I apologize for political rant the last few days, I need to learn you cannot win an argument with a lawyer. Anyways the Brewers have had a pretty busy off-season so far and I wanted to touch on that before the Holidays.
I already talked about the decision to bring in Greg Zaun and let Kendall walk. Kendall got a 2 year deal with the Royals, and well folks that is why they are the Royals. I am sure Zack Greinke will love his game calling skills. The next wave of moves was to not tender a contract to Braden Looper, Mike Cameron, and Felipe Lopez. Many disagree with not offering Lopez a contract. I personally feel like Lopez would have accepted a deal for around 5 million for one year. But I am glad the Brewers didnt offer. For one the argument that says we could have traded him after we signed him, is a dream argument. The market is flooded with decent second baseman and nobody is knocking down the doors to sign these guys. My guess is he gets 2 year deal worth about 7.5 mil with incentives. So nobody would have likely given us anything for him and we can not afford having a 5 million dollar backup second baseman. By having the five mil in flexibilty Melvin was able to go after a couple of his big name targets. Non tendering Looper was a no brainer. He won 14 games last year, but he was in the bottom 3rd of pitchers in both leagues. He was just one of those pitchers that benefitted from a lot of offense when he was on the mound. You can never count on that type of luck. He was decent #4 for us last year, but to compete for the playoffs we needed to upgrade.
Our first move did just that. We signed Randy Wolf to an above market 3 year 29.5 million dollar deal. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Brewers have to over pay to get guys to come to Milwaukee. Will Wolf be a really good pitcher in three years? Probably not, but he does fill a big hole behind Gallardo in our rotation. He is a durable pitcher that you can almost pencil in for 200 innings of 3.8 era baseball. In todays game that is as good as you can ask for from a starting pitcher. He is not going to carry a team like CC can and put zeroes on the board for 8 innings. However he will make 27-30 starts and the Brewers should have a good chance to win every time he steps out there. They needed to sign a free agent starting pitcher and they got the 2nd best starter on the market. It is hard not to like this move, especially when Washborn and D. Davis were the back up plans. I still feel like we dont have a true ace, but we arent likely going to be finding one, now that Cliff Lee and Halladay got traded. So we are going to have to go with what we have, and hope our offense can rake. The next move Doug Melvin and co made was to bring in RP Latroy Hawkins. He is going to slot into the 7th or 8th inning role with Coffey. Many feel like they overpaid for his services as well, but he is a career under 4.00 bullpen arm. I feel like he will fit in nicely to our pen, and suddenly our week bullpen is looking to be at least average. It looks as if we will open with Mitch Stetter, Coffey, Hoffman, Hawkins, Claudio Vargas (who the just resigned), Chuck Lofgren (rule 5 pickup), and Jeff Suppan as the swing man. It isnt a dominate strike you out bullpen, but all of these guys besides Hoffman can pitch more than one inning, so it will leave Macha with plenty of options. There are also a couple sleepers to look out for. Zach Braddock one of our best pitching prospects looks to be moving to the bullpen so he can help out sooner rather than later. He is a lefty strike out artist, who dominated his recent stint in the AFL. We also still have John Axford who looked pretty good in a few major league innings at the end of last year. Expect these guys to open in AAA but be up when needed. As for the starting rotation it is looking like we will have Gallardo, Wolf, Parra, Bush, and Suppan or possible another starter aquired by trade. The rotation still has some holes, and really looks dependent on if Bush and Parra have bounce back years. That is a lot of ifs, hopefully they can trade for another average pitcher, so at least we have some depth when inevitable someone goes down.
Not many changes in the line-up with only the addition of Carlos Gomez in center. We should have a lot more speed and athleticism this year. Here is a look at my projected lineup.
Weeks -2nd
Escobar- SS
Braun- LF
Fielder- 1st
Hart (Gamel)-RF
McGhehee- 3rd
Zaun- C
Gomez- CF
The bench then looks like Counsell, Gamel, Gerut or Cattalonatto, and either Adam Heether or Hernan Iberrean.
There obviously could be some smaller moves, but for the most part I see the Brewers pretty set heading into next year. With the Cardinals and Cubs looking to be having pretty mediocre off seasons, I see us right up there competing for the Central and or a wildcard birth. Another SP in a trade of Hart would be helpful.
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