I am going to say that so far this hasn’t been the best offseason for the Milwaukee Brewers. They are going to most likely lose Prince Fielder, Francisco Rodriguez accepted arbitration yesterday, which means the Brewers might have to pay a setup man $13 million, and now they have signed SS Alex Gonzalez away from the Atlanta Braves, who isn’t much of an improvement over what they had.

The Brewers needed to replace Yuniesky Betancourt, who in terms of WAR (0.5 WAR), was the least valuable shortstop in baseball last season. But guess what? Gonzalez, the guy who replacing Betancourt in Milwaukee, was the second least valuable SS in baseball in 2011 (1.1 WAR).

Offensively, their numbers are scarily similar. Take a look…

The difference between Gonzalez and Betancourt is that Gonzalez is a better fielder. GM Bob Melvin really wanted to improve his defense this offseason, but at the time, Gonzalez really slipped last year defensively. Melvin is hoping that his -0.3 UZR was just an aberration and not the sign of a guy who is going to be 35-years-old in two months.

The Brewers might have improved slightly with this signing, but not enough for the a Brewer fan to be exciting about this signing.

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By The Baseball Index