Brewers sign Matt Garza to four-year, $52 million deal

Now that Masahiro Tanaka is off the market the other starting pitching dominoes can begin falling and Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com reports that the Brewers have agreed to a four-year, $52 million contract with right-hander Matt Garza.

That’s quite a bit less than most projections pegged Garza for at the beginning of the offseason and basically the same as the four-year, $49 million deal Ricky Nolasco got from the Twins.

Garza, who was traded from the Cubs to the Rangers in July and won’t require forfeiting a draft pick to sign, threw 155 total innings with a 3.82 ERA and 136/42 K/BB ratio last season. He’s struggled to stay healthy in recent years, but has generally been a solid No. 2 starter and is still only 30 years old.

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Here’s a rumor from yesterday afternoon that sort of fell through the cracks, but it’s fun enough to think about for a few moments: Ken Rosenthal reports that the Dodgers and Reds have had “multiple” trade discussions involving Yasiel Puig.

Puig is a potential trade candidate, either (a) because he’s “disgruntled,” according to Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times last week; or (b) because the Dodgers want to clear salary and roster spots in order to sign a big-name player, according to Rosenthal here. Many people suspect that the Dodgers are going to make a run at Bryce Harper, for example, and if that’s the case they’d no doubt want to open up right field for him.

It seems questionable that any Reds-Dodgers talks would get a ton of traction, especially given that Rosenthal reports that there’s a possibility of the Dodgers taking on Reds pitcher Homer Bailey and the $28 million he’s still owed in order to get some talent back from the Reds in a trade. That would seem to defeat the purpose of unloading Puig’s salary, but this is the sort of things we all talk about now given that the league has, more or less, a defacto salary cap imposed by the Competitive Balance Tax.

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