Yovani Gallardo Returning as Brewers Exercise Option

Throughout the season we waffled on whether the Milwaukee Brewers were going to exercise their team option on Yovani Gallardo for 2015, and today that question was answered.

According to Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors, the Brewers have picked up Gallardo’s 2015 option for $13 million rather than letting Yo become a free agent.

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2015 will be Gallardo’s 9

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season with the Brewers. Through his first eight years he set the Brewers all-time record for strikeouts.

2014 was hard to figure for Gallardo. His strikeouts continued their downward slide form 9 per nine innings in 2012, to 7.17 in 2013 to 6.83 per nine in 2014. Generally when a high strike out pitcher starts to strike out fewer batters, their ERA, FIP and xFIP all start going the wrong direction.

But that wasn’t so for Gallardo, who also cut his walk rate from 3.57 in 2012 to 2.53 in 2014. He also saw a career high in ground-ball rate, at 50.8%.

$13 million for 2015 will be the richest season in Gallardo’s career thus far, but it isn’t only a small raise over his $11,250,000 salary in 2014. In 2015, $13 million for a 29-year-old veteran of eight seasons with a career ERA+ of 109 is probably a little on the cheap end on a one year deal. So the cost certainty is certainly attractive for Milwaukee.

Some fans speculated late in the season that the Brewers would exercise Gallardo’s option just to trade him before the deadline. I’m not saying that the Brewers won’t trade Gallardo at the deadline of 2015 goes belly-up, but I highly doubt that was Doug Mevlin’s motivation in making this deal.

That will lock Gallardo in place with Wily Peralta, Kyle Lohse, and Matt Garza as the four guaranteed slots in the Brewers rotation and leave Jimmy Nelson and Kyle Lohse to duke it out for the final spot.

The Brewers still have to decide on their options on Rickie Weeks and Aramis Ramirez. We’ll detail Ramirez option on Friday, and we’ll discuss Gallardo’s season in full in the next few days.