The Brewers' option situations after the season:
- Jeff Suppan has a $12.75MM club option with a $2MM buyout. This is a lock to be declined.
- Trevor Hoffman has a $7MM mutual option with a $500K buyout, though both numbers increase based on games finished. This might be a rare case where both sides exercise a mutual option.
- David Riske has a $4.75MM club option with a $250K buyout. He's still recovering from Tommy John surgery; this will be declined.
- Doug Davis has a $6.5MM mutual option with a $1MM buyout.
- Gregg Zaun faces a $2.25MM club option with a $250K buyout; this could be exercised.
Eligible for free agency: Dave Bush, Craig Counsell, Jody Gerut, Claudio Vargas, and Jim Edmonds. That's about $10MM more freed up, plus Bill Hall's $7.15MM and a couple of buyouts will be off the books. Increases to players under contract total $7MM. That's not bad, considering Ryan Braun and Yovani Gallardo will enter what would've been their first arbitration years.
Manny Parra and Joe Inglett project to be eligible for arbitration for the first time. Carlos Gomez and Carlos Villanueva are second-year guys. The big names are third-year arbitration players: Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart, and Todd Coffey. Hart stands a good chance of being non-tendered, while Fielder could approach $20MM if he's not signed long-term.
“This is a lock to be declined.” – you can say that again.
Prince will basically absorb Suppan’s salary. We have a lot of dead weight coming off of the books, which I hope will enable us to lock of Fielder long term. We could also use a solid right handed #2 guy, but I don’t know who that might be or if we could afford him. And what will we do about right field?
we should just be honest the brewers arnt going to resign prince fielder, joe mauer signed 189 million dollar contract and prince will bring more than that, the yankees redsox and angles, dodgers will all be going after him and he will probably approach 225 million in his contract the brewers couldnt do that over 10 years.
Teixera only got $180 from the Yankees…There is no way Prince gets anywhere near $225…
are you trying to say that fielder is better than mauer?
phht.
Mauer signed a below market deal, so I don’t think you can compare, although I agree that he won’t approach 225MM, especially with the other 1B’s that could potentially be on the FA market, something like 6 or 7 years at around 18MM per year.
I still wonder if Suppan makes it through the whole year.
He’s clearly done as a MLB starter, the only reason he’s still around is the $14.5M. If he stumbles out of the gate and pitches like he has the past two years, I don’t see how they don’t give the final rotation spot to Manny Parra or Chris Narveson.
Hart should’ve been non-tendered last offseason.
I would be quite surprised if the Brewers don’t just cut suppan or attempt a trade.
2011…
Prince Fielder is already signed through next year. They signed him last year through next year.
I’m pretty sure he only signed a 2 year deal, Prince will still be under team control but will not be under a fixed contract after this season, I hope the Brewers sign him long term, they are one of the teams I like in the NL.