This may just be feel-good lip service, but both Francisco Cordero and Doug Melvin are talking about keeping the closer in Milwaukee.
There are a decent number of free agents with closing experience. But if you take Mariano Rivera and Jason Isringhausen off the board, Cordero’s the best available. As pitchers often do, Cordero’s improved his control and strikeout rate coming over to the NL.
In a market where setup men are priced at three years and $5-6MM annually, Cordero figures to cost $10MM over four years at the least. It’d probably make sense for Cordero to wait and see what Rivera and Isringhausen get in terms of average annual value. Cordero’s agent Bean Stringfellow got Billy Wagner his four-year, $43MM contract in November of ’05.
