joey Wiemer and Jakob Junis to Cincinnati in return. We've already seen Wiemer be on the move again as the Reds traded him to Kansas City, and now Montas is on the move and has a new home.

Late on Sunday night, ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that Frankie Montas has agreed to a two year, $34 million contract with the New York Mets, joining with former Brewers GM David Stearns.

Brewers trade deadline pickup Frankie Montas finds new home

After being acquired by the Brewers, Montas pitched to a 4.55 ERA in his 11 starts down the stretch, improving upon how he had performed with Cincinnati. Montas started Game 2 of the NL Wild Card series, going 3.2 IP and allowing three runs, but just one of them earned.

Montas had a $20 million mutual option for the 2025 season that was declined. Instead, he finds a multi-year pact with New York that's valued at $17MM per season.

The Brewers got what they needed out of Montas, solidifying their rotation with someone who can eat innings even though the results were somewhat mixed. Considering how in flux that group was at the time of the deadline, his addition was key to stabilizing Milwaukee's run to the NL Central title. Still, his mid-4.00 ERA did not justify such a high salary for the 2025 season.

However, that won't stop the high revenue Mets from giving Montas a hefty guarantee, believing that he will continue to improve as he gets further away from the injury that cost him nearly all of the 2023 season.

The Brewers were never going to re-sign Montas at the salary he was expecting and ultimately ended up getting. It's quite interesting the Mets were the team to sign him as David Stearns has been collecting former Brewers players from his tenure in Milwaukee but Montas and Stearns never had any overlap in this town. Stearns was already way gone before Montas arrived in a Brewers uniform. Still, it wouldn't be surprising that Montas was someone the Brewers front office was long interested in before they acquired him and Stearns clearly wanted him.

This is merely the first of the Brewers free agents to sign elsewhere this offseason. They have several more starting pitchers on the open market, including Colin Rea, Joe Ross, Wade Miley, and Bryse Wilson that are now gone from the rotation depth. They've yet to sign elsewhere and reunions are still possible with all of them. Montas always seemed like the least likely of the group to return.