Watch Brandon Woodruff celebrate in the Brewers clubhouse after clinching the NLDS
Watch Brandon Woodruff celebrate in the clubhouse after the Brewers clinched the NLDS on Saturday, October 11, 2025 at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
The Milwaukee Brewers have extended a one-year, $22 million qualifying offer to right-handed pitcher Brandon Woodruff.If Woodruff accepts, he will return to the Brewers; if he declines, he becomes a free agent and the Brewers get draft pick compensation if he signs elsewhere.Woodruff returned in 2025 from major shoulder surgery but his season was cut short by a lat strain, raising durability questions.
For nearly a decade now, Brandon Woodruff has brought immense value to the Milwaukee Brewers, and the team isn’t ready to part ways just yet.
The Brewers extended a qualifying offer to Woodruff before the Nov. 6 deadline, in hopes of retaining the services of the right-hander and career Brewer for at least one more year. The offer, worth one year and $22 million, now sits in the hands of Woodruff. If he accepts, he will rejoin the Brewers for his 10th big-league season; if not, he will become a free agent and the Brewers will receive draft pick compensation if he signs with another team.
“We love Woody,” Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said. “I think this is, for us, sort of step one in the process. We’d love to have him here and he’s a huge part of our franchise, and it’s just sort of step one in that process if we’re able to keep him here. We knew today was — a date that we had to cross, and we love Woody and we’d be thrilled to have him back. He means a lot to our franchise.”
Woodruff was the longest-tenured member of the Brewers roster this past season, when he made his return from the major shoulder surgery in November 2023 that held him out for nearly two full years. The 32-year-old made 12 starts, pitching to a 3.20 earned run average with 83 strikeouts and 14 walks in 64⅔ innings.
A right lat strain suffered in September put a damper on the season’s finish for Woodruff, as the injury kept him from pitching in the postseason for a third straight year. It also created an even more compelling market this off-season for Woodruff, who signed a backloaded two-year, $17.5 million contract before the 2024 season to remain a Brewer while he rehabbed his shoulder.
When on the mound, Woodruff has been an elite starter, owning a career 3.10 ERA in 745 innings, but questions about durability lingered heading into the off-season, including after the lat strain that shelved him for the postseason.
Woodruff’s velocity ticked down in 2025, as well, with his fastball that sat around 96 mph before surgery at 93.1 mph this past season.
The right-hander, though, not only has said he expects to be back at full health – and stuff – in 2026, two-plus full years removed from his procedure, but also learned valuable lessons about how to pitch with diminished velocity. His strikeout and walk rates remained elite, as did his expected ERA (2.18, 99th percentile), and he did it by throwing his four-seam fastball less, his two-seamer more and adding a new cut fastball.
Woodruff will have until 3 p.m. CT on Nov. 18 to accept or reject the qualifying offer. The most recent case of the Brewers extending a qualifying offer was with shortstop Willy Adames, who declined it last year and signed a massive seven-year deal with the San Francisco Giants.
From an average annual value perspective, it’s a lucrative deal for Woodruff, who ESPN projects to get two years and $25 million and FanGraphs projects at two years and $34 million. It also allows Woodruff to remain in Milwaukee, where he’s spent his entire career since being called up in 2017 by the team that drafted him two years prior out of Mississippi State. If Woodruff accepts the offer, he could use the 2026 season as a springboard for a bigger, multi-year deal as long as he’s able to remain healthy.