The Brewers are nearing an extension with catcher Jonathan Lucroy, Ken Rosenthal and Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports report (Twitter link). The deal with the Sports One Athlete Management client would be either four or five years long. An announcement is expected today, Morosi tweets.
Lucroy is about to start his third season in the Major Leagues. A four-year extension would cover the 25-year-old's final pre-arbitration season and three of his arbitration seasons, assuming the deal starts this year and that Lucroy obtains super two status following the 2012 season. A five-year deal that kicks in immediately would cover his final pre-arbitration season and all four of his arbitration seasons.
Lucroy posted a .265/.313/.391 line in 468 plate appearances last year, preventing 28% of stolen base attempts against him. However, the 2007 third round selection frames and blocks pitches well, according to The Fielding Bible Volume III.
Recent extensions have generally placed the value of a starting catcher's first three arbitration years in the $7-10MM range, as MLBTR's Extension Tracker shows. A four-year deal for Lucroy would figure to fall on the low end of that range given his relative inexperience.
This post was first published on March 26th, 2012.
Interesting priorities in Brew City.
I assume you are referring to signing of Lucroy rather than Greinke or Marcum?
It’s simple. Lucroy is a decent young catcher. They have no obvious heir at that position. At best, their one catching prospect, Maldanado, projects as a backup.
On the other hand they drafted 2 college starting pitchers in the top 15 of last years draft. They have 2 starters at AAA knocking on the door and the staff ace, Gallardo is already locked up.
They’ve invested in starting pitching in the draft. They haven’t at catcher.
I don’t care how much you’ve invested. Finding another Jonathan Lucroy is much easier than finding another Zack Greinke.
I think they’ll eventually get Greinke locked up. He seems to really like it there. I think Marcum will walk, though.
I think the Brewers would like to keep Greinke too, but it takes two parties to make a deal. If Greinke wants to position himself to test the open market, or is looking for C.J. Wilson money, there’s not much Milwaukee can do to keep him.
I’m not a Brewers fan, but I’d be ok letting Marcum and Greinke walk instead of signing a long term contract. They are both really good when they’re on, but they both scare me. Gallardo on the other hand I’d want to keep no matter what.
Lucroy doesn’t strike me at the type of ballplayer to really merit a multi-year, cost saving/certainty commitment, seeing as how they already have him under team control for the next five years, his offensive skills are middling, and defensive skills have typically been undervalued (until Yadi’s deal, I suppose).
But maybe the Brewers know something I don’t and he’s primed for a breakout year. (Insert cheap shot at Ryan Braun here)
They’ll get more value on a five year deal with Lucroy than the Cards are going to get paying Molina $14mil per.
ummmm, I would hope so. Lucroy is signing an extension with one year of service time that doesn’t cover a single free agent year. Molina’s extension was signed with 7 years service time covering 5 free agent seasons.
That’s like saying Matt Moore’s contract is going to be better than CC Sabathia
I was responding to the poster above who said that Lucroy doesn’t merit an extension… I was also obviously referencing the fact that Molina is not worth what he’ll be getting paid. Sabathia is.
Having a starting position player locked up for 5 years at 10 million is a steal. Lucroy came up a year early due to injuries making him a super 2. He had to learn an entire pitching staff on the fly in the middle of a season instead of having the time to work with these guys during spring training, on top of that he had a broken finger last spring training that slowed the development even more.
He was always known as an offensive catcher in the minors so to say he is middling is off-base. He had a .798 ops in AA in his second full year in the minors and the next year he only played 31 games before being called up, if anything his defense has improved a ton and now that he knows the staff his offense could/should take off. I am not saying he is going to be a stud but a good second tier cost controlled catcher is exactly what the Brewers neeed and what they do before they lock up the big contracts. They are wooing Greinke and lock up the pieces around him so they know how much they can pay and he knows those pieces are here to stay . That is what Melvin does.
I’m all for keeping Lucroy around, if only to watch his masterful suicide squeeze bunts…everything else is just gravy. Can’t wait to see the money involved here.