Lohse pitching well

it’s ridiculously early but kyle lohse has been great. he throws strikes and he works fast. yes he makes funny faces while pitching and most brewer fans figure his performance is going to tank any moment but for right ‘now’ doug melvin has to feel good.

Brewers To Sign Kyle Lohse

The long wait is over: the Brewers will sign Kyle Lohse, tweets [wait for it… - TDA] Jon Heyman of CBS Sports.   Lohse will receive a three-year, $33MM contract, tweets Bob Nightengale of USA Today, and ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick notes a possible $1MM in performance bonuses… Lohse is represented by [wait for it… - TDA] the Boras Corporation.  The Brewers will forfeit the 17th overall pick and the accompanying slot money in the June draft, while the Cardinals will gain the 28th overall pick.

Lohse, 34, seemed en route to a large contract after posting a 2.86 ERA, 6.1 K/9, 1.6 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9, and 40.5% groundball rate in 211 regular season innings for the Cardinals in 2012, and pitching well the year prior.  Turning down the Cardinals’ one-year, $13.3MM qualifying offer seemed the right call in November for a player I considered the 10th best free agent available.  However, partially because of the draft pick compensation issue, Lohse languished on the market nearly until Opening Day.  Agent Scott Boras, whose contract demands were the other major factor in Lohse’s wait, told ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick in January, “It doesn’t really matter what time dinner is when you’re the steak.”  Lohse had been throwing simulated games in Arizona, but it’s unclear when he’ll be Major League-ready.

Steak #1 = Jeff Suppan, Steak #2 = Randy Wolf…

The long wait is over: the Brewers will sign Kyle Lohse, tweets [wait for it… - TDA] Jon Heyman of CBS Sports.   Lohse will receive a three-year, $33MM contract, tweets Bob Nightengale of USA Today, and ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick notes a possible $1MM in performance bonuses… Lohse is represented by [wait for it… - TDA] the Boras Corporation.  The Brewers will forfeit the 17th overall pick and the accompanying slot money in the June draft, while the Cardinals will gain the 28th overall pick.

Lohse, 34, seemed en route to a large contract after posting a 2.86 ERA, 6.1 K/9, 1.6 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9, and 40.5% groundball rate in 211 regular season innings for the Cardinals in 2012, and pitching well the year prior.  Turning down the Cardinals’ one-year, $13.3MM qualifying offer seemed the right call in November for a player I considered the 10th best free agent available.  However, partially because of the draft pick compensation issue, Lohse languished on the market nearly until Opening Day.  Agent Scott Boras, whose contract demands were the other major factor in Lohse’s wait, told ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick in January, “It doesn’t really matter what time dinner is when you’re the steak.”  Lohse had been throwing simulated games in Arizona, but it’s unclear when he’ll be Major League-ready.

Passan: Scott Boras’ title of ‘Mr. January’ faces stiff challenge from MLB’s new rules on free agency

Mr. January is a nickname bestowed on Boras by owners flabbergasted by his propensity to snag large free-agent deals after New Year’s Day. Boras, long the sport’s villain, is the protagonist in this tussle, because baseball’s new rules governing the draft have destroyed the free-agent market for Adam LaRoche, Kyle Lohse, Michael Bourn and Rafael Soriano – the latter three of whom are Boras clients…

The new draft format included fixed bonus pools for teams based on the previous year’s record; the worst teams would get the most money. A separate rule transformed compensation for free agents who left. Teams would have to offer a player a one-year deal worth the average of the highest-paid 125 players in the major leagues the previous season – about $13.3 million this year. If another team chose to sign one of those players, it would forfeit its first-round draft choice and the bonus-pool money that came with it – unless it was a top 10 pick, in which case it would lose its second-rounder and the accompanying bonus value…

The pool system limits flexibility and creativity, leaving teams even more reticent to plunge into an already-inflated free-agent market when it’s tied to the draft.

“We’d love any of them if we didn’t have to give up our pick and pool money,” one GM said this week, and others have echoed his sentiment, frustrated that two disparate entities commingle in such fashion. Players are even angrier, and agents say they’ve had trouble explaining how stars in the future could be hindered by a rule that MLB promises it did not implement to create a false market…

When Zack Greinke and Anibal Sanchez got get-out-of-jail-free cards because they were traded midseason – only players who spend the whole season with one team are subject to compensation rules – and the interest in Edwin Jackson dwarfs that of Lohse, the system is broken. There’s a chance Mr. January weasels out of it like he has so many other problems. There’s also a chance some of the best players out there have to pull a Ryan Madson and take a one-year deal, and we saw how well that worked out.

Four players flap in the middle of this hurricane, which seems to spin with no end. Per usual, MLB and Scott Boras, the provoked and the provocateur, are in its ugly eye.