According to MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy, Ryan Braun‘s agent had preliminary contract extension talks with Brewers assistant GM Gord Ash recently. Troy Tulowitzki‘s recent deal may serve as a framework.
Tulo received $31MM over six years with a seventh year option. For their cases to be comparable in terms of service time, Braun will have to qualify as a Super Two player. I spoke to ESPN’s Keith Law on the topic. He said:
Right now, given his service time and where the cutoff for super-twos has been for the last ~ten years, I don’t believe he’ll have enough service time after 2009 to qualify as a super-two. That has to be a $5 million savings for Milwaukee, easily, if Braun does anything like what he did last year.