Photo credit: Scott Paulus/Milwaukee Brewers
Welcome back to the On Deck Circle, our weekly look at what lies ahead for the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers have their first off day of the Cactus League season on Tuesday and their first night game of the spring on Thursday, but in between those two days they have a home game against the White Sox on Wednesday that I’d like to highlight.
Most Brewers fans probably aren’t using words like “highlight” to describe Matt Garza’s scheduled starts anymore, but his situation is one of the more interesting storylines of the spring at this point. As I mentioned last week, Garza probably needs a good spring to prove his disappointing 2015 season is behind him. To date, his results aren’t showing much improvement: He’s walked five batters and allowed a pair of home runs in 4 2/3 innings over two appearances.
Garza actually told Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he was pleased overall with his most recent outing on Friday, but “got too quiet” in the top of the second when he walked the first two batters before allowing a home run to Joey Gallo.
Spring training results are easy to blow out of proportion, and it’s worth noting that Garza has had some good seasons previously despite having bad spring training numbers. In 2011, for example, he posted a 10.38 earned run average over seven Cactus League appearances with the Cubs and went on to have his best MLB season, pitching 198 innings with a career-low 3.32 ERA.
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With that said, Garza didn’t have anything to prove in 2011, and he probably does now. He’s only a few months removed from being bumped from the rotation last September, a move that significantly dampened his opportunity to earn an extra $13 million in 2018. This season, writers like Ryan Romano of BP Milwaukee have already identified him as the weak link in a Brewers starting rotation that has prospects like Zach Davies and Adrian Houser among those waiting for an opportunity.
Aging, ill-performing and highly paid starting pitchers aren’t a new thing for Brewers fans, of course: This is an organization that has had to manage the decline of Jeff Suppan, Randy Wolf and Kyle Lohse in recent years. This is the first time, however, it’s happened to David Stearns and Craig Counsell, and if Garza doesn’t improve it will be telling to see how the new management team handles him.
Under Doug Melvin, the Brewers seemed very wary of cutting ties with underperforming veterans with big contracts. Jeff Suppan is perhaps the most glaring example: In 2009 he posted a 5.29 ERA and allowed opposing batters to hit .309 with a .387 OBP and .512 slugging percentage over the course of a full season, and was still invited back for a 2010 campaign where he was even worse before being released in June.
There’s no guarantee that Stearns and/or Counsell will be this patient with Garza. Neither were in their current role when his four-year, $50 million contract was signed, making it all the easier for both of them to write the deal off as a sunk cost if necessary. Furthermore, Garza almost certainly will not still be around when this team’s window to win might open again, and continuing to allow him to pitch every fifth day might limit the organization’s ability to evaluate a pitcher who will.
Of course, it’s not too late for Garza to turn things around. If he shows signs of promise yet this spring and performs at even an adequate level during the season, this entire point will be moot. If he doesn’t, though, then he may give us another opportunity to learn something new about David Stearns’ management style.
