Thursday, Jan. 8

The Brewers inked Trevor Hoffman to a one-year deal worth $6 million plus incentives today, making for the very first news out of Brewers land since before Christmas. It certainly is refreshing to see Doug Melvin doing something, because Brewerland has been eagerly anticipating the arrival of that one starter that will set the rotation for the year or the guys who are going to replace Salomon Torres or Eric Gagne in the bullpen.

Hoffman is distinguished among everyone across the baseball world, what with saving games for the last 15+ years for the Padres and doing an incredibly good job doing it. Including his injury-shortened year in 2003, Hoffman has only dipped below a 130ERA+ three times since 1994, and unlike the closer the Brewers brought in last year, has never been clouded with any steroids suspicion.

Hoffman relies mostly on his changeup, something which Melvin said makes Hoffman’s age a non-factor. After a quick analysis of his 2008 statistics, Hoffman had normal K:BB and K/9 ratios, which is good, but gave up an inordinate amount of home runs, many of which came in the deep, cavernous space that is Petco Park. Moving to a new, smaller park could easily inflate his home run totals, and I’d say everyone who reads this blog knows a certain person who came into Miller Park last year and decided to have a historically terrible time keeping the ball in the park. I’m going to be concerned with any one-run lead in the ninth with Hoffman out there, but I’ll reserve judgment until I see him pitch. 45 1/3 innings is an awfully small sample size for anyone, so we’ll see if he bounces back, but I’m not entirely convinced that he will.

The main problem that I have with the signing is that it cost the Brewers $6 million. For a pitcher who’s going to net an ERA around 4 or 4.5, that is the definition of overpaying for a player — Jorge Julio, a similar pitcher but slightly worse, came to Milwaukee for less than $1mm. In other words, I’m not the biggest fan of the signing, especially in a dying market such as this one, but I’ll eat my words when Hoffman saves 40 games next year and helps propel Milwaukee towards a playoff birth. At the very least it’ll sell some extra jerseys and put butts in the seats.

Despite the signing, however, I still like the job Doug Melvin has done insofar as manager. Both last year and this year, when there’s been a problem, hole, or insecurity somewhere on the team, he’s done his best to address it promptly. This year is no exception. Revert to last year, when the bullpen was in total disarray, he signed Salomon Torres, Eric Gagne, and David Riske to deals in an effort to build the pen up. Two of those three moves have (so far) worked out terribly, and Melvin still overpaid for both of them, but I still like the idea.

I’m too lazy to look up the post, but I’ve always agreed with the now-defunct Fire Joe Morgan on last year’s Gagne signing. Sure, they overpaid for Gagne, forking over $10 million bucks for a year of his “services.” However, the move was made with a purpose — I wasn’t entirely convinced that a small sample size in Boston was enough to make him a permanently broken pitcher, and despite him performing terribly, the Brewers are no longer on the hook for him. They took a calculated risk and it didn’t work out. If Gagne had it in him to put up Torres-like numbers last year, I think all of the fans wouldn’t consider it a terrible signing. It turned out that the CC/LaPorta trade could have worked out terribly too if CC wasn’t inhuman for the final few months of the year.

In other news, I just watched a terrificly ugly basketball game between the Gophers and Hawkeyes where the Gophers overcame an inept offense and a 13-point deficit in the first half to win the game by 3. Minnesota should have won by more, considering biggest Iowa man Cyrus Tate went down in the first half with a sprained ankle and the main guy covering two big men Ralph Sampson III and Colton Iverson wasn’t any bigger than 6′5”. For the majority of the second half, Tubby Smith recognized that Iowa was running mainly ball screens to create good matchups for his players, and thusly decided to create a small, athletic lineup that could defend ball screens simply by switching. For the first 15 minutes of the second half, while Tubby employed this defense, Iowa scored 7 points, allowing Minnesota to claw their way back. I’m telling you, I like this Smith character.