I know that I'm posting quite a bit on the bullpen lately, but that has been the major issue with the Brewers so far and so that's what there is to talk about. Many of the moves that General Manager Doug Melvin made shore up the bullpen in the off-season have had success, albeit of varying degrees. Salomon Torres has been very good and both Guillermo Mota and David Riske have been mostly successful with a few rough outings that inflate their numbers a bit. The Eric Gagne signing has, however, been a fairly unmitigated disaster to this point. There has been a lot of talk and analysis of the fact that the Brewers let Fransisco Cordero take the larger offer from the Reds, but not as much talk about the other options the Brewers had besides those two. 

The other veteran closer on the market last winter who had fallen on harder times recently was Troy Percival. At the time he signed with the Rays, there was talk that he was down to Milwaukee and Tampa Bay in his decision making process. Percival is doing in very well in Tampa Bay. So far in 16 innings this year, Percival has a 2.25 ERA, a .563 WHIP, a 15/2 K/BB ratio. Sure, two of his seven hits allowed were round trippers, but he's saved 10 of 12 opportunities and worked 12 totally clean innings in 16 tries. Compare that to Gagne who in 18 2/3 innings has a 6.27 ERA, a 1.875 WHIP, a 18/14 K/BB ratio. He's converted 9 of 14 save opportunities and has only 6 clean innings worked in that whole time.

What's worse is that Percival signed a 2 year contract for 8 million dollars with a possible 4 million in incentives. Sure, the fact that Gagne is only signed for a year is great, but it's for more than the 8 million that has to be paid to Percival. If he winds up pitching well for the Rays this year, they will get him at a relative discount for next year and still pay only a little more for two years than the Brewers paid Gagne to struggle this year.

It may be that Percival just wanted to go to Tampa Bay and the Brewers were a second option that he never seriously considered. Still, at this point it looks like Melvin should have rolled out the red carpet and made an offer that Percival couldn't refuse to try to lure him to Milwaukee. Assuming they still would have signed Riske and made the trades for Torres and Mota, it's hard to argue that they wouldn't have a signifigantly better bullpen this year with Percival than with Gagne.