Greinke talks about Brewers` contract extension offer

With an offer of more than $100 million for the next five years, Milwaukee Brewers are expressing their willingness to keep right-hander Zack Greinke, who confirmed this report on Friday.

Early in the year, Matt Cain received a contract extension offer of $112.5 million from the San Francisco Giants, and sources believe that the Brewers presented Greinke with the same offer. Greinke spooked on this subject at Great American Ball Park, where the Brewers played against Cincinnati:

“I can say Heyman (of CBS Sports.com) is pretty accurate with what he’s saying, but nothing else.”

The Brewers decided to make this offer last week, but Grainke did not make any clear statement yet on whether he will accept to offer or not.

“We’ll see how it works out. That’s about it. I can’t say anything about that. I just gave you that one thing. I figured that was as good as I could do,” added Greinke.

With the free-agent market slowly approaching, Brewers` general manager Doug Melvin is hoping to keep Greinke, even though he did not confirm nor deny the offer:

“I’m not going to say one way or another (if an offer was made). It just complicates things to talk about that. There’s talk about Cole Hamels signing in Philadelphia. If he does, he will be one of the few young players to get this close (to free agency) and do so. Zack falls in that category, too. Once young players get this close to free agency, they usually test the market. It only happens a few times (that they don’t).”

In 2012, Greinke managed to back up his accomplishments from his previous season, which consists of 16 games, with a 3.83 ERA, 1.20 WHIP and 201 strikeouts in just over 171.2 innings. This is the second season with the Brewers for the 28-years-old.

Many people consider Greinke Brewers` best starting pitcher this season, after he managed a 3.57 ERA with 117 strikeouts in 116 innings. The right-hander also managed to improve his batting average against, which is now at .261 and his WHIP, (1.25).