Brewers: Ranking The 5 Worst Contracts In Franchise History

Worst contract in Brewers history #4: Eric Gagne – One Year, $10MM

The Brewers might’ve set a record for shortest amount of time before regret sunk in on a free agent contract. The Eric Gagne deal was a disaster from the beginning and a complete waste of 10 million dollars.

On December 10th, 2007, the Brewers signed Gagne to a one year, $10MM contract. On December 13th, 2007, three days later, Gagne was implicated in the Mitchell Report as a steroid user.

So things got off to a rocky start right away, but he wasn’t suspended since PED rules were just being put in place at that time, which made Gagne still available for Opening Day, much to the detriment of the Milwaukee Brewers.

On Opening Day, the Brewers were able to snag a 3-0 lead over the Chicago Cubs in the top of the 9th inning. Gagne came on in the bottom of the 9th to close out the win. Instead, he gave up a single, then a walk, and then a 3-run, game-tying homer to Kosuke Fukudome. Luckily he didn’t give up a walkoff, but it forced the game to go to extra innings where the Brewers were able to win.

Still, it set the tone for the rest of the season for Gagne, who never had his ERA below 4.70 at any single point in the 2008 season. He finished just 16 games and got just 10 saves. That’s $1 million paid for every save he got, a high price to pay.

Gagne finished the 2008 season with a 5.44 ERA in 50 games, giving up an astonishing 11 home runs in 46.1 IP. He never pitched in the big leagues again after that trainwreck of a season with Milwaukee.

The only thing keeping Gagne from being higher on this list is the fact that it was just a one year contract and the Brewers weren’t saddled with him for multiple seasons.

Worst contract in Brewers history #3: Jeffrey Hammonds – 3 years, $22.2M

The Coors Effect.

Jeffrey Hammonds had been a solid player with Baltimore and Cincinnati in the 1990s, and started to show a little more power in 1997 and 1999. Then, he was traded to the Colorado Rockies ahead of the 2000 season by the Reds for Dante Bichette.

Hammonds went on to hit .335/.395/.529 with 24 doubles, 20 homers, and 106 RBIs with the Colorado Rockies in 122 games.

Playing at Coors Field bumped his stats, but the question was: Was his improvement legitimate? The Brewers believed it was. They signed him to a three year, $22.2MM contract that offseason, the largest free agent contract the Brewers had ever given out at that time, by far.

As it turns out, his breakout was not legitimate and instead simply a function of playing half his games at Coors Field.

Over the course of his three year Brewers career, Hammonds played more than 50 games in a season just once. He hit just .248 with 16 total home runs with Milwaukee. Hammonds was injured a lot and was nowhere near the hitter he was with Colorado.

Prior to the Brewers signing him, Hammonds had never played in more than 123 games in a season. He routinely dealt with injuries in his career and his All-Star season in 2000 was just the third time he played in more than 100 games in his eight-year career to that point.

The Brewers should’ve had a bit more foresight to see that Hammonds was going to regress, but instead they decided to give him $22.2MM to be a major disappointment on teams that were going nowhere fast.

They thought they were signing an All-Star to help open their brand new stadium, Miller Park. It was the big splash to help with the excitement for the new era of Brewers baseball. Instead, Hammonds showed that General Manager Dean Taylor and manager Davey Lopes weren’t the right guys to lead this team going forward.

Worst contract in Brewers history #2: Matt Garza – 4 years, $50MM

Matt Garza had quite the career. He had some decent years in Tampa and in Chicago with the Cubs, but he was never great or an ace-level pitcher. Yet that didn’t stop the Brewers from paying him like one.

The Brewers were trying to line up a rebound season in 2014 and get back into the postseason, and they needed more pitching to get there. So owner Mark Attanasio went all out and got one of the top starting pitchers on the market in Matt Garza. Garza was a highly sought after commodity at the trade deadline the summer before and was still sought after entering his age-30 season.

At the time, Garza signed the largest free agent contract in Brewers franchise history at four years and $50 million.

It did not age well.

Garza had a decent enough first season in Milwaukee, finishing with a 3.64 ERA in 27 starts as the Brewers tumbled down the stretch that year, but we don’t need to talk about that.

Then the rebuild started in 2015 and Garza’s contract became an albatross. They were stuck paying him for three more seasons at $12.5MM per year and Garza’s performance made him impossible to move. In 2015, Garza pitched to a 5.63 ERA and things did not get much better. He was removed from the rotation in September, was shut down for the season, and famously did not take it well.

In 2016, Garza missed the first two and a half months of the season with a shoulder strain. When he returned, he posted a 4.51 ERA in 19 starts.

Then came 2017, as Garza’s performance was still mediocre but the Brewers as a team were turning the corner. They were surprisingly in first place for a chunk of the season and remained in the playoff race until the final game of the year. However, that was because some of the young guns on the pitching staff were taking over.

Guys like Zach Davies, Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, Brent Suter, and Brandon Woodruff were taking over the rotation and the Brewers simply didn’t want Garza in the rotation anymore. So they tried to move him to the bullpen after a rough month of August.

After a poor start against the Reds on September 5th, where he gave up five runs in 2.2 IP, the Brewers removed Garza from the rotation. He made a few appearances out of the bullpen but finished the year with a 4.94 ERA.

That was the end of Garza’s big league career.

The contract was an albatross from start to finish, and was completely immovable at a time where the Brewers were plenty willing to unload veterans for prospects, but Garza performed so horribly, they weren’t able to move him through the rebuild.

Worst contract in Brewers history #1: Jeff Suppan – 4 years, $42MM

Even just seeing the name Jeff Suppan puts a bad taste in Brewers fans mouths to this day. Any mention that he was with the Brewers or that they signed him to the contract they did makes fans react like they just got sprayed in the face by a skunk.

This is, without a doubt, the worst contract in Brewers history.

Jeff Suppan had 12 professional seasons under his belt when the Brewers signed him on Christmas Eve, 2006. Suppan had posted just one sub-4.00 ERA in those 12 seasons. The newspaper headlines talked about the signing as a Christmas present under the Brewers tree. It turns out, it was just a lump of coal.

Suppan had a really good postseason in 2006, where he helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series. In the NLCS, he made two starts, went 15 IP and gave up just one run. In the World Series, he made one start, going six innings and allowing three runs. The performance was good enough to convince the Brewers that they should give him $42MM over four years.

Keep in mind, Suppan had a career 4.60 ERA in over 300 starts in his career to this point. That’s not a small sample size. Yet, the Brewers decided to sign him to the largest free agent contract in franchise history at that point.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Suppan continued to post poor numbers. They couldn’t even blame injuries, Suppan was healthy as a clam, he just stunk. He put up a 4.62 ERA in 2007, making all 34 starts.

In 2008, the Brewers broke their playoff drought, no thanks to Suppan who had a 4.96 ERA that season. Milwaukee lost four of his five starts in September that year. Suppan gave up six runs in 3.2 IP in the second game of a doubleheader against Philadelphia on September 14th.

That was Ned Yost‘s last game as Brewers manager. He was fired the next morning because of the team’s recent downward spiral. If Suppan doesn’t stink it up in that game, or any of his several leading up to it, perhaps Yost never gets fired. If Yost never gets fired, Ken Macha never gets hired. Macha couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag and the Brewers stunk for two years with a great core in place because of it, while Yost got hired by Kansas City and won a World Series with them.

The Brewers still had two more years with Suppan under contract, and he struggled once more in 2009, posting a 5.29 ERA in 30 starts. 2010 was the final season of the Suppan Era in Milwaukee. They finally moved him out of the rotation, and then released him mid-season after he pitched to a 7.84 ERA in 15 appearances, eating the final $10MM on that contract, paying him to not pitch for them. He then signed back with the Cardinals, and actually pitched well in 13 starts down the stretch for them.

Suppan was by far the worst contract in Brewers history. It was a stupid signing to begin with, he was always a mediocre pitcher and they paid him like he was a No. 1 starter.

You could make the argument Suppan’s struggles led to Ned Yost’s firing, which was another one of the biggest mistakes in franchise history not only because they let go of a good manager who was a Brewers alumni and not at fault for the team’s struggles, but because it led to the hiring of Ken Macha.

Granted, Yost did make the “Soup pitched great” quote after he gave up 4 runs in five innings, but still, he was a far better manager than Macha and firing him was wrong. Did Yost feel he had to say things like that because of the investment the front office put in Suppan? Anyways, I digress.

It will be extremely difficult for any contract to ever top the horribleness of the Suppan deal, and for the Brewers sake, let’s hope no contract ever does.

Some honorable mentions include: David Riske‘s three year, $12.25MM deal and Franklin Stubbs’ three year, $6MM contract.