The best and worst contract of the Brewers’ 2025 season

When you build a roster that leads Major League Baseball in wins and reaches the NLCS, you're bound to have a lot of team-friendly contracts on the books.

That's especially true for the smoothly operated Milwaukee Brewers, who received elite contributions from a swath of pre-arbitration players in 2025. That doesn't mean they were infallible and had no bad contracts to speak of, but they mostly received tremendous bang for their buck.

So, with that in mind, let's analyze who gave the Brewers the best (and worst) performance for their money this season.

Worst contract on 2025 Milwaukee Brewers roster: Rhys Hoskins

Rhys Hoskins is the recipient of this ignominious honor, and it wasn't particularly close.

His $18 million salary checked in as the second-largest on the team this season (behind only Christian Yelich), and yet he failed to make either postseason roster for Pat Murphy's squad.

Now, that wasn't entirely his fault, as Andrew Vaughn completely usurped Hoskins after being acquired from the Chicago White Sox. Hoskins didn't choose to have a left thumb injury that kept him out for a long while, nor did he will a career-defining comeback from Vaughn.

Nevertheless, after a solid first half in which he hit .242/.340/.428 (114 wRC+), Hoskins received just 10 at-bats the rest of the way and struck out in six of them. That's hardly the production the Brewers were paying for.

Dishonorable mention: Jordan Montgomery

This is a bizarre one, and not just because other trade deadline acquisitions (i.e., Shelby Miller and Danny Jansen) were also qualified candidates for this spot.

It's still Montgomery who gets the pick here, seeing as he missed the entire 2025 season following a Tommy John surgery in March. The Diamondbacks paid him $15,362,903 to rehab before shipping him to Milwaukee in the most bizarre deadline deal in recent history. Arizona included Miller and $5.5 million as part of the package, meaning the Brewers were on the hook for roughly $1.7 million of Montgomery's $22.5 million salary.

That's not a huge amount by any means, but for a guy who never had a chance of appearing in a game for Milwaukee, it certainly stands out on the salary cap sheet. Add to that, the fact that Miller had just a modest impact on the Brewers' success in 2025, before unfortunately going down with a season-ending injury, and taking on Montgomery's contract looks even more ill-advised. That's especially true when you realize the figure that Milwaukee paid Montgomery is more than double what the Brewers paid Brice Turang in 2025. Speaking of...

Best contract on 2025 Milwaukee Brewers roster: Brice Turang

Brice Turang is our winner here, and for very good reason.

He was the only member of the roster to be named a finalist for both a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger Award, hitting .288/.359/.435 (124 wRC+) while accruing seven Defensive Runs Saved. His 4.4 fWAR led the team, and you don't have to try very hard to argue that he was the best player on the best team in baseball in 2025.

Mind you, he did all of this on a pre-arbitration salary of $777,100. The competition was steep, but Turang's production per dollar (not a real stat, but you get the point) was a joke. Folding his contract into the mix, there's an argument to be made that the second baseman was one of the five most valuable players in the sport this season.

Honorable mention: Jackson Chourio

Chourio might seem like an oddball pick as the honorable mention here, seeing as the Brewers had so many elite contributors earning arbitration-level (Andrew Vaughn, Trevor Megill) or pre-arb salaries (Sal Frelick, Abner Uribe, Jacob Misiorowski, etc.).

His selection here reflects more of his standing and meaning to the team, rather than pure bang-for-your-buck value. A $4.25 million salary for the 21-year-old phenom in 2025 looks scant compared to other superstars around the league, and he was more than worth the price with a .270/.308/.463 (111 wRC+) performance at the plate.

Seeing as he continued building on his already-dazzling postseason legacy and confirmed himself as the face of the franchise in October, it's hard not to be excited about Chourio's exceedingly team-friendly deal.