But now, as we flip the calendar over to 2016, the landscape is shifting. Adam Lind is gone, as are Francisco Rodriguez and (for an inexplicably heavy return) Jason Rogers. With Lind and Rodriguez’s salaries off the books, the Brewers’ player payroll for 2016 currently sits just north of $40 million, third-lowest in the league.

Meanwhile, dozens of players are still seeking an employer for the 2016 season — and the artificial boundary line of January 1st is going to widen the parameters of their search. The smart ones are regrouping, realizing that a full month has passed with nobody meeting their demands, perhaps retooling said demands. Less money will work; after all, it’s better than no money. Because of that, fewer years are A-OK, too; nobody wants to be locked into a contract paying below their perceived value for a long time. And if the right offer comes from a cold-weather team with high income taxes and no hope of playoff baseball, eh. We’re coming up fast on “beggars can’t be choosers” time — which is where the Brewers’ new front office can shine.

Already, the team has been linked with a free-agent starter who is very familiar with the Central Division in the National League.

Brewers Reportedly Interested in RHP Mat Latos https://t.co/t8ilylSfqI pic.twitter.com/YPNl2V4EqW

— Brew Crew Ball (@BrewCrewBall) December 23, 2015

Just two years ago, imagining Mat Latos as a reclamation project was downright absurd. Latos had proven to be one of the most consistently excellent pitchers in all of baseball. His resume at 26 years old was sterling: four consecutive seasons with three or more WAR, a WHIP below 1.25, and at least eight strikeouts per nine innings. In the middle of that stretch, a trade sent him from San Diego and Petco Park — one of baseball’s most pitcher-friendly stadiums — to the unforgiving Great American Ballpark of Cincinatti. Unfazed, Latos continued pitching at a high level and quickly established himself as “the nominal ace of the Reds’ pitching staff,” as his Player Comment identified in the 2014 BP Annual.

The 2014 season was less than kind to Latos, however. He missed time due to injury at several points and even when he was on the mound, his strikeout numbers took a dive as his fastball slowed by two miles per hour. His ERA and WHIP still looked great, but there were signs of trouble if you looked under the surface. Those signs were convincing enough for the Reds that they traded him to Miami last offseason in exchange for Anthony DeSclafani and Chad Wallach.

In 2015, those subsurface troubles turned into a veritable hurricane. Still throwing slowly, Latos was up and down in his starts with the Miami Marlins. Then, after being acquired by the Dodgers, he was just down. In five starts and one relief appearance, Latos posted an ERA of 6.66. Less than two months after trading for him, the Dodgers released Latos … during the last week of September.

Because of this, the right-hander has approached free agency with a strategy all his own. Rather than accepting a lower pay rate well into his 30s, Latos is seeking out a one-year contract. This way, he can build up his value with an effective campaign and still get well-paid before his 30th birthday.

For the Brewers, it’s a perfect fit. While Milwaukee surely wasn’t expecting to make a free-agency splash, the short-term nature of Latos’ desired arrangement fits with the team’s plans. The Brewers’ current payroll is less than half the 2015 mark, and while that isn’t money that has to be spent, it means that Mark Attanasio has the budgetary wiggle room to take a one-year flier on a talented pitcher.

The big question: What might that year look like? With Mat Latos, your guess is as good as mine. Despite his onetime reputation as a consistent force on the mound, Latos’ personality is anything but consistent. Some players control their emotions, others are controlled by them. Latos is controlled by them. Because of this, the range of possibilities is vast and all-encompassing. I took a look at a few of them.

The Good Scenario

Latos’ velocity leakage in 2014 was caused by a cocktail of injuries, and his 2015 performance makes it appear likely that this is the new normal. But Latos is just 28 years old. A rebound of sorts isn’t completely out of the cards. And to venture even deeper into the realm of speculation, Latos is an emotional player and a relentless competitor. Maybe he saw himself as a Cincinnati Red, and the trades to Miami and then Los Angeles wrecked his psyche. Maybe he was throwing slow because he was in his own head — and since he’s down to a one-year deal, he’s got to get past that to save his career.

The Brewers sign Latos, and he shows up to Spring Training on a mission. Surrounded by youth, promise, positivity, and no pressure to win, Latos works his fastball’s velocity back up to 93 mph — shy of what it used to be, but capable of overpowering hitters once again. With such a young, inexperienced group of players around him, the grizzled veteran immediately becomes one of the de facto team leaders. Nobody is surprised when he gets the ball on Opening Day, but they are when he tosses a three-hit shutout.

Back in the familiar National League Central, Latos reminds the league why he was once considered an ace. Miller Park is a notorious hitters’ park, but so was the GABP and Latos was at home there. He’s not an extreme flyball pitcher, and with his velocity back up to normal, he’s got the power to keep hitters on the defensive. It’s an up-and-down 2016 season for the Brewers, but Latos is one of the bright spots.

He only makes 15-20 starts for the team, but it’s enough to intrigue the trade market, since he looks like a difference-maker again. Come July, the Brewers are able to trade him to a contending team for a teenager who looks poised to be a top-10 prospect in a few seasons.

The Bad Scenario

Latos’ velocity leakage in 2014 was caused by a cocktail of injuries, and he was still hurt in 2015. Like, hurt hurt. Like, “that platelet-rich plasma injection you got after the 2014 season in your elbow was the writing on the wall” hurt.

These days, the Tommy John Monster has no mercy. He takes them all — old, young, cautious, reckless. But before he takes them, he takes their fastball’s power. The past two years, everyone knew something was off. However, when Latos is struggling to top 90 on the radar gun in Spring Training, everybody is legitimately worried.

Still, the veteran starter bravely soldiers on. He starts on Opening Day, largely by default, and follows up Kyle Lohse by getting shelled just like 2014. All of Latos’ starts are short, painful affairs. While the team wasn’t supposed to compete, Latos’ performance is actively stunting the development of other pitchers. It’s not even May and the Brewers are sidelining Latos, sending him off for a specialist and an MRI. The MRI comes back, and Latos has the dreaded torn UCL. For the record books, his ERA as a Brewer is worse than it was as a Marlin.

The Ugly Scenario

The Brewers sign Latos, but neglect to trade or release Matt Garza.

Spring Training rolls around. Latos and Garza are both emotionally volatile, and both trying to work their respective ways back from nightmarishly bad 2015’s. As the logic goes: you can get away with one head case on your team, just don’t give him somebody else crazy with whom to hang out. Latos needs a positive environment to get his career back on track. With Garza griping just an arm’s length away, that positive environment wouldn’t exist in Spring or beyond.

Latos starts for the team on Opening Day, and the umpires are unforgiving with their strike zone. He can’t catch a break, and with each call the frustration shows more and more on his face. Finally, he cracks, and blows up at the umpire, earning himself an ejection. The next day, Garza struggles with his command, mumbling and chirping the entire time.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. And especially with players like Latos and Garza, when things go bad they keep going until they hit rock bottom. The 2016 Brewers’ starting rotation starts to look eerily like the 2015 iteration, with Latos playing the role of Kyle Lohse. The days he threw mid-90s are firmly behind him, and even his one-year contract looks like the biggest payday Latos can ever hope for.

Fed up with giving 40 percent of the team’s starts to expensive older pitchers who aren’t delivering results, David Stearns blows the whole thing up in July. Both players are shopped around aggressively and, ultimately, released.

Conclusion

The truth is, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Mat Latos in this phase of his career. But the promise of a 28-year-old pitcher on a one-year contract is too good a chance for a team in Milwaukee’s position to pass up. Hell, if things go well, maybe we trade Latos for a prospect — then bring him back, K-Rod style.

The risks associated with Latos are very real, especially the velocity drop. Two seasons in, you’d be crazy not to be skeptical that things are permanently slowed down. But older pitchers have recovered from more dramatic changes in velocity and become effective again. Latos has shown that he owns the skill of a 3-to-4 win pitcher. It’s worth the gamble for the Brewers to see if he can recreate that.

What the Milwaukee Brewers should be doing this offseason is identifying free agents who could eventually bring a long-term asset, either via a trade or via the qualifying offer system. The Chicago Cubs did this several years ago, signing Scott Feldman to a short-term deal. They famously shipped the right-hander to Baltimore in 2013 for Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop — an innocuous deal at the time, but one that has profoundly shaped the current Cubs franchise.

This isn’t to suggest that the Milwaukee Brewers can pull off a trade as lopsided as the Arrieta deal turned out to be. They should, though, be targeting Scott-Feldman-like free agents, ones who can be signed to short-term deals and ones with modest upside. None of these players will be exciting, the vast majority of them are currently fringe everyday guys, but the key is to find fringe guys who have the opportunity to produce solid numbers in 2016. It’s not unlike what happened with Gerardo Parra. The Brewers moved a couple low-end prospects for a fourth outfielder. A year later, Parra re-established his value and brought the Brewers a potential back-end starter for the next half-decade. David Stearns and his staff should target a couple players of that ilk.

Below are three free-agent targets that I have in mind.

AUSTIN JACKSON

The 28-year-old center fielder has been a below-average hitter for the past two seasons, posting an 86 wRC+ and 94 wRC+ over the past two years, respectively. His glovework has kept him employable, but a full-time stint in the National League in one of the best hitter’s parks in Major League Baseball may be enough to inflate the numbers to league-average status. He was a two-win player in 2015. In the friendly confines of Miller Park, he could do what Dexter Fowler did this past year — move from fringe center fielder who bounced around annually to a legitimate starting option.

Jackson could be a 15/15 guy with a middling batting average in Miller Park. As a rebuilding club, they’ll have the luxury to deal with his penchant for striking out and his extended cold spells at the plate. The club would hope they catch Jackson on an upswing in the early part of the 2016 season, one where he performs as a top-half center fielder and could be flipped at the trade deadline to a contender. Outfielders who can play defense are always in demand at the trade deadline — especially center fielders — and the Brewers are in a position to take a shot in the dark. Given the number of outfielders reportedly on the trade market this winter, too, the club may have a real shot to sign Jackson on a one- or two-year deal.

DILLON GEE

Gee is one of my favorite under-the-radar pitchers of the offseason. He’s a viable back-end starter who got squeezed out in New York due to their ridiculous rotation. He’s also a guy who has the stigma of spending much of the 2015 season in Triple-A and a guy the Mets couldn’t trade no matter how hard they tried. Despite this, the right-hander owns a career 4.03 ERA and has shown a better ability to miss bats than his strikeout rate would otherwise suggest. That may not sound exciting, but prior to the year in which the Cubs signed Scott Feldman and he was shipped to Baltimore, Feldman compiled a 5.09 ERA in 123.2 innings with the Texas Rangers.

Throughout his career, Gee has a career 9.1 percent swinging-strike rate and it increased very slightly to 9.4 percent this past season. That’s right around the league-average swinging-strike rate for starting pitchers, which is 9.3 percent. Thus, it seems disingenuous to claim that the 29-year-old hurler has terrible stuff or a repertoire that cannot succeed at the highest level. He also limits walks, which is a huge benefit. The problem, of course, is that Gee gives up the long ball too often and hasn’t necessarily translated his swinging-strike rate into actual strikeouts. These limitations are what could make him available on a short-term deal for Milwaukee — they’re never going to sign the finished article during a rebuild — but he actually showed a surprising amount of ground balls in 2015 and one wonders what changed in his repertoire and if its repeatable.

Gee suffered from a .355 BABIP in a very small sample in New York a year ago. Prior to that, he posted ERAs of 4.00, 3.62, and 4.10. That’s good enough for a back-end starter on a rebuilding club. If he can put together a quality couple months, too, he could be someone who nets an interesting prospect at the trade deadline. But, yeah, I warned you that these names would be uninspiring.

DALE THAYER

The icing on the cake: A 34-year-old veteran reliever who cleared waivers and was sent to Triple-A in 2015.

Thayer is only a year removed from a 2.34 ERA for the San Diego Padres and will surely be cheap this offseason. His overall numbers suggest that he was ineffective across the board, but his .286/.316/.427 slash line against righties belies the quality strikeout-to-walk ratio. Thayer struck out 20 percent of the right-handed hitters he faced, while only walking three percent. The right-hander has a long history of success against righties, too, holding them to a career .213/.276/.343 slash line. The dramatic drop-off in effectiveness as a 30-something is concerning; however, it’s important to recognize that his velocity didn’t drop much — only 92.2 mph to 91.9 mph with the fastball. The main issue seemed to be that he fell behind too often in the count, something he didn’t do very often in 2014.

Doug Melvin regularly brought in relievers on minor-league deals who ended up being very serviceable. Zack Duke is the most obvious example of this, but guys like Kammeron Loe found success after inking a minor-league deal with the Brewers. Thayer may be an interesting non-roster guy to bring into camp. He’s only a year removed from extreme effectiveness and didn’t really see his velocity decline. If he can throw more strikes, his fastball-slider combination becomes much more effective and he can improve the middle portion of the bullpen — and relievers are always in demand at the trade deadline, even if it’s just for something like international slot money.

A few months ago, I took a look at how many trades the Brewers made by month. The information showed, for the most part, similar results as I looked at trades from 1969 to 2014, 1986 to 2014 and 2002 to 2014. For each section, the data showed the Brewers most often make their trades in July and December. The Brewers should and will probably be active in the trade market this winter as they look to rebuild.

That being said, making trades is only one part of the hot stove season and only one part of rebuilding. The next major part is the free-agent signing period, which started on November 7th. The biggest names of this year’s class include David Price, Zack Greinke, Jason Hayward and Johnny Cueto, and as Dave Cameron mentioned, this class may be in for a huge payday. Baseball is currently rolling in money and these free agents should reap the benefits.

While this may be true, don’t expect Milwaukee to be among the buyers. The Brewers are looking to rebuild, and they’re not a big-market team. They, therefore, aren’t in a good position to spend with the high-market teams — even if they wanted to, they probably couldn’t. But what the Brewers can do is buy some low-level free agents, hope they perform, and flip them for some assets later in the season. They could also try and sign some players that have typically been injury prone or who have underperformed, hoping they start performing and become staples in their roster for years to come.

I think these are all interesting strategies for the Brewers to improve their roster and advance their rebuilding process. Therefore, I wanted to look at when the Brewers usually sign their free agents.

Free agency technically started in 1975, but the battle really started taking place in 1969 when Curt Flood became the first baseball player to fight for free agency. Flood challenged baseball’s reserve clause, as he believed it violated his 13th Amendment rights. He initially wrote a letter to Bowie Kuhn, then commissioner of Major League Baseball, but Kuhn denied Flood’s request, which caused Flood to sue Major League Baseball for antitrust violations. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, where the court ruled against Flood in a five-to-three ruling.

Although Flood lost the case, the war for free agency wasn’t over. In 1974, the issue rose up again as player’s union leader, Marvin Miller, told pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally to play out their year without signing a contract. A few years earlier, the players union got an independent arbitrator hear their grievances and then, “In a case brought to that arbitrator in 1975, regarding the contracts of two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, [Peter] Seitz ruled that an arcane but critical section of the standard MLB player contract, the reserve clause, did not prevent Messersmith and McNally from leaving their clubs and signing deals elsewhere. With that, the era of free agency in baseball, and sports as a whole, began.”

This is a long, but important way of explaining the reason why the data I gathered only goes back to 1975. The data was gathered at baseball-reference’s transactions page, and only includes player signings and amateur signings for the Brewers. The information I looked at was also from a monthly basis.

As you can see, the Brewers mostly make their signings in December and January. This is pretty intuitive as most players are signed during the offseason. As well, even though there’s been a lot of recent activities early this November, most signings do not typically occur in November. And, as I’ve shown in the past, most trades don’t happen in November, at least for the Brewers. I would typically suspect that teams likely prefer to analyze the market and not make any rash decisions, which is probably why most of the signings for the Brewers happen in the middle of the offseason. Therefore, it might not be wise to expect a lot of transactions to happen this November, although, with the flood of new young GMs, this might change.

With that being said, recent trends show that the Brewers tend to sign more players in January.

From 2012 to 2014, most of the Brewers signings happened in January (when compared to December) and dramatically so in 2014, where ten players were signed in January and only two in December.

But for those who are craving hot stove news, fear not, as I expect the Brewers to be most active in December. Even though January is a very busy month in terms of free agent signings, it is not in terms of trades. July, a month that is typically a trading frenzy, due to the trading deadline, does not have a lot of free-agent signings. December is, therefore, the only month when both events collide.

From 1975 to 2014, the Brewers have made 186 signings and trades in the month of December, which dramatically outpaces the next highest month. Therefore, even though we are all getting excited at the prospect of what the Brewers will do this offseason, I don’t expect that we’ll get a clear picture until December. But, when December hits, I expect it to be quite a fun and busy month as we’ll constantly be checking Twitter and other websites for updates on the latest transactions.

THE TRENDS:

When it comes to the player’s signings trends, there’s a lot of variance, especially in recent years, but the overall trend does show the Brewers are signing more and more players.

So far this year, there have already been 23 signings, which matches the total for 2014. Therefore, the Brewers should obviously surpass this mark.

This information, for the most part, doesn’t mean that the Brewers are definitely going to be active this offseason. It also doesn’t mean that the Brewers are going to be active players in the free-agent market. Stearns has mentioned that he plans on being more involved in the draft and in trades, as oppose to the free-agent market, as he feels it isn’t a place where he generally sees himself going. Stearns also mentioned in the same Tom Haudricourt article that it doesn’t mean he’ll never get into the free-agent market, but rather that he will be more selective.

I do expect the Brewers to be active this winter, but mainly in the trade market. As for the free agency, I still expect the Brewers to sign some players. They obviously won’t be stars, but they might be able to find a solid lowest cost player. The Brewers should have a lot of open spots this upcoming season and will be able to give players who they haven’t before a chance to showcase their talent.