The Brew Haus - Gagne Signed, Trade in Works?
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by Corey Kempf
Though the deal has not been made official yet, reports out of both Milwaukee and Madison have the Milwaukee Brewers nearing terms on a one-year, $10 million contract with free agent reliever Eric Gagne.
Gagne, most recently of the Boston Red Sox, will add even more depth to a bullpen that is now about to burst at the seams with the amount of arms that have been added. He will also provide the team with another option in the closer spot, a role that was expected to be given to Derrick Turnbow.
Gagne is a former Cy Young Award winner who shattered the consecutive saves record, closing out 84 straight games for the Los Angeles Dodgers, though injuries and Tommy John surgery have limited his success in recent years.
The Brewers of recent years have become famous for these reclamation projects, signing free agents coming off bad years or plucking potentially good players from Rule 5 drafts and turning them into All-Stars, especially when it comes to the closer spot.
In 2003, Dan Kolb stole the closer job from Mike DeJean, converting 21 saves that season before breaking the franchise record for saves the next season with 39. In 2004, Turnbow, claimed off waivers from the Angels came out of nowhere to tie the record. Chris Capuano, a mostly unknown addition in the Richie Sexson trade of 2003, wins 18 games for the Brewers in 2005.
The Brewers are going to need to work their magic again to turn around a pitching staff full of players coming off relatively bad years, including Gagne and Turnbow. New additions Guillermo Mota and Salomon Torres also struggled in 2007, as well as much of the Brewers' starting rotation.
What the Gagne acquisition doesn't answer is what are they going to do with all this pitching?
With Gagne, the Brewers have 22 pitchers on their 40-man roster, including 17 who, based on a holdover from last year or by offseason acquisition, are candidates to fill spots on the 25-man roster. Here is the list:
- Greg Aquino
- Dave Bush
- Chris Capuano
- Eric Gagne
- Yovani Gallardo
- Seth McClung
- Guillermo Mota
- Manny Parra
- David Riske
- Ben Sheets
- Brian Shouse
- Jeff Suppan
- Salomon Torres
- Derrick Turnbow
- Claudio Vargas
- Carlos Villanueva
- Matt Wise
The Brewers, of course, will only keep about 11 or 12 of these guys on their 25-man roster, so that begs the question, "What are they to do with the rest of them?"
The only answer is to trade them. Most of these guys will not and cannot be sent to the minor leagues. I can guarantee you that, on Opening Day, these men will be in the bullpen: Gagne, Mota, Riske, Shouse, Torres, and Turnbow. The other five or six slots will consist of a starting five and a possible long reliever.
The starting rotation is where problems occur. Right now, the team has eight legitimate contenders in Bush, Capuano, Gallardo, Parra, Sheets, Suppan, Vargas, and Villanueva. Bush, Capuano, and Vargas are all eligible for arbitration and have all been the center of some fairly fierce trade talk thus far. Capuano was supposedly headed to St. Louis for Scott Rolen before the deal fizzled.
Nonetheless, the possibility of a blockbuster trade involving at least one of these players is almost imminent at this point. A trade will not likely happen until free agents start signing and the market becomes thinner for solid pitching. It will be at that point, when teams start getting desperate, we will see a big trade involving the Brewers, I believe.
- Corey Kempf covers the Milwaukee Brewers beat for ArmchairGM. His other Brew Haus entries can be found here.
