The Brewers have announced a three-year contract extension for center fielder Carlos Gomez, who will get $7 million in 2014, $8 million in 2015, $9 million in 2016 and a chance to prove that last year’s breakthrough was no fluke.

“Personally, I feel really good about the steps that I’ve taken, and I appreciate the opportunity they give me again, and I trust in my ability,” Gomez said. “I’ve been past a lot of stuff in my career … and now this is going to be my fourth year here [plus] a three-year extension. I’m going to spend seven years of my career on this team, and I feel like I’m going to be a big part for the Brewers for seven years. I feel really excited to continue my progress, continue to work.

“Some people ask me if I’m happy. Yes, I’m happy, but I’m not going to be completely happy until I [finish] my job and I’m sure I deserve that money.”

General manager Doug Melvin, who has locked up many of the team’s young players in recent years, pushed the notion of stability.

The thing I like about this also is we have two young catchers, a young shortstop, [second baseman] Rickie [Weeks] is under 30 years of age, and now we have a young center fielder. Sometimes the toughest parts to fill on a ballclub are up the middle.”

All of those players — catchers Jonathan Lucroy and Martin Maldonado, shortstop Jean Segura, Weeks and Gomez are under club control through 2015, when the Brewers hold an option on Weeks.

“It’s a good building foundation for us,” Melvin said.

Of Gomez, Melvin said, “He’s come into his own. He’s always had good physical skills, and I think he’s good for this ballclub with Ron [Roenicke’s] aggressive managing style. Carlos has always played that game, so it’s a good fit for us.”

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An otherwise lousy afternoon for the Brewers did feature one highlight: Lance Roenicke, the 24-year-old son of the manager, singled sharply to center field in the eighth inning of a 12-3 loss to the Rangers.

“Pretty neat,” Ron Roenicke said. “And a pretty good at-bat. He saw live pitching for the first time yesterday in live [batting practice]. So it’s pretty good.”

Lance Roenicke batted again in the ninth inning and lined out to shortstop. An outfielder, he was the Brewers’ 25-round pick in the 2012 First-Year Player Draft and split last season between rookie Helena and Class A Wisconsin. Ron Roenicke was able to make the hour-long drive north to Appleton, Wis. for three of Lance’s games last summer and fall, when the Timber Rattlers won the Midwest League championship.

Lance just reported for the Brewers’ Minor League Spring Training last week. Instead of staying with dad, he’s living at the team hotel with the rest of the team’s farmhands.

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Brewers third baseman Aramis Ramirez is pain-free and hoped to remain so Monday, when he ran his sprained right knee through its toughest test yet.

“Today, I’m going to move around a little bit more,” Ramirez said. “Take grounders to the sides and run the bases, so I’ll have a little bit better idea today where I am.”

Ramirez,who was injured sliding into second base on March 2, took batting practice and fielded grounders on Sunday with no ill effects. He planned to add lateral movement to his field work on Monday, and the biggest test will come when he runs the bases. Ramirez was to do his work on a back field at Maryvale Baseball Park.

“Everything is going good,” Ramirez said. “I don’t feel any pain right now, so I’m going to do some more stuff today and see how it feels.”

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Corey Hart was not exactly sure Saturday morning about the next step in his rehab from knee surgery, but he was thrilled about one positive side effect from his encouraging MRI scan the day before: He can drive again.

“I hate depending on people,” Hart said, looking around the clubhouse. “A lot of these people in here found out where I live. Especially the guys in Scottsdale, I would say, ‘If you just take me, I live real close.’”

Not exactly. Hart lives in a community west of Phoenix — on the opposite side of town from Scottsdale.

“[Bobby] Crosby took me one day and I was like, ‘Dude, I just live on the other side of [U.S. Hwy.] 101,’” Hart said. “Then we cross the 101 and I say, ‘See those mountains way out there? I live on the base of those mountains.’ But guys were definitely helpful.”

Now, Hart will be free to help himself. Friday’s MRI confirmed that the defect on the joint surface of his knee has “filled in” since his Jan. 25 surgery. He no longer has to walk around on crutches, and will slowly graduate to new exercises intended to build strength and increase range of motion.

The Brewers’ original estimate had Hart sidelined until late May. Hart remains optimistic about beating that prediction.

“It was good news, but I still don’t know exactly what the game plan is yet,” Hart said. “It was good enough news that I don’t have to wear crutches anymore and I can start driving, but I still don’t know if there is a timetable or a plan. I just know I’m about to do more.”

“I think [an April return] is more a possibility now than it was,” said Hart. “I think they were — not surprised, but they weren’t sure what it was going to show. All of a sudden it showed it was good enough to where I can move forward. I know I’ll do more than I’ve been doing. I know I can do more, I just don’t know how much more. I can’t jump to doing full body weight stuff.”

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Brewers first baseman Corey Hart was cleared to begin intensifying his rehabilitation from right knee surgery after an MRI scan on Friday showed sufficient healing in the joint.

Manager Ron Roenicke said the club would continue to operate under the original four-month timetable for Hart’s return, a path that would put him back in the Brewers’ lineup in late May.

“If he heals faster, great,” Roenicke said.

Hart had surgery on Jan. 25 to repair torn cartilage and debride an imperfection in the knee joint, a process in which the surgeon induces bleeding to promote the bone to heal. Friday’s MRI scan was intended to examine whether the depression in Hart’s knee had filled in.

Even with this bit of good news, Hart is still some weeks away from baseball activity.

“They liked what they saw. Corey is off crutches and can drive again, so he’s a happy camper,” Roenicke said.

Roenicke also received a positive report Friday from the team’s other injured first baseman, Mat Gamel, who underwent successful surgery earlier in the day for a torn ACL. Gamelhad a similar procedure last May and missed the final five months of the season, and will miss all of 2013.

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Some morning notes from overcast Maryvale Baseball Park:

– Everyone seems to have an easy answer for the Brewers’ vacancy at first base. Move Logan Schafer there! Khris Davis!

Well, Alex Gonzalez has a response:

“It’s not easy,” he said.

Gonzalez is one of baseball’s great defenders, a career shortstop who is trying his hand at first base this spring while Hart works back from right knee surgery. At the moment, Gonzalez is far and away the Brewers’ most likely internal solution, perhaps in a right-left platoon with Taylor Green.

Gonzalez says the key to learning a new position is to relax and have fun. So, is he having fun?

“After as many years playing shortstop, going to first, it’s kind of…” he said, tailing off into a long pause.

He thought about it.

“I don’t know what I want to say,” he said. “It’s not real fun to play first for me. I’ve tried to make adjustments, be relaxed at first and let the thing happen.”

It makes sense for Gonzalez to accept the move, however hesitantly, because it is his best way into the lineup. The Brewers remain committed to 22-year-old Jean Segura at shortstop, the only position Gonzalez has played in 1,559 regular season Major League games.

“The time comes where I will feel comfortable there,” Gonzalez said. “But right now, I’m leaning how to play, all the kind of stuff [you need to know] to play first. … I go out there everyday and try to ‘get it.’”

– Kelvin Escobar said he threw a bullpen session Thursday with no recurrence of the hand weakness that cut short his last outing against the Cubs. He’ll progress back to game action and said he feels he has plenty of time to impress Brewers coaches and bid for a bullpen job. More from him to come.

Time to go meet with the manager.

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Brewers first baseman Corey Hart is expecting good news from a follow-up MRI scan of his right knee on Friday. If the scan shows sufficient healing of the surgically-repaired joint, he will be cleared to ramp-up rehab.

“I’m eager because I’m bored of the same stuff,” Hart said.

Hart used the word “microfracture” again in describing his injury. He had a procedure on Jan. 25 in which the knee joint surface was debrided — a process in which the surgeon induces bleeding around an imperfection to induce the body to fill in the gap. Hart also had a small meniscus tear repaired.

“Tomorrow, if it shows it’s good, then I’ll have no crutch and I’ll be able to slowly get into strengthening it,” Hart said. “It will be 3-4 weeks before I’m into baseball stuff.”

Hart said the knee feels “great,” though he’ll have to work to improve its range of motion. Assuming the MRI brings good news, he will be able to drive a car again — a nice perk considering his driver in recent weeks, fellow first baseman Mat Gamel, will undergo a knee surgery of his own on Friday for a torn ACL. Gamel will stay in Hart’s guest house during the early stages of his rehab.

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At this rate, general managers will need their own disabled list.

Brewers GM Doug Melvin was back in the office by 8 a.m. Thursday after being stung by a scorpion Wednesday night. Just three days earlier, Yankees GM Brian Cashman broke his right fibula and dislocated his right ankle parachute jumping with the U.S. Army in support of the Wounded Warrior Project.

Cashman needed surgery. Melvin had it a little easier, though he spent three hours in the emergency room after his scare, and his left arm was still zinging on Thursday.

Melvin was at his Spring Training condo after dinner when his wife, Ellen, noticed a bug scuttling across the floor. So Doug Melvin grabbed a tissue and attempted to eliminate what he believed was a harmless problem, only to be stung on the middle finger by what he learned was an Arizona bark scorpion — the only one of the 80 scorpion species in the United States considered lethal, according to Slate.

“I didn’t know anything about the damn things — I do now,” Melvin said.

He described the sensation as an “intense bee sting” and his left hand began to swell immediately. After a quick Google search, Melvin decided to go to the emergency room. He was monitored there for several hours.

“I got nervous when all of the numbness started getting up in the shoulder area,” Melvin said. “You think, ‘Can this thing go to your heart?’ They said you can lose your breathing, your vision can be a problem. None of that happened to me.”

Tthis wasn’t the first time that a member of Brewers camp has tangled with a scorpion.

Zach Braddock, a left-handed pitcher who’s with the Orioles now, was stung on the left ankle by a scorpion in March 2011. He felt discomfort but suffered no serious symptoms.

Scorpions average 2 1/2 inches in length, according to National Geographic. The one that stung both Melvin and Braddock was less than an inch long. Braddock was sitting on a couch chatting at the time he was stung.

“It felt like someone was pulling your hair out, and then it progressively got worse,” he said. “It was out of nowhere. I’m glad it’s over now.”

In 2009, the wife of Tigers shortstop Jhonny Peralta, Molly, was also bitten by a scorpion in Arizona and was also OK.

What will Doug Melvin do the next time Ellen spots a bug crawling across the floor?

“I’m going to have her kill it with her shoe,” he said.

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Some morning notes from Maryvale:

– Brewers pitching coach Rick Kranitz was in the stands for Yovani Gallardo’s inning for Team Mexico against the D-backs on Tuesday night and feels comfortable with Gallardo moving on in the World Baseball Classic. Gallardo is scheduled to pitch Friday against Team USA in front of as many as 40,000 fans at Chase Field.

Gallardo’s status for the tournament was briefly in question when he suffered a minor right groin strain last week.

“We already had a plan ahead of time,” Kranitz said. “If he cleared one hurdle, he was going to the next one. We talked to ‘Yo.’ Everybody’s talked. If there was something there, he would have felt it last night after the game, and he said everything was good.”

Kranitz will be one of those fans in the stands on Friday.

“Better get there early,” he said.

– After getting a second opinion, Brewers first baseman Mat Gamel will undergo surgery on Friday to repair a torn right ACL for the second time in less than a year. Gamel had the same procedure last May and missed the rest of the season, re-tore the same ligament on Feb. 16 and will miss all of 2013.

Dr. Gary Waslewski, a team physician for the Arizona Cardinals football team and Phoenix Coyotes hockey team, will perform Gamel’s surgery in Scottsdale, Ariz., with Brewers head physician William Raasch assisting.

– Left-hander Travis Webb threw live batting practice to hitters for the first time on Tuesday and was to discuss with Brewers  coaches on Wednesday the next step. It could be pitching in a game. Webb, a nonroster invitee who is new to the organization, has been brought along very slowly because of a muscle strain behind his left shoulder.

“I feel great,” he said. “I’m going to go out and throw and just see where I’m at. I really want to be out there. I feel like this is an important time for me. But again, I want to make sure that I’m ready to go.”

Webb said he no longer feels any discomfort in that muscle.

– I checked with Rickie Weeks, the Brewers’ best batting practice slugger, to make sure that Khris Davis’ booming home run in Tuesday’s exhibition against Team Canada was as impressive as it looked from the press box. Weeks’ eyes widened.

“You don’t see many up there,” he said.

Davis’ go-ahead blast bounced at the base of two flagpoles in left-center field and nearly cleared a brick wall that separates Maryvale Baseball Park from an adjoining strip mall. Last year, when Davis was rehabbing a calf injury in Arizona, he hit one further down the left field like that actually cleared that back wall on a fly, at least according to Tony Diggs, who helped run the Maryvale operation for the Brewers.

On Tuesday, he hit a curveball.

“I don’t know if I could hit it much farther,” Davis said.

Does he consider power a big part of his game?

“I just think it’s a secret weapon, really,” Davis said. “Me being kind of small, no one looks at me and is like, ‘He’s got power.’ I do, but it’s kind of a secret.”

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Brewers right-hander Kelvim Escobar was eager to meet with the team’s head physician on Tuesday morning for an explanation of the mysterious hand weakness that cut short his first Spring Training outing in four years.

Dr. William Raasch diagnosed the problem as a nerve impingement, Escobar said. He will meet on Tuesday morning with manager Ron Roenicke and pitching coach Rick Kranitz to determine the next step.

Escobar said he would spend the next few days “doing exercises, keep throwing, pitch in a game again to see how my hand responds and go on from there. It could have been worse. He checked my shoulder, my elbow, my neck, and everything was fine. He thinks it’s a nerve that’s not firing.”

Escobar worked to six batters against the Cubs on Sunday and said he struggled to grip the baseball from the start. He exited with two outs and the bases loaded after two walks and a hit batsman.

The 36-year-old is a non-roster invitee in Brewers camp who has been limited to one Major League appearance since 2007 because of shoulder injuries. He is trying to win a job in Milwaukee’s bullpen.

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