Brice Turang Just Secured a Major Payday — And It Surprisingly Didn’t Come From the Brewers .MH
Several other Brewers were recipients of significant bonuses following the 2025 campaign.
The world of baseball produces some of the greatest contract discrepancies in all of sports. At the top end of the sport are the Shohei Ohtanis and Juan Sotos who each agreed to contracts north of $700 million. However, alongside them on the diamond at any given point are a number of players earning the league minimum salary, which in 2025 was $760k. Much farther below that mark are the salaries that minor leaguers bring in each year, which can be as low as $19,800 in Rookie ball.
The Players Union has long searched for solutions to the pay discrepancy, and during negotiations for the current collective bargaining agreement, they found one that at least lessens the issue. Created was the pre-arbitration bonus pool, which aimed to give financial support to those players who have yet to qualify for the arbitration process that allows them to earn higher salaries. The pool, which is funded by each MLB team contributing equally to a $50 million sum, is dispersed based on a certain set of criteria. Awards voting is the first determinant of how much money each pre-arb player takes away from the pool, with winners and runners-up of major awards taking home large paychecks if they qualify for the pre-arb status.
Following the award winners and finalists, MLB uses a Wins Above Replacement calculation to determine how much money the rest of the top 100 pre-arb players take away from the pool, as detailed by Darragh McDonald of MLB Trade Rumors. With the Milwaukee Brewers having several pre-arb players who played major roles on their 2025 roster, it should come as no surprise that the team had ten players earn bonuses from the pre-arb pool, as detailed by the Associated Press. While Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, Sal Frelick, Jackson Chourio, Aaron Ashby, Quinn Priester, Chad Patrick, Abner Uribe, and Joey Ortiz are certainly more than appreciative of their bonuses, one player’s addition to his salary stuck out as especially impressive.
Brice Turang earns more from pre-arb bonus pool than his 2025 salary
Earning the ninth-highest bonus from the pre-arb pool was Milwaukee’s second-baseman Brice Turang. His bonus, which came in at $1,155,884, was considerably higher than the $760k salary that the third-year second baseman earned in 2025. Technically, Durbin’s bonus also outshone his 2025 in-season earnings, as his league minimum salary was prorated to roughly $670k due to the time that he spent on the minor league roster in early April, whereas his bonus from the pre-arb pool checked in at $707,139.
For both Turang and Durbin, as well as the other eight Brewers who received bonuses, it’s a nice reward after grinding it out in the minor leagues on a meager salary for many years. The bonus helps offset some of the imbalance between the value that the players demonstrate on the field and the amount of money that is allocated to them in the payroll. Additionally, because the Brewers have so many players who qualified for the pre-arb bonus pool, they too benefit from the pool’s existence. Milwaukee’s players earned far more than the roughly $1.67 million that the team contributed to the pool in 2025, meaning other teams are effectively paying the Brewers’ players bonuses for their impressive seasons.
Brewers fans are still holding out hope for a long-term extension this offseason, which would serve as a much larger payday for Turang, but Milwaukee may have missed their chance by not executing such a deal last offseason. The price tag on a long-term extension for Turang went up considerably after his exceptional 2025 campaign, and paired with his age and years remaining until he hits free agency, it’s unlikely the two sides reach an agreement this offseason.
