Astros To Bring Back Brocail
By
KC2HMZ
Posted at 8:40 am
The Houston Astros and 40-year old righthanded relief pitcher Doug Brocail have agreed to a one year, $2.5 million deal with a club option for 2009, according to numerous media sources.
Brocail played for the Astros in 1995 and 1996, appearing in 59 games and making 11 starts. He went 7-9 with one save and a 4.35 ERA. He spent last season with the Padres, making 67 relief appearances and going 5-1 with a 3.05 ERA.
Brocail has also pitched for the Rangers and Tigers during his 13-year major league career, compiling a career 44-43 record, with 7 saves and a 3.99 ERA. With San Diego last year, Brocail held opposing hitters to a .228 average, with left-handed hitters batting just .182 off him, fifth among right-handed pitchers in the NL.His 67 games and 76-2/3 IP pitched were his highest totals in both categories since 1999 with Detroit. Over the last two seasons with the Padres, Brocail went 7-3 with a 3.51 ERA.
With the additions of Brocail, Geoff Geary, and Oscar Villarreal, the Astros have now picked up three relievers who pitched in a combined 175 games last season.
This is nice pick up for us. I don’t know how much Brocail has in his arm, but he will give the bullpen some leadership that we lost last year with us losing Russ Springer.
The problem is we still don’t have a closer.
Trading Wheeler at the deadline last year looks like an even smarter move now too, doesn’t it? He wasn’t about to make anyone forget Dave Smith, Billy Wagner, or Joe Sambito, but now the Astros have been outbid on Cordero and Linebrink and were last reported talking to Troy Percival (but he’s headed to Tampa now), Jeremy Affeldt (just non-tendered by the Rockies with several teams rumored to be interested), and David Riske (reportedly near a deal with the Brewers this past week).
The fact Percival and Riske were mentioned illustrates that Wren (1) is not too keen on Qualls as the closer and (2) is in danger of getting painful slivers under his fingernails from scraping the bottom of the barrel in such an undignified manner.
Then again, the Brewers’ bullpen is in such a shambles now that Melvin is in the same boat with Wren (a boat that is, of course, scraping the bottom). Meanwhile, the Cubs will apparently move Dempster into the rotation and experiment with Kerry Wood as closer, and the Pirates have a converted middle reliever in Matt Capps serving as their closer. That leaves the Reds and Cardinals as the only NLC teams with a proven closer, and they both have issues with their starting rotations.
But, yeah, they finally corrected Purpura’s mistake in letting Springer go. That was one of Tim’s absolute worst decisions. But at least the Astros got the satisfaction of watching the Cardinals overpay to re-sign Springer last month.