Brewers decline club option on two-time All-Star

The Brewers have declined their $10.5M club option on closer Devin Williams, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Williams will receive a $250K buyout and remain under team control for the 2025 season via arbitration, where MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him to earn $7.7M in his final season before free agency.

The move hardly comes as a surprise given that the Brewers figure to save around $2.5M by declining Williams’ option. The 30-year-old may have been able to put together a season where he played well enough to justify picking up that option had he been healthy, but multiple stress fractures in his back left Williams unable to pitch until late July this year. 

Once he was on the mound again, Williams was nothing short of his dominant self with a sensational 1.25 ERA and a 2.06 FIP in his 22 appearances during the regular season this year. In his limited playing time this season, Williams posted his typical elevated walk rate of 12.5 percent but made up for it as per usual with an otherworldly strikeout rate as he punched out a whopping 43.2 percent of opponents this year.

Eye-popping as those numbers may seem, they generally are not a product of sample size. Williams has been among the very best relievers in the sport ever since he broke out during the shortened 2020 season to earn the NL Rookie of the Year Award, a top-seven finish in NL Cy Young Award voting and even down-ballot MVP consideration. 

Since that incredible rookie year, Williams has pitched to a 1.70 ERA that is 248 percent better than the league average by ERA+ in 222 innings of work. That’s the second-best ERA in baseball among qualified relievers over the past five years, second only to Emmanuel Clase. Meanwhile, Williams’s 2.24 FIP ranks third behind only Edwin Diaz and Matt Brash, and his 40.8 percent strikeout rate is second only to Diaz.

As one of the very best relievers in baseball over the past half-decade, Williams has been vital to Milwaukee’s success in recent years, particularly following the departure of Josh Hader at the 2022 trade deadline. While that could make Williams difficult for the club to replace in 2025 and beyond, the Brewers managed to remain successful in 2024 even after dealing Corbin Burnes to the Orioles last winter. 

Given that the first half of 2024 showed the Brewers were more than capable of getting by without Williams thanks to excellent performances from Trevor Megill, Bryan Hudson, Jared Koenig and Joel Payamps in the bullpen, it would hardly be a surprise if Williams found himself dealt at some point this winter.

MLBTR ranked Williams No. 4 on our recent list of the Top 35 offseason trade candidates, and even club GM Matt Arnold acknowledged last month that the Brewers would need to remain “open-minded” about the possibility of shipping Williams elsewhere this winter. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean a trade is guaranteed. Even as the Brewers parted ways with Burnes, they decided to retain shortstop Willy Adames for his final season of team control. Adames figures to reject a qualifying offer and sign elsewhere this winter, but his resurgent 4.8-fWAR campaign proved crucial to the club’s offense throughout the year as the Brewers claimed their second consecutive NL Central title. 

If offers for Williams aren’t sufficiently enticing or the club decides Williams is too important to the club’s hopes of winning in 2025 to part ways with, it’s certainly possible he remains with the club for his final trip through arbitration before free agency.