Brewers hoping to hit it big with Tomlin
PHOENIX - Last spring, the Milwaukee Brewers took a flier on left-hander Wade Miley and were ultimately rewarded for it.
They can only hope that things turn out the same this season with their addition of veteran right-hander Josh Tomlin.
The 34-year-old agreed to a minorleague deal just prior to the start of camp that will reportedly pay him a $1.25 million base salary and includes $2.25 million worth of incentives if he makes the major-league roster.
Tomlin, with 144 career starts to his credit, will compete for a spot in the Brewers’ rotation with the bullpen as a fallback option.
“He’s got a lot of starting experience in the big leagues. He’s had success in the big leagues,” manager Craig Counsell said. “He had a rough 2018 where he just couldn’t get on track.
“He did a lot of work in this offseason evaluating that, and I think that’s important. He has very clear ideas of what he wants to try to do to kind of amend that. Now, he just goes out and he does it.”
Miley used some honest self-assessment in remaking himself in the 2017 offseason and it paid off for him and the Brewers after the two sides agreed on a free-agent deal at the outset of spring training.
He twice missed large chunks time with groin and oblique strains, but otherwise was one of the team’s steadiest performers in 16 starts.
Tomlin is coming off a 2018 season that saw him go 2-5 with a 6.14 earned run average with the Cleveland Indians. He was removed from the rotation after six starts, suffered a hamstring injury and finished the season in the bullpen.
He also allowed 25 home runs in just 701⁄3 innings, so time will tell if Tomlin can rebound as well as Miley did.
“Wade delivered pretty darn good results, so we’ll see,” said Counsell. “But it is similar.
“The player has made this decision to change, and how he’s going to do it. Now our job is to provide some more cues along that path.”
It’s a completely fresh start for Tomlin, who spent 13-year professional career with the Indians. A native of Tyler, Texas, he went 61-53 with a 4.77 ERA in 183 total appearances.
His best season came in 2016, when he went 13-9 with 4.40 ERA in 174 innings.
“It’s a little bit different coming here and not knowing anybody as the new guy,” Tomlin said. “I told my wife I had butterflies coming here and that anxiousness of getting going.
“On paper, this is a really good team and that’s what I really wanted to be a part of ultimately. You saw what they did last year and we have a chance to do it again this year.
“Seeing that and having an opportunity to be a part of that was a no-brainer for me.”
Albers looks for turnaround
For the first two months of the 2018 season, Matt Albers was one of the most effective relievers in the major leagues. Over 21 games, covering 25 innings, he allowed only three runs, good for a 0.72 ERA, while logging 21 strikeouts.
Albers then suffered a shoulder strain and was never the same. With a hamstring injury later thrown into the mix, he pitched only 91⁄3 innings over the remainder of the season, getting pounded for 28 hits and 25 runs (24.12 ERA). Not surprising, the veteran righty was excluded from postseason play.
Albers, 36, who signed a two-year, $5 million deal before last season, certainly does not want that to be his final memory with the Brewers. Accordingly, he is highly motivated this spring to show he still has some gas left in the tank.
“I’m a competitor. Obviously, I was not excited about the results,” Albers said.
Though the shoulder and hamstring issues were major factors in his collapse, Albers thought he still had enough to get hitters out. His main problem was not finishing off hitters after getting ahead in the count.
The good news is the Brewers prospered even in Albers’ absence, thanks to a deep bullpen that got even deeper with later acquisitions. The possible bad news for him is that there are more big arms in camp than ever vying for bullpen jobs, so he knows he’ll have to be on top of his game.
“I’ve had a lot of spring trainings where I wasn’t sure I was going to make the team,” he said. “I’m feeling good right now. But, obviously, I have to go out there and prove it.”