Brewers: Wrapping Up The 2020 Non-Tender Deadline

The 2020 Non-Tender Deadline has come and gone. Let’s wrap up what the Brewers did at the deadline.

In the wake of the non-tender deadline, a lot of Brewers fans may be feeling confused and still aren’t really sure what’s going on and what happened.

Let’s break down and wrap up all the decisions made by the Brewers front office.

Tendered Contracts

Josh Hader, Brandon Woodruff

This means the Brewers have committed to going through the arbitration process with both Josh Hader and Brandon Woodruff. They have not yet agreed on a dollar amount, but the Brewers tendered a contract to them. The salary amount will be figured out later.

Both sides have to file for their desired salary in mid-January and would then have a hearing in early February. However, both players can agree to a deal and settle on a certain dollar amount at any time between now and the hearing.

Signed Deals

Orlando Arcia, Omar Narvaez, Manny Pina, Daniel Vogelbach

These four players have agreed to contracts with the Brewers and have their salaries set in place already. Orlando Arcia signed for $2MM, Omar Narvaez for $2.5MM, Manny Pina for $1.6MM, and Daniel Vogelbach for $1.4MM.

All of these players took a pay cut from their 2020 pre-pandemic salaries, with the exception of Vogelbach who was a first time arbitration eligible. They also took less money than they were projected to get in arbitration.

Why would they do that? Essentially, if they didn’t take the pay cuts the Brewers would non-tender them and put them on a very volatile and tough free agent market right now. The non-tender dangling in front of their faces encouraged them to agree to a slightly lesser deal to ensure they have a job come next year.

That kind of threat wouldn’t work on Hader or Woodruff since they’re too good of players and all four of these guys could’ve been replaced.

Non-Tendered

Ben Gamel, Alex Claudio, Jace Peterson

These players were all non-tendered and immediately become free agents. Ben Gamel was in the 4th outfielder role and with the emergence of Tyrone Taylor and Billy McKinney, they can fill the role for league minimum while Gamel would’ve cost near $2MM.

Alex Claudio is coming off another year with a 4.00+ERA and still hasn’t produced like the Brewers thought he would when they traded a competitive balance draft pick for him a few years ago.

Jace Peterson was also far down on the depth chart and his super-utility role will be filled by Mark Mathias most likely.

Traded

Corey Knebel

This is the move that most fans may be puzzled about. After reports that the Brewers were non-tendering Corey Knebel, all of a sudden the Brewers announced they traded Knebel to the Dodgers for a player to be named later or cash.

What it boils down to is this: The Brewers were all set to non-tender Knebel and lose him for absolutely nothing in return when the Dodgers called and offered something in return so they didn’t have to fight everyone else to sign Knebel in free agency.

The salary for Knebel would’ve been too high for the Brewers to take into next year so he wasn’t coming back anyways. If you’re David Stearns, you might as well get something for him if you can.

Knebel is too valuable to lose for nothing, so this way Stearns didn’t have to lose him for nothing.

The Brewers 40 man roster currently sits at 36.