Keeping Prince Fielder: Brewers Should Learn from Indians' Strategy

The Milwaukee Brewers have been a bad team for a long time; since the start of the ’90s. 

Selling the team to someone other than Selig has helped, but it might not be enough. 

Milwaukee has a legitimate chance to contend for the NL Central title this year and for many years to come. The reason for this is its great young, talented position players. 

The team is loaded with Ryan Braun, J.J. Hardy, Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart, and Prince Fielder. These players have come through their system and developed into a nice core group of players. The Brewers have other quality players too; in fact they have picked up some high-priced free agents in the last two years. 

Milwaukee has a problem bringing in big-name free agents for fair market value.  Because of this, Milwaukee has vastly overpaid for free agents because it has no choice. 

The problem is these contracts never pan out. Eric Gagne came in for $10 million despite pitching horribly for Boston at the end of last season. Another high-priced free agent was Jeff Suppan, who came over from St. Louis signing a four-year, $42 million contract to be their third starter. 

These two players won’t get the Brewers over the hump—and instead might keep them from signing their better, homegrown talent. 

This spring, Prince Fielder has made it clear he is not happy with his modest $670,000 contract. We can debate if anyone making six figures has a right to complain, but we cannot debate that Prince is upset. 

Prince is one of the premier players in the National League. His talent is difficult to come by and will cost some team millions of dollars to acquire. Just don’t expect that team to be Milwaukee. 

Everyone wants players to give a hometown discount, but this discount is available if the team is willing to ask for it early and pay players earlier in their career.

One man who has done this over the past few years has been Cleveland Indians General Manager, Mark Shapiro. The Indians, like the Brewers, have a lot of young talent that was acquired through trade or brought up through their farm system. These young players include Grady Sizemore, Jhonny Peralta, Victor Martinez, C.C. Sabathia, Travis Hafner, Fausto Carmona, and Ryan Garko. 

The Indians quickly realized after losing players during their boom in the ’90s that they needed to keep their own talent. They did so by taking some risks and giving out contracts before players were free agents. The players took less money than they would have made on the open market for some security early on in their career.

Case in point: Sizemore is signed through 2012, Peralta signed through 2011, Hafner through 2012, and Martinez is signed through 2010.

They haven’t resigned everyone to monster deals, but they were able to keep C.C. Sabathia for many years below market value. He might leave after the ’08 season, but he is considering a hometown discount because he was treated well early on. 

The Indians have had some problems with this system. Cliff Lee was a starting pitcher who showed a lot of promise. He still might make it, but after a few good years he found his way back to the minors last year. This came after signing a three-year, $14 million contract extension.

The main point here is that Prince Fielder is clearly the Brewers’ best player and will be an MVP caliber player for the next decade.  

The Brewers have already set a precedent by overpaying for mediocre talent. Will they fork out the right amount for their own talent?  Probably not. They will hope for that hometown discount. 

From their actions this spring I would look for a Prince to turn down any future hometown discount. They already discounted his salary this year, so don’t expect him to voluntarily offer a discount. 

Especially with Scott Boras as his agent.