LAS VEGAS -- Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold knows the question he will be asked most often now that the best regular season in club history has given way to the business of the offseason.
Is the World Series MVP on the trade block?
“I’m assuming we’ll get this question a lot,” Arnold said this week at the GM Meetings. “But he means a lot to our team.”
He means William Contreras, the catcher who turns 29 on Christmas Eve after taking center stage for the Brewers in the postseason, delivering a 1.036 OPS against the Padres, Dodgers and Rays while controlling opponents’ running games and mastering the ABS challenge system at the best possible time. He commanded so many different facets of the game that he emerged over other worthy candidates like Jackson Chourio, Cooper Pratt and Aaron Ashby to become the first World Series MVP in Brewers history.
And now Contreras is being talked about as a trade candidate? The reason for that is pure business: He is going into his final year before free agency after the Brewers picked up his 2027 club option, and history tells us players in that contractual position are often on the block. The Brewers traded 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes to the Orioles just before the start of 2024 Spring Training. They traded two-time NL Reliever of the Year Devin Williams to the Yankees following that season. And they traded another ace starter, Freddy Peralta, to the Mets going into the 2026 season.
In each instance, the player was going into a contract year. The Brewers reaped prospects in return.
But there’s an exception to every rule. The Brewers faced a similar decision with shortstop Willy Adames going into the 2024 season and opted to keep him, given his importance to the club on and off the field. They extended Adames the qualifying offer following that season, he declined as expected, and the Brewers got an extra Draft pick.
So the question for Arnold and the Brewers with Contreras goes like this: Is a catcher more like a pitcher or a shortstop?
“They’re hard to find, that’s for sure,” Arnold said.
How are the Brewers approaching this offseason with Contreras?
“I mean, he’s really special and means a lot to our group,” Arnold said. “You saw what he did in the postseason, how he’s been able to catch 1,000 innings for three years in a row, and Silver Sluggers and All-Star appearances. I don't think we win this championship without William Contreras.”
All-Star closer Trevor Megill is in a similar contractual position and would be coveted in his own right should the Brewers make him available. He turns 33 on Dec. 5 and is coming off a career year in which he threw a personal-best 61 2/3 innings and logged 30 saves for the second straight year.
He’s heading into his final year of arbitration this winter.
“He got the last six outs of the World Series, and I just went to a Metallica concert with him, so I like him. I like him a lot,” Arnold said.
That’s a true story. Megill, who enters appearances at home to Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen,” saw the band perform at The Sphere in Las Vegas this week while Arnold was already in town for GM Meetings. Megill got to meet the band.
It continued a whirlwind couple of weeks for Arnold, Megill and everybody else associated with the Brewers, who are about two weeks removed from their World Series parade. Three days after that celebration in Milwaukee, the offseason hit like a ton of bricks for Arnold, who made his first moves by extending a qualifying offer to first baseman Jake Bauers and picked up Contreras’ option among other moves five days following the season’s final out.
“You don’t have time. You just have to go,” Arnold said. “You get off the plane from Tampa and it’s right away. … I feel like when this happens, you have a target on your back. It's important to us to make sure we’re prepared and not putting our feet up. We want to be prepared to do it again next year.”