Josh Lindblom signs with Brewers - 3 years / $9.125 mil [Latest: Lindblom DFAd]

[torts]

So says heyman

[wildcat2237]

"Hear Lindblom Brewers deal is about 9.1M for 3 years"

 

 

Brewers have lots of money to spend....that is about $3 million or so toward 2020 payroll.

Edited December 11, 2019 by wildcat2237

[NYChez]

It makes a little more sense after seeing his Korean stats.

 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=lindbl001jos

[homer]

Miles Mikolas Part Deux?

 

Except Korea instead of Japan.

[Jaylyn]

Miles Mikolas Part Deux?

Nice thought! Seems like a low risk signing, it's a dice roll move!

[torts]

800+ innings pitched over 5 years in Korea seems like a pretty reliable arm. Here's hoping we start getting pitchers who can go more than 5 innings!!

[tmwiese55]

With those innings totals you'd think the plan is to give him a shot at the rotation initially and move to pen if it doesn't work out. Anyone have info on velocity and arsenal?

[long ball]

Here's the blurb from the Fangraphs top 50 free agent write up:

 

Player Notes

An unsigned Astros third rounder in 2005, Lindblom has gone from being Purdue’s closer to a fast-tracked Dodgers prospect to being twice-traded for former All Stars (Shane Victorino and Michael Young) in a six-month span before kicking around waivers (Texas, Oakland, Pittsburgh) and Korea (Lotte Giants) for a couple of years, coming back to MLB (Pittsburgh, again), and then heading back to Korea (Doosan Bears) for what have been the two best seasons of his career.

 

Lindblom won the 2018 Choi Dong-Won award, the KBO’s equivalent of the Cy Young, then led the league in innings (194) and posted a .997 WHIP during the Doosan Bears’ 2019 championship run (Doosan has won three of the last five KBO titles).

 

Now 32, Lindblom is coming off of a one-year, $1.7 million deal. His fastball is below big league average, operating in the low-90s, but he has developed an above-average splitter, and has good glove-side command of a serviceable slider/cutter. He also has a loopy, low-70s curveball.

 

Durability — he has just three IL stints in a decade — and repertoire depth push Lindblom toward the starter end of the spectrum, while a need to work heavily with the offspeed stuff so his fastball doesn’t get crushed slides him back toward the bullpen. The combo looks like a long relief type, one especially suited to face a lineup full of lefties because of the split, and his ability to tie up lefties with that slider/cutter.

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2020-top-50-free-agents/

Edited December 11, 2019 by long ball

[FVBrewerFan]

With those innings totals you'd think the plan is to give him a shot at the rotation initially and move to pen if it doesn't work out. Anyone have info on velocity and arsenal?

 

He's now a Brewer pitcher, so guessing a fastball and a slider he's "working on."

[mattyo]

Like this signging for tht price quite a bit

[Brewcrewin07]

Plan to use him as a starter...not that this is a terrible move, but I really wish the Brewers would stop treating starting pitching as the redheaded step child. Cheap signings hoping it works out is not a way to build a staff. It might work for a year or possibly two, but long term, no way.

 

[Jaylyn]

Still want another starter, Wade Miley come on down!!!

[Eye Black]

Offensive numbers were down in KBO last season after they "de-juiced" the baseball, but he appears to have been consistently good even in the two years prior.

[Bulldogboy]

Meh. Teams that make moves like this generally are looking for

a 5th starter type. We need a 2 3 4 now.

[long ball]

I like the deal. Low risk signing. Hopefully adds some stability to the rotation and can probably be serviceable out of the bullpen if he can't hand in the rotation. Really affordable as well. I did see Passan tweet there are performance bonuses that could double the contract cost, but even still it's super affordable compared to some of the other back end starter types who have signed already.

 

Still need at least 1 more starter if not 2.

[reillymcshane]

I like it. If he doesn't succeed as a starter, he has a chance to at least contribute as a reliever. And the money isn't prohibitive.

 

Slowly but surely, things are coming together.

[Eye Black]

Random Observation: Gerrit Cole will make more in his first 9 starts with the Yankees than Lindblom will make over the next three years.

[Brewcrewin07]

Can max out at 18 million with incentives...

 

[Brewcrewin07]

Meh. Teams that make moves like this generally are looking for

a 5th starter type. We need a 2 3 4 now.

 

You hit the nail on the head. The Brewers in regards to pitching sign guys that would normally be back end of rotation guys and make them amongst their top starters. NOT a sustainable strategy.

[IntentionalHBP]

Meh. Teams that make moves like this generally are looking for

a 5th starter type. We need a 2 3 4 now.

 

You hit the nail on the head. The Brewers in regards to pitching sign guys that would normally be back end of rotation guys and make them amongst their top starters. NOT a sustainable strategy.

Can you relax? You might as well become a Dodger/Yankee fan.

[bigredrobbo]

Meh. Teams that make moves like this generally are looking for

a 5th starter type. We need a 2 3 4 now.

 

You hit the nail on the head. The Brewers in regards to pitching sign guys that would normally be back end of rotation guys and make them amongst their top starters. NOT a sustainable strategy.

 

Surely, if the last 2 days deals totaling a half BILLION have taught us anything, it's the ONLY sustainable strategy for a small market team. You're in for a looooong winter if you think for a second any of the top FA starters are coming here.

[Eye Black]

Here is an article MLB Trade Rumors wrote on Lindblom back in November, Josh Lindblom Eyeing MLB Return:

 

If you click through right-hander Josh Lindblom’s archives here at MLBTR, the headlines aren’t exactly eye-catching. A series of DFAs, outrights, releases and minor league re-signings with the Pirates make up most of the recent chatter on the 32-year-old, whom many readers may never even have heard of. Lindblom pitched 147 innings in parts of five seasons with the Dodgers, Phillies, Rangers, A’s and Pirates from 2011-17. Interspersed throughout were multiple stints with the Lotte Giants of the Korea Baseball Organization (2015-16 and a midseason return in 2017). Lindblom opened 2017 on a minor league deal with Pittsburgh but eventually returned to the KBO in relative anonymity among MLB fans.

 

There’s nothing “anonymous” about Lindblom’s past two seasons as far as KBO fans are concerned, though. While his 2017 campaign there was solid but unspectacular, Lindblom has erupted as one of the best pitchers in South Korea since the beginning of 2018. In two seasons with the Doosan Bears, Lindblom has worked to a combined 2.68 ERA with 8.6 K/9, 1.7 BB/9 and 0.72 HR/9 in 363 1/3 innings. His 2019 strikeout, walk and home-run rates all improved over their already-strong 2018 marks as Lindblom racked up 194 2/3 innings with a 2.50 ERA. The righty flirted with a sub-2.00 ERA for much of the season and this week was announced as the winner of his second straight Choi Dong-Won Award — the top pitching award in the KBO.

 

With that run of excellence and a Korean Series championship in his back pocket, Lindblom now has his sights set on a return to Major League Baseball. Unlike last time when he quietly signed a minor league pact with the Pirates, however, he could very well find genuine interest on Major League offers. Lindblom’s current two-year platform tops that of fellow right-hander Merrill Kelly in just about every capacity, and Kelly landed a two-year, $5.5MM contract with the Diamondbacks last winter. It’s important to note that Kelly, who pitched this past season at age 30, was younger — but the gap between their numbers isn’t particularly close:

 

[pre]NAME IP ERA WHIP K/9 BB/9 HR/9

Merrill Kelly (2017-18) 348.1 3.82 1.29 9.04 2.38 0.88

Josh Lindblom (2018-19) 363.2 2.67 1.03 8.56 1.66 0.72[/pre]

That’s obviously a pretty basic look at the pair’s stats overseas, but there’s nonetheless a notable discrepancy, even if Kelly did manage to strike batters out at a slightly higher rate.

 

There’s reason to consider Lindblom beyond his surface-level numbers, though. He isn’t going to blow big league hitters away with velocity — his heater averaged 91 mph this year in the KBO — but Lindblom has standout spin rates on his side. Data obtained by MLBTR puts his four-seamer at a hefty 2610 RPM this past season, while his splitter (where less spin is better) would also rank quite well among big league hurlers at 1200 RPM. The KBO ball isn’t the exact same as the MLB ball, so the carryover might not be exact, but Lindblom’s ability to spin the ball is something that could be of genuine intrigue to a Major League club.

 

Lindblom’s pitch selection has also changed over the past two seasons, with the 2019 version of the right-hander’s repertoire leaning much more heavily on a four-seamer/splitter/cutter combination than in the past. His slider, changeup and curveball were all used minimally (eight percent or lower), and he’s ditched his former two-seamer entirely. It seems likely that he’d continue to be reliant on the same three-pitch mix that fueled his breakout. The splitter, in particular, has developed into a weapon for Lindblom in the KBO despite the fact that he never threw the pitch during his time in MLB. Notably, he’s also generated extremely low levels of opponent exit velocity, though the weaker competition and different ball composition make it tough to discern exactly how to value that data.

 

Broadly speaking, that’ll be the question for Major League teams this winter: How should they react to a pitcher who was a fringe 40-man candidate in his last two MLB stints but has made demonstrable alterations that resulted in positive indicators?

 

It’s easy to dream on Lindblom’s KBO numbers, but remember that even star-caliber KBO players haven’t been compensated particularly well by Major League teams. Jung Ho Kang and ByungHo Park were MVP-caliber talents in South Korea but secured respective guarantees of $11MM and $12MM over four-year terms from the Pirates and Twins. The aforementioned Kelly was clearly an above-average starter in KBO’s hitter-friendly environment but didn’t secure $3MM per season in MLB guarantees — and his contract with the D-backs surrendered two additional years of control via affordable club options.

 

Penciling in Lindblom at even a $5-6MM salary would be aggressive based on prior trends, and age certainly won’t help his case. Team executives with whom MLBTR inquired suggested Lindblom could be viewed anywhere from a swingman to an intriguing back-of-the-rotation starter. Despite the gap in stats between Lindblom and Kelly in the KBO, not everyone who weighed in was sold on Lindblom as the better long-term play.

 

In this year’s edition of our annual Top 50 Free Agents (published Monday), we ranked Lindblom near the back end of the list and pegged him for a two-year deal worth a total of $8MM. That doesn’t sound like much to most onlookers — and realistically won’t cut deeply into any team’s payroll — but it’d nevertheless be a fairly risky gamble on a 32-year-old who has never found much MLB success.

 

Perhaps a club will fall in love with the spin and his highly GIF-able splitter — tip of the cap to Sung Min Kim (Twitter links) — but we’ve yet to see a pitcher who fits this career arc top the two years and $15.5MM that Miles Mikolas secured in 2017. Mikolas came back in advance of his age-29 season and had a more dominant three-year run in Japan than Lindblom has had in Korea. As such, that contract felt too aggressive to project, but something between Kelly’s deal and that contract seems plausible. Last offseason, swingman Jesse Chavez signed for that same two-year, $8MM we projected, so it doesn’t seem outlandish to suggest a comparable amount for Lindblom.

 

Lindblom has also drawn interest from teams in Japan and could quite likely receive a nice offer to return to the Bears in 2020, so he’ll have choices at his disposal this winter. Regardless of where he lands this time around, he’s a source of greater intrigue than he was the last time he was quietly available for any team to sign.

[SRB]

Lord help me for all the Brewers fans on Twitter whose analytic mindset is "What, a guy that I haven't heard of? Let me explain to you why this is therefore a bad deal"

[liveforoctober]

Meh. Teams that make moves like this generally are looking for

a 5th starter type. We need a 2 3 4 now.

 

You hit the nail on the head. The Brewers in regards to pitching sign guys that would normally be back end of rotation guys and make them amongst their top starters. NOT a sustainable strategy.

 

In the entire HISTORY of the Milwaukee Brewers organization... please tell me one time that we've signed a free agent TOR guy. Never? Never! So why is it going to happen now that we have the most value minded GM we've ever had?

[MrTPlush]

Okay, now let’s go get a reliable starter to fill out the rotation.