Milwaukee Brewers: Should Matt Albers be guaranteed a bullpen spot?

Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell has stated that relief pitcher Matt Albers is guaranteed a spot in the bullpen to start the season. Given his 2018 performance, is this the best approach?

Before the Milwaukee Brewers Spring Training opener against the Chicago Cubs, when speaking with the media, manager Craig Counsell mentioned that relief pitcher Matt Albers already has a “set job” within the bullpen.

It was the last offseason when the Milwaukee Brewers signed Albers to a two-year deal, worth $5 million after a fantastic season with the Washington Nationals. Once again, it looked like another home run signing by GM David Stearns.

Albers struggles

During his 2017 campaign with Washington, Albers had appeared in 61.0 innings, recorded a 1.62 ERA, a 0.852 WHIP and held his opponents to a .520 OPS. While expecting a slight regression in 2018 should have been expected, nobody imagined that his year would end as poorly as it did.

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However, most will forget that during the first few months of the 2018 season, Albers was off to another hot start. Through May 28th, he pitched in 25.0 innings, posted a 1.08 ERA and his opponents had just a .524 OPS.

Unfortunately, once the calendar flipped over to June things went downhill quite quickly. Due to a shoulder injury, Albers wouldn’t pitch again until July 29th and shortly after that, he was back on the DL with a hamstring injury.

Over this span, the few outings that Albers was able to pitch in went horrendously. From June 1st, he would pitch in only 9.1 innings the rest of the season and allowed 25 earned runs and his opponents posted a whopping 1.646 OPS. Even during his minor league rehab assignments, Albers would struggle to put together a clean inning of work.

Should he be guaranteed a bullpen spot?

The Milwaukee Brewers have one of if the not the best bullpen in all of baseball that is led by three former All-Stars and is highly competitive. But when it comes to Albers their hands are tied. It is not as if he has any more minor league options available at this point in his career and trading him is highly unlikely.

Really none of us are in a position to question Craig Counsell on baseball decisions and when it comes to Albers, the same holds true. As noted above they don’t exactly have many options with him but he still has upside potential along with not much risk.

Hopefully, we can attribute a large portion of his issues in 2018 to injuries and now that he is healthy he will be closer to form. While it may not be likely that he pitches as he did in 2017 and early 2018 if he can get close he will be one heck of an addition to an already stout bullpen.

With that said, if he picks up where he left off last year, he will be gone after the 2019 season and the Milwaukee Brewers are only out $2.5 million.

With limited options and Milwaukee finding themselves in a low risk, high reward situation with Albers, giving him the opportunity to prove himself at the beginning of the season does make sense even though initially that doesn’t seem like the best decision.