The Brewers agreed to a five-year, $30.1MM extension with pitcher Yovani Gallardo today. The deal buys out all three arbitration seasons and one free agent year, and has a $13MM club option on another. SI's Jon Heyman tweets that Gallardo can void the club option by obtaining points based on Cy Young voting, while MLB.com's Adam McCalvy gives no-trade clause details. The contract is a bit loaded toward the front, with the free agent year costing only $11.25MM. MLBTR named Gallardo as an extension candidate in January and predicted the contract amount once the agreement was reached this morning. Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel first reported the agreement, with the AP adding contract details.
Gallardo is an interesting case, as he had two years and 108 days of service time heading into the season but only 320 innings under his belt due to a torn ACL that caused him to miss most of '08. He would've been arbitration-eligible for the first time after this season. Coming into the season Gallardo had 22 wins, 325 strikeouts, and a 3.57 career ERA. McCalvy deduced that Jon Lester was the comparable used, as Gallardo's new deal mirrors that contract and exceeds it by $100K. Gallardo now appears to own the biggest contract signed by a pitcher with less than three years service time.
I hope we can lock him up for his 3 arbitration years. He is a solid pitcher.
Excellent news! Glad we can keep him until possibly 2015!
im going to guess, and this is just throwing a number out there, 4/29…buy out his 3 arb years and first FA year i think it would
Not that it is a big deal but Gallardo had 22 wins coming into the season not 21.
Good point, thanks
No problem.
Deal is for five years: one pre arb, three arb, one free agent. Includes club option for another FA year. Your guesses on the amount? I’ll say around $30 mil.
Damn that was a good call, Tim.
It’s a good thing that the Brewers were able to keep him. He is a player you could build around on a pitching staff.
Good deal. Lock down Fielder for 4-5 years and the team is set to compete year in and year out for the next little while.
great deal.
Sickels thinks he’s an early peaker who will head into a decline phase in his late 20’s.
Hard to say if he’s right, but I find it interesting when compared to his prospect hype – an advanced guy without the ceiling of some of the other guys in his rookie class.
Still, he’s been a heckuva lot more valuable that the Homer Bailey and Phil Hughes types he was ranked below when breaking in.
I don’t even think he’s peaked yet. As Macha said himself, he isn’t ready to take on the mantle of Ace yet (which was said last season, of course.)
He’s got the perfect combo of fastball-changeup. As long as the fastball stays 88+ and the separation of velocity remains proper, he’ll be just fine, imo.