Deciding to go back to the market that netted them with slugging first baseman Eric Thames, the Milwaukee Brewers and starting pitcher Josh Lindblom have agreed to a three-year deal, according to Jon Morosi of MLB.com.
The three-year pact, which guarantees Lindblom $9.125 million, can balloon all the way up to $18 million in value, which would be a great payday for the former MLB hurler who took his talents overseas to the Korean Baseball League, where he played for both the Doosan Bears and the Lotte Giants over the course of the past five seasons.
Having won the KBO’s Cy Young-equivalent award in both 2018 and 2019, the former member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Oakland Athletics, Texas Rangers, and Pittsburgh Pirates won the league’s Most Valuable Player award this past season.
Striking while the iron is hot, Lindblom is heading back to the United States to see if his second stint as a professional baseball player can pay off, and this type of investment for the Brewers represents a calculated investment made by the team’s President of Baseball Operations, David Stearns.
The 32-year-old was originally a second-round selection made by the Dodgers back in 2008, having pitched in 114 career games in the MLB, with six of those being starts. As much as the move of acquiring Thames has worked out for this team, Lindblom has similar expectations for his 2020 season and beyond, especially with how he will be joining a team that has seen a sizable chunk of its 2019 payroll disappear, opening up a potential for many new moves to be made moving forward.
Having had conflicting reports of financial figures being thrown around the news wires this past week, the Brewers have had a bit of a tumultuous offseason, having lost starting catcher Yasmani Grandal, third baseman Mike Moustakas, and converted reliever Drew Pomeranz, all of whom signed four-year deals for big amounts of money.
Lindblom represents a really solid investment opportunity for Stearns and another arm for manager Craig Counsell to use to start games, although starting pitchers do not tend to go long into games under Counsell’s reign. With Brandon Woodruff looking to be this team’s ace in the rotation for 2020, they need to fill in the remainder of the rotation around him, and Lindblom represents a low-cost back-end option that could easily overplay his contract and his potential.
Having five pitches at high disposal, relying heavily on his cutter and his fastball for over 65 percent of his pitches thrown, his velocity matches up with regular MLB levels (around 93 MPH), which should translate fairly well back into the MLB style of baseball.
With lower expectations for this team, the Brewers have made a few shrewd moves this offseason that have the makings of Stearns draped all over them. With Lindblom representing yet another buy-low, high-potential personnel move, the Brewers are hoping that the team will have a lot to cheer about in 2020, and not just because of their slick and newly-branded uniforms that will be taking the league by storm moving forward.
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