Gallardo extension coming today? -- Latest: 5-year, $30M extension

[WV Brew]

Reading the tea leaves. Mark A vents about salaries and then Gallardo is signed. I'm afraid that these are connected. Does this mean that Mark was frustrated about the inability to sign Prince after a seemingly "fair" offer? The Gallardo signing could be "Plan B". I'm afraid the window to sign Prince has come and gone, if it ever existed. The longer he is unsigned, the less an extension will be worth to him.

 

I know many of you want Prince traded anyway. I'm just less confident that Doug will get anywhere close to reasonable value. I fear a collection of Overbay and Gomez types who will do nothing to improve the club. Looking at the system, where are the hitting replacements? Lawrie is really the only hitter who looks like he may be a real asset in the Majors. The rest are really more complementary players. Most of the rest of the major prospects appear to be pitchers. Are we just going to go from a club with not enough pitching to one with not enough hitting? Where am I going wrong? How does this club progress? Ideas?

[TheCrew07]

I think we're progressing in the proper direction. Pitching is power. Period. We don't need an impact bat at every position to compete, and in fact having a very good offense last year meant nothing because the pitching was so bad. I'd much rather build one of the best if not the best rotation in the NL than one of the best offenses. In fact, the Phillies had a great offense for years, top in the NL, but they never won anything in the post season until they got great pitching, the Brewers have had one of the top offenses in the NL since 2007 but only got to the post season when the pitching peaked.

 

I'm not sure why we focus so much on the position players around here, maybe because the advanced metrics looked at that side of baseball first, and many of the pitching metrics like PAP are just dumb so we end up debating the validity of the metric more than the players being measured.

 

If we get to a point where we have some surplus pitching we can always move some pitching for an impact offensive player. We won't be able to replace Fielder 1 for 1, but if we can get better production out of spots that have traditionally been weak like C, we'll still be in the top half of offenses in the NL. I still believe Gamel is a .900+ OPS player in his peak, I think a guy like Salome is an .850ish OPS guy if he can figure out how to play defense (oddly he was drafted for his defensive tools), I believe Cain and possibly Schafer will be more productive than Gomez, and I believe Weeks is starting to peak. So as far as offensive production goes, if we lose Fielder's 45 HR potential and replace it with Gamel's 30 HR potential, but then we pickup 5 to 6 more HRs from 2B and 20ish more from C then the IF offensive production is a wash. Lucroy has already hit 20 HR in a season in the minors, he's a 15-20 HR guy as well, so I think either way our C position is about get a major boost production wise.

 

In the OF Braun will be Braun in LF for a long time. I think down the road we'll be able to do better than what Gomez will give the team this season, and for RF we a have bunch of options that should yield better numbers than Hart put up last season. Davis, Gindl, Cain, maybe Gamel or Lawrie move out there as well now that Dennis has shifted from RF to 1B.

 

In short, I think the team's future hinges much more on what happens with the pitching than it does on what happens to the hitting regardless if Fielder walks or not.

[dlk9s]

Reading the tea leaves. Mark A vents about salaries and then Gallardo is signed. I'm afraid that these are connected.

I doubt it. I would imagine that they had been working an extension for quite some time.

[Invader3K]

Yeah, when it was announced during spring training that Gallardo had been renewed, they hinted that they had already been talking about an extension; just that the two sides were too far apart at the time. This wasn't just a sudden thing they hammered out quickly, if that is being implied. At least that is not the impression I get from comments by Yo and Melvin.

 

Fielder is really a completely separate issue. Rosenthal commented on this yesterday, and while I don't put a ton of stock in Rosenthal's expertise regarding the issue, he mentioned that Boras isn't really one to fear free agency, even with several other elite 1B types coming on the market at the same time.

[FedEx227]

Since I'm in Chicago, I'm sort of out of the loop on a lot of Brewers news.

 

Does this Gallardo extension pretty much seal the deal on Fielder not being re-upped even if he goes through free agency?

[Invader3K]

Since I'm in Chicago, I'm sort of out of the loop on a lot of Brewers news.

 

Does this Gallardo extension pretty much seal the deal on Fielder not being re-upped even if he goes through free agency?

I think the general consensus is that the two are unrelated. Gallardo's salary shouldn't have that much bearing on whether or not they can afford Prince.

[logan82]

I think this contract was just offered so Deputy Braun had someone to help him sell his Remetees.