Brewers trade Yovani Gallardo to Rangers, per report

With most of Wisconsin watching the Packers take on the Seahawks in the NFC Championship game, the Brewers may have decided to liven up their off-season big-time.

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Brewers are 'on the verge' of trading their long-time top starter, though there is no word yet on what the potential return will be.

Gallardo was drafted by the Brewers in the 2nd round of the 2004 draft and has played all eight of his major league seasons with the team. He could have become a free agent this off-season, but Milwaukee chose to exercise an option on him that will see him paid $13 million in 2015. Now, it appears the Rangers will be paying that sum.

The addition of Gallardo will serve to solidify the bottom of the Rangers' rotation, though how it helps the Brewers remains to be seen. Best guess would assume that there is at least some strong bullpen help coming back to Milwaukee, though anything other than that is up in the air. This also indicates that both Jimmy Nelson and Mike Fiers will be in the rotation to start 2015, with Taylor Jungmann -- for now -- the assumed sixth starter.

Though Gallardo has never become a true ace as was hoped, he's been a top-line starter for the Brewers nearly every year of his career. He has a career 3.69 ERA and only once has seen that number exceed 4.00. His strikeouts have been down in recent years, but he's learned to pitch well despite that.

Welcome (back) to the off-season, Brewers.