Shaun Marcum signs one-year deal with Chicago Cubs – MLB News
The Milwaukee Brewers have reportedly signed pitcher Shaun Marcum to a one-year contract. The deal comes at a time when the Brewers’ right-handed pitcher and the club were about to enter in arbitration hearings.
This was an arbitration case that had seen delay for the reasons quite obvious. With the deal that has been struck now, the club is formally out of any race to get the free-agent pitcher Roy Oswalt, who could be a source of strength to the club’s defence.
The deal comes at a time when the names of Matt Garza, Anibal Sanchez and others remain in the list of arbitration eligible players. Thus the deal involving Marcum comes an auspicious time both for the club and player as a whole.
"These guys were sort of linked together, and we had to see how the day was going to play out," said Werner, the Brewers' arbitration guru. "I had a lot of good conversations with Rex to lay the groundwork for getting a deal done today. In a perfect world,
sure, we would have gotten this done weeks ago to save us the aggravation of getting a case together. But it was a pretty smooth negotiation."
Marcum was decent with his pitching last season, serving the team to the best of ability on the pitching mound. However, the pitches he hurled remained effective in the regular season. As soon as the postseason started, Marcum seemed to have lost the magical
touch he had exhibited in the first half of the season.
The 30-year-old player had 13 wins to his credit. With a 3.54 ERA, he had 33 starts, as the starter had over 200 innings to pitch. But, as mentioned earlier, it was in the postseason games where he failed to deliver.
Nonetheless, the Milwaukee Brewers has pinned many hopes on this player; thanks largely to his brilliant skills as far as his pitching prowess is concerned. It is to be seen how he attains the goals that the Brewers have set for winning as part of their
strategy for the upcoming 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
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