Traditionally, this is the time of year when the Brewers put on their work boots and their gloves. They bundle up against the first biting winds of November and they head to the dump, where the league leaves its scraps. There, they find treasure. Each November, the Brewers make some forays into minor-league free agency. It’s not a place where stars can be found, but the occasional gem can be mined by taking the time to study what looks like a piece of ordinary rock from a new angle.

Few teams in the league do this better than the Brewers, but traditionally, the Crew has also had some advantages in this regard. Timing is everything, when one is shopping in the minor-league free agent class. Whereas the top free agents in the game often wait a month or two to find their homes, the best minor-league free agents tend to sign right away. These are players with low ceilings and limited markets, who were left (or tossed) off their previous club’s 40-man roster at the end of the season. They’ve been in professional baseball a long time, but no one believes in them. 

That’s not quite true, of course. Someone believes in at least some of the 574 players who became minor-league free agents on Thursday. If you need evidence of that, consider Joe La Sorsa, a lefty reliever who ended the season on the fringes of the Mets roster but was jettisoned this week. He’s already signed with the Pirates, on a minor-league deal that will pay him $800,000 for the season if he makes the Pittsburgh roster next spring. La Sorsa was one of a dozen or so priority names on my own early list of potential targets from this huge pool of players. He’s a low-slot lefty with a sinker-sweeper combination that can be devastating, when it’s right. The challenge will merely be to find a way to more consistently keep him right.

Players like La Sorsa don’t linger on the market until Christmas or beyond, though, because they’re not waiting to see if someone will bid $10 million for their services. They know the drill. They live on the cliff’s edge, barely in contact with the major leagues. La Sorsa is a fairly typical case. He’s pitched 46 times for three different teams over the last three seasons, but ended the season in the minors—an insurance policy against all-out injury disaster for a team on the outskirts of the playoff race. Just as often, though, they’re guys who have never played in the majors at all.

Thus, getting a guaranteed roster spot—placement on the 40-man roster, with the relative security that brings and the higher salary level even if one is in the minor leagues—is like hitting the jackpot for these guys. When the Brewers targeted Blake Perkins in November 2022, they got him not by bidding any significant amount beyond the league-minimum salary, but by giving him a place on the 40-man roster. Those spots are precious, though. A team in a rebuild or a transition between competitive phases can sometimes offer one even to a fringy player, but the majority of the league has to guard those places closely. The Brewers are a bit more of an old-growth competitive forest right now, and they don’t have a slot on their 40-man that will be easy to allocate to a player like this.

Of course, La Sorsa (again, a relatively typical priority target) didn’t get such a prize from the Pirates. What he did get is the open lane to an eventual roster spot, which comes with signing up with a team short on money, talent, or both. Jared Koenig signed with the Brewers as a non-roster invitee in November 2023, and although he spent most of spring training in the most anonymous corner of the Maryvale clubhouse, he was in big-league camp. (That is a much easier thing to offer than a roster spot, and it’s usually the table stakes for any team trying to woo a hidden gem they like.) They sold Koenig on joining them partially by being themselves: players and agents know the team is both good at player development and unlikely to sign big-name free agents who will block their path to a job.

They also had the luxury, then, of being viewed as somewhat thin and open to change in the bullpen. Those days are gone. To their credit, the Pirates landed a priority target last November, too, re-signing righty reliever Isaac Mattson a fortnight after they’d cast him into minor-league free agency. Mattson had been bad for them in 2024, but he knew they would have room for him if he could make the minor adjustments required. He did, and they did, and he pitched 47 innings with a 2.45 ERA for the Bucs in 2025.

Signing in November is a sign that a minor-league free agent is among the subset of that group viewed as potentially valuable. Some team prioritized them; they got one of those coveted spring invites or an inside track in a race for the final spot on the roster. Players who linger on the market, if they come from this demographic, are doing so because they’re holding out for a real shot—but haven’t yet been offered one.

The Brewers are in a tougher position to lure top minor-league free agents, because they don’t have the roster spot to expend or the obvious playing time to offer. Nonetheless, keep an eye on them this month. Small moves they make now might pay off in medium-sized ways in 2026. Ismael Munguia, 27, is a speedy left-hitting outfielder who moved from the Giants farm system to that of the Yankees last offseason. He has very little power, but his bat-to-ball skills are elite, and his swing decisions show some promise. He’s the kind of player the Crew might snap up, and while he could easily spend the whole season stashed at Triple-A Nashville, if he signs with Milwaukee this month, it will probably be because they made a case to him that he will have a role with them next season. 

Ditto for Ryder Ryan, a right-handed reliever out of the Pirates system who switched out his tight slider for a better sweeper and added a cutter as a bridge pitch in 2025. Those were promising changes; he has a chance to be a very late-blooming but usable big-league arm. If he scraps his sinker and leans more on his four-seamer (off which the sweeper and cutter play better, anyway), he could take another step forward next year. With players of his ilk, the key is to identify a player whom the development group firmly believes they can improve; make that case to the player and/or their agent; and be frank with them about the opportunity they would find in the organization. Lefty Parker Mushinski, recently of the Guardians, is another potential addition.

Minor-league free agents move based on factors like reputation and soft promises. The key, from a team’s perspective, is to be honest enough to maintain a reputation for treating players like these well. Guys at this stage of their career are carrying a precious candle in a high wind. They have, in most cases, just one more chance to make their big-league dream come true. It’s bad form to deceive them, and smart teams know better than that. Without expending undue resources, the goal is to get a few players to believe that their best hope at keeping that flame from being extinguished is to take shelter with you. The Brewers already have a crowded roster, full of good players. That makes it harder for them to pitch themselves to players like these. Because they spend little in big-league free agency, though, they have to keep making minor moves. It’s a delicate balancing act, but few teams in the league do it better.