Milwaukee Brewers: 3 starting pitcher free agent targets
By Kenny Jilek
Jake Odorizzi
Jake Odorizzi may be the most realistic, best, and most poetic possibility for a Brewers starting pitcher acquisition this offseason. After an All-Star season in 2019, he took a bet on himself with the Twins $17.8 million qualifying offer that kept him in Minnesota for one year. Unfortunately for him, and possibly very fortunately for the Brewers, he lost that bet pretty badly.
He had an abysmal ERA of 6.59 and only made four starts totaling 13 2/3 innings because of a blister. Before this season, he was set up for a big payday, but with how he looked in 2020, his value might’ve tanked enough for him to be a possibility.
Similar to Walker, he has an ERA of 3.92 for his career, and before 2020 he never really had a bad year. His worst was in 2018 when his ERA was 4.49, and while he did allow more baserunners than usual, there may have been some bad luck to make it that bad because his fielding independent pitching (FIP) was 4.19. When looking at 2020, it was really home run woes that got him as he gave up four of them in his short time. His walks per nine were the best of his career at 2.0, as was his strikeout to walk ratio. He’s still a very capable pitcher, and he’ll likely bounce back next season.
At this point, if you’re not familiar with all of the Milwaukee Brewers’ draft history, you might still be wondering why I said it would be the most poetic acquisition for the Crew. This is because he was a first-round pick of the Brewers in 2008 and was part of the trade to acquire Zack Greinke in 2010. Two of the other guys shipped out in that trade, Jeremy Jeffress and Lorenzo Cain, have already found their way back to Milwaukee eventually, and if Odorizzi came back, that would only leave Alcides Escobar as the last one to not come back, and he’s currently playing in Japan.
You never really know what the market for a guy like Odorizzi will be. On one hand, he’s coming off a terrible season, and even his All-Star season wasn’t really even ace material. On the other hand, teams with deep pockets are always willing to outbid and overpay for a former All-Star who’s going to be 31 when next season starts, and Odorizzi probably won’t be an exception. Zack Wheeler has similar career stats, and he got $118 million from the Phillies, but hopefully, recency bias from other teams seeing Odorizzi’s 2020 season will keep them at bay.