Ex-Minnesota Twins Pitcher Matt Garza Signs with the Milwaukee Brewers

Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

You partake in one of two forms of gratification: instant or delayed. I am an instant gratification, so I will take this chance to say that I told you so. I told you that the Tanaka signing would trigger the dominoes of the other starting pitching and just that happened when ex-Minnesota Twins starter Matt Garza signed a 4-year, $52 million dollar deal.

If that seems low, the consensus is that it is quite low. The deal is only four million dollars less than the deal gave to Ricky Nolasco earlier this offseason.

(Editor’s Note: I see that Parker Hageman wrote about these similarities over at Twins Daily. You can read his piece here.)

Garza didn’t leave Minnesota with the highest regards, but the Twins sure did lose that trade. Garza sure turned out to be a lot better than Delmon Young and Jason Bartlett wins the battle over Brendan Harris, too.

The realization for Twins fans is that the Twins probably weren’t going to bring in Garza after brining in Nolasco, Phil Hughes and Mike Pelfrey with some larger money. Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN tweeted this out today:

"Garza-Brewers talking 4-years, $52M deal, per @Ken_Rosenthal. Same story on #MNTwins: won’t do 4-years. Probably would’ve done 2-years."

Garza is a better pitcher than Nolasco and definitely a steal with this deal, but to boil it down to the basics: Garza had to settle or at least settled after the dust cleared. Garza had to be asking for a lot more money earlier in the offseason or else the Twins would have signed him instead of Nolasco or Hughes. There had been reports throughout the offseason that the Twins were in contact with Garza, so we have to believe that this is the case.

Would it have been nice for the Twins to get Garza? Yes. It’s still been a very productive offseason for a franchise that usually doesn’t take a lot of shots in the offseason.