The Brewers trading away Freddy Peralta to save $8 million is bad for baseball, even if their plan works

The team that ended the 2025 regular season with the best record in baseball just traded its ace for two prospects. We just got done with another cycle of "everyone collectively freaks out about the Dodgers signing a stud" and the Brewers just traded one away. Where's the outcry? I guess I'll take care of that right now.

This is bad for baseball.

Ah, yes, this is just the M.O. of the Brewers, so everyone just accepts the reality. The Brewers fan base not only isn't complaining right now, it is picking fights on social media with anyone who dares to question the move. It always comes back to something along the lines of explaining how we "just don't understand" how they operate. 

Oh, I understand. We've already seen it plenty of times in recent years with Josh Hader and Corbin Burnes and Devin Williams and now Freddy Peralta. I've known all offseason it was coming.

Peralta is set to make $8 million this coming season. That's an outrageously huge figure for most of our standards in the real world, but in the world of Major League Baseball players, this is a pittance for someone of Peralta's caliber. He just finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting and was the bona fide ace of a playoff team that advanced to the NLCS for the third time in club history. FanGraphs estimated he was worth $29 million to the Brewers last season.

Freddy Peralta trade grades: Mets finally get their frontline starter; Brewers do what they always do

R.J. Anderson

I'm sure the Brewers are excited about Brandon Sproat and Jett Williams. I have no doubt they can convince their fan base that they won the trade and Peralta had to go. Hell, they don't even have to. The fans have already done it for them. 

For me, though, this move is much worse for baseball than the Kyle Tucker signing by the Dodgers. 

The Brewers were, again, the best team in the regular season last year. They had the best record, the best run differential and went 6-0 against the vaunted Dodgers. The playoffs were another matter, of course, but man, this was a team on the precipice of winning its first ever World Series. 

The move from there shouldn't be to deal an ace for two lottery tickets, which, yes, that's what the overwhelming majority of prospects are. 

I'm well aware that Peralta is only one year away from free agency. I don't care. When you're in the position the Brewers are, you go all out to try and win the World Series now. Otherwise, what's the point of even playing? Sproat and Williams might improve the Brewers down the line, but right now the Brewers got worse for 2026. 

And they made this choice, make no mistake about it, because of money.

The Brewers' end-of-season competitive balance payroll in 2025, per Cot's Contracts, was roughly $145.5 million. Right now, for 2026, it's at roughly $143.9 million. There's always wiggle room in there for increases during the season, such as adding a player at the trade deadline. But, man, that number isn't supposed to go down year to year.

The 2025 Brewers drew 2,650,089 fans in the regular season, their highest figure since 2019. They also hosted five playoff games and those are monster earners for teams. Keep in mind that there's also revenue-sharing money, where the rich teams essentially give money to the "poor" teams. Teams pool 48% of the money they earn and that is then distributed equally to the 30 teams. We don't have figures for the 2025 season, but the game is very healthy, financially, and Forbes estimated that in 2024, MLB had a league-wide revenue of $12.1 billion. Feel free to try and work through this math on your own, but we've seen plenty of reports in current years that small-market teams are getting into nine figures (that would be at least $100 million) in revenue-sharing money. 

The Brewers have a savvy enough front office to continue to absorb moves like this. That's why the fan base so vehemently defends the money-saving maneuvers that are dictated by ownership. I have no doubt that this move made them better in 2027 and 2028. 

If you look at the roster now, there's a chance this rotation ends up being really good in 2026: Brandon Woodruff, Jacob Misiorowski, Quinn Priester, Chad Patrick, Logan Henderson. There's good talent in there and we've seen plenty of success from that group. 

It's worse without Peralta on top, though, there's no doubting that. They are worse for 2026 than they were yesterday.

The bottom line is the team that had the best record in baseball last year chose to actively make itself worse in order to save ownership $8 million. 

How is that good for baseball?