The Brewers Biggest Arbitration Decisions

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Photo Credit: Scott Paulus/Brewers

The Brewers will be forced to reveal some of their plans behind the plate this week as they make a decision regarding veteran catcher Erik Kratz.

After something of a lull over the Thanksgiving holiday, expect a busy week on the transaction front for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Friday is another significant day on Major League Baseball’s offseason calendar, a required decision point for teams with arbitration-eligible players. By the end of the day teams are required to either “tender” a contract offer to a player, the first step towards the arbitration process, or “non-tender” the player and allow them to become a free agent. The Brewers have 14 players eligible for arbitration this winter, tied for the most in all of baseball. That’s down from 16 eligible candidates a few weeks ago: The Brewers opted not to retain injured catcher Stephen Vogt and exercised a club option on reliever Jeremy Jeffress to lighten their potential caseload a bit.

Nonetheless, the Brewers have a lot of decisions to make this week and keeping all fourteen players would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $41 million, according to estimates at MLB Trade Rumors. Here are some of the more interesting decisions:

Jonathan Schoop

Schoop is likely to be the Brewers’ most challenging decision this week, at least in part because past performances put him in line for a big payday. Schoop had a career year in 2017 with the Orioles as he hit 32 home runs, made an All-Star team and received MVP votes for the first time in his career. That big season earned him a big raise in arbitration, from $3.475 million in 2017 to $8.5 million in 2018.

His performance took a significant step back in 2018, but because of the way the process works his arbitration-determined salary almost certainly wouldn’t reflect that. He’s projected to receive over $10 million in 2019 if the Brewers opt to retain him. The Brewers may be reluctant to give up on Schoop given his youth (he just turned 27) and the ability he showed in 2017, but that year is starting to look like an outlier among his career numbers.

Junior Guerra

It took him 12 professional seasons, but Junior Guerra is finally in line for a big payday. He’s eligible for arbitration for the first time as a “Super 2” player, someone who ranks in the top 22% in service time among players with more than two but less than three full seasons of MLB tenure. If he sticks around in the majors through the 2022 season he’ll be eligible for arbitration four times instead of the typical three. He’s projected to earn $2.7 million via the arbitration process in 2019.

Guerra, however, will be 34 years old in January and appears increasingly redundant on a Brewers roster with lots of candidates for the 2019 rotation. Even if the Brewers opt not to add to their pitching staff this winter, Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, Jimmy Nelson, Jhoulys Chacin, Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and Brandon Woodruff might all have an inside track on Guerra for a spot on the Opening Day roster. Guerra is less than two years removed from serving as the Brewers’ Opening Day starter in 2017 but he’s not guaranteed anything at this point given the organization’s depth.

Erik Kratz

The Brewers will be forced to reveal some of their plans behind the plate this week as they make a decision regarding a veteran catcher who became an unlikely hero of their stretch run: Kratz set new career highs for playing time and hits in 2018 and started seven of the Brewers’ 10 postseason games behind the plate.

Kratz appears positioned to try to stay in the majors for another season in 2019, but time is not on his side: He was the oldest catcher to appear in 50 MLB games in 2018 by two and a half years and will turn 39 during the upcoming year. He’s certainly had a positive impact and been a great story during his time in Milwaukee, but guaranteeing him $1.7 million could be a challenging bet.

For Schoop, Guerra, Kratz and any other player on the tender/non-tender fence, the Brewers do have another option: They could consider a “take it or leave it” offer to any of the above players, with the understanding that they may opt to non-tender the player if they’re not willing to accept a lower-than-projected salary. This strategy helped the team save some money last year with Jeremy Jeffress, who accepted an incentive-laden one-year deal with a pair of club options instead of testing the free agent waters. The Brewers recently exercised the first of those club options to keep Jeffress around for 2019 at a significantly lower rate than he was projected to get via arbitration.

At any rate, this week the Brewers will have some interesting decisions to make that should shed some light on their plans for the winter and the 2019 season.