Oh to be a young and talented baseball player these days....

It was announced earlier today that the Milwaukee Brewers have signed left fielder Ryan Braun to an 8-year $45 million contract extension that's going to keep Ryan in a Brewers uniform until 2015 (which will go down in history as the year Prince Fielder ate Milwaukee). As you'd expect, both sides are happy about this.

"It's a very good contract for both the ballclub and Ryan," general manager Doug Melvin said at a press conference at Miller Park.

I'll say. It's also a record-setting contract for the ballclub and Ryan. The eight-year $45 million deal is the largest contract ever given to a player with less than three years of Major League experience. The previous record was set this winter when the Rockies gave Troy Tulowitzki $31 million over six years, and blows away Evan Longoria's $17.5 million deal signed with Tampa Bay earlier this season.

Braun finished second to Tulo in the NL Rookie of the Year voting last season, finishing up the year with a .324 average and 34 homers. He's currently hitting .285/.316/.545 with 9 home runs and 29 RBI. Of course, unlike Tulo this season, Braun is still healthy and playing everyday. I'm sure the Brewers hope that continues.

It's also pretty clear that the new trend of teams signing their young players to long extensions to avoid arbitration is going to continue for a while as well.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Chicago Cubs (24-16) vs. San Diego Padres (15-26) - 2:20PM Est.

There are thirteen games on the schedule today in baseball, and nine of them are going to be played under the sun, the way the baseball gods intended it to be. So I figure I may as well feature the team that plays more day games than anybody else in baseball, the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs offense has been mashing the ball all season long, and now Alfonso Soriano has finally joined in on the fun, as he's homered in three straight games (leading off the last two). Soriano is hitting .487 on the current 10-game homestand for the Cubs, a homestand that Chicago is off to a 5-1 start on.

Today will also mark the debut of Jim Edmonds in a Cubs uniform, as what most Cubs fans would surely consider a sign of the apocalypse becomes reality today. Why the Cubs would need Edmonds, I don't know, but they got him.

I'm always wary how to approach these "successful surgery" stories. I mean, it's great that Yovani Gallardo's knee surgery went well, but it doesn't mean he's coming back any faster. On the good news spectrum, it's like losing your house in a hurricane, then finding $100 lying on the street. It's always sweet to find $100, but that money isn't bringing your house back. Anyways, here's what the Brewers had to say about the surgery:

"[Dr. Raasch] said it was very, very straightforward," Brewers assistant general manager Gord Ash said. "It went very well."

[...]

Ash would not offer a timetable for Gallardo's return from the second surgery.

"He rehabbed well from the first one," Ash said. "This one is more extensive, obviously. We'll see how it goes. ... What will dictate how quickly he comes back is how he re-learns to use the knee."

The first surgery being referenced is the scope that Gallardo had done during spring training for a torn ligament in his other knee. And Ash sounds really hopeful there, but don't let that fool you. Gallardo's out for the season barring some kind of miracle rehab. Miracles are nice, but counting on them is just bad business.

I've always been one for letting my employer decide when I'm no longer capable of doing my job, but Eric Gagne and Jason Isringhausen apparently feel differently, being "honest" enough to let their managers know they're no longer worthy of the closer role. (Update: Gagne can apparently close again!) Either way, not a lot of confidence. What they did is rare in the sense of being voluntary, but it certainly underlies the basic fantasy notion that saves are easy to come by.

In Milwaukee, if you're looking for saves, you actually love Gagne flip-flopping; Ned Yost will probably go back to the well with him, and you'll have an easier time going after the guy who will probably end up getting the saves. Salomon Torres, Guillermo Mota and David Riske are the official closer by committee. (The reality is they shouldn't have let Francisco Cordero walk, but that's neither here nor there at this point). I've been saying that Riske is my guy since early in the season, but in fairness, he hasn't pitched perfectly. Then again, neither has Torres, so I'm sticking by my guns here and saying Riske ends up with the most saves in the Milwaukee pen this year (unless Yost does something cr-r-r-r-azy and puts Carlos Villanueva in the spot).

The Cardinals end of things appears to be a little more cut and dry, in the sense that Ryan Franklin is the new go-to guy from the bullpen in St. Louis. Russ Springer and Randy Flores are apparently in the mix as well to a degree, but when you look at Springer's walk count -- five! -- since Izzy went down, it's hard to imagine Tony La Russa trusts him. Plus, Franklin is actually locking down the ninth. And the guy you want to grab for your fantasy league.

If you haven't been paying attention, let's get a brief timeline of the Eric Gagne saga down. Between March 31st and May 4th this year, Gagne blew five saves in 14 chances for the Brewers. Despite cries from Brewers fans and all corners of the interwebs, Ned Yost refused to remove his Canadian closer from the role. On May 10th, Gagne asked Ned Yost to remove him from the ninth inning spot. Yost announced the move yesterday. Tonight? Gagne's ready to close again! From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Brewers blog:

"I had my mental break (Sunday)," said Gagne. "I'm good to go now.

"I know I'm a great closer. I know I'm going to work out of it. It's just a confidence thing. The only way you'll be all right is keep going out there in a closing situation."

Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!

I have no idea what Ned Yost is planning on doing with this new development, but he'd be crazy to put Gagne back in the closer's spot. The other options in their pen aren't great, but Gagne's been an unmitigated disaster since the trade deadline last year and the Brewers have plenty of problems without having to worry about him.

When Yovani Gallardo tore his ACL early this month, the Brewers decided to explore all of their options before ending the budding ace's season with surgery. Unfortunately for both the Brewers and Gallardo, surgery now appears to be the only option. Accordingly, Gallardo will go under the knife early tomorrow morning.

While this isn't a surprising announcement, it still has to be disappointing for the sliding Brewers. Without Gallardo, their rotation is composed to Ben Sheets and a cast of supporting characters that are much better suited for the bottom of the rotation rather than taking the #2 slot on a team that's competing for the playoffs. It's early to say that the Brewers are screwed without Gallardo, but things just don't look good,

Right now, Jeff Suppan is the club's best starter other than Sheets. He's got a 4.63 ERA, a 1.56 WHIP, and only 21 strikeouts in 46 and 2/3 innings. There's some hope that Manny Parra will step up and help fill the void, but he hasn't even made it through 33 innings in seven starts. I want to say that he's getting stronger as he adjusts to the big leagues, but that's just not true. Incredibly, things get even bleaker when we move past those two and into Carlos Villanueva/Dave Bush territory. Honestly, even with all the good players the Brewers have, it's hard for me to think of a more devastating injury for them than this one.

What a terrible time to be a relief pitcher. We're only a month and a half into the season and already people are being pulled out of position for poor performance, scolded for showing emotion, and blamed for managerial jobs being put on the line. The worst examples of this have been St. Louis's Jason Isringhausen and Milwaukee's Eric Gagné.

In today's Dugout, we discuss the many reasons how and why St. Louis's Jason Isringhausen and Milwaukee's Eric Gagné are the worst examples. Oh boy, are they a couple of bad examples.

(Oh yeah, and if you don't get Izzy's screen name, say his last name out loud slowly.)

More, after the jump.

I think there's something really ironic about the balance necessary to put a stack of five cups on top of the head of the passed out fan in this video. In order to empty all the cups, there has to have been a significant amount of liquid consumption; not to mention the whole idea of balancing something, much less five things, on the head of this "sleeping" fan.



The crowd's ability to play the 12th man, though, is what obviously spurred this trick on. Hello, Wisconsin!

H/T: Busted Coverage

Our NL Central man-about-town, Pat Lackey, has long voiced every baseball fan's collective wonder: Just how in the name of everything holy is Eric Gagne still closing baseball games? It's been clear for over a year that the man is not the Eric Gagne of old, but Brewers manager Ned Yost seems to be the only one not paying attention. Four or five blown saves later, and Yost still won't take the man out of the ninth inning spot.

So guess what? Eric Gagne did it himself:

"I don't sit here and make decisions five minutes after a tough loss," Yost said after watching Gagne saddle the Brewers with a defeat that never should have happened.

Minutes later, Gagne took his manager completely off the hook with a pronouncement that was evident to anybody who has watched his work of late. "I don't deserve that ninth inning right now. It's very simple," said Gagne, who surrendered two ninth-inning runs that allowed St. Louis to pull out a 5-3 victory at Miller Park. "It's embarrassing."

Ah, embarassing indeed, but who should be more embarassed? Gagne, whose tools are just clearly not there anymore? Or Yost, whose tools are supposed to involve proper decision-making and talent management? Who's done a worse job?

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

St. Louis Cardinals (23-15) at Milwaukee Brewers (17-19) - 2:05 PM ET

Milwaukee, already known for its consumption of beer and brats, has been the Tums capital of America this weekend. First, Jason Isringhausen blew a save on Friday after having the Brewers at two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning ... which led to Jason being demoted from the closers role. Then the very next day, there was Eric Gagne blowing yet another save, which was Gagne's ... oh I've lost count this season, how many blown saves is that? Gotta be between 50 and 80 (actually, he only blew a tie game in the ninth, but Gagne did get the loss). And that led Gagne to muse that maybe he should go the same path as Isringhausen. So can anybody here close today's game? Hey, at least extra innings will be fun.