Angels Won’t Increase Their Offer to Gaetti : Baseball: Third baseman’s agent makes request, but the club says it is already the top bidder.

Angel President Richard Brown rejected a request Wednesday by Gary Gaetti’s agent that the club enhance its $10.8-million offer, casting doubt on the Angels’ prospects of adding the third baseman to their lineup next season.

Brown said he told Jim Bronner, who represents Gaetti, that the Angels won’t change the guaranteed, four-year offer they made in mid-December. According to Brown, Bronner did not specify when he would have Gaetti’s next response. As a new-look free agent, Gaetti has until Tuesday to re-sign with the Minnesota Twins or to sign with another club. Bronner could not be reached at his Chicago office Wednesday.

“Through Jim Bronner’s own admission, we are already the highest bidder,” Brown said. “I am not about to start bidding against myself. I told them what they proposed today is not acceptable.”

Bronner’s request came on the day it was believed that Gaetti would announce his decision. Instead, Brown said, Bronner asked for “some changes in the agreement, not necessarily more money, but refinements that would entail greater aggregate costs. We are not amenable. We offered what we thought was an extremely fair offer.”

Brown said he and Bronner agreed not to reveal the value of the new proposal.

Minnesota initially offered Gaetti $7 million for three years plus an option year contingent on his third-year performance. To stay competitive with the Angels, the Twins then offered a package potentially worth $10.4 million. Of that sum, Gaetti would be guaranteed $4.8 million for the first two years, $1.5 million for the third year and $1.3 million for the fourth. The remaining $3.2 million would be earned through incentive clauses.

With the two bids now relatively close, it’s increasingly likely that Gaetti will re-sign with the Twins. Gaetti has played for Minnesota for nine seasons, and his children attend school in a Twin Cities suburb.

“Personally, I think Gary’s in a quandary about whether he wants to leave Minnesota,” Brown said. “It’s a question of the quality of life in Southern California versus the quality of life in Minnesota.”

However, Twin General Manager Andy MacPhail was not as optimistic that Gaetti would stay.

“Frankly, I think he’s leaning toward California,” MacPhail said from his Minneapolis office. “We made the best offer we could, no question. We moved off (not guaranteeing) the fourth year, but it’s not at the same dollar level as California’s offer. . . .

“Nobody officially told me things would be resolved (Wednesday), but there’s no doubt we’d like to know what’s going to happen so we can move on.”

Despite being widely quoted last week as saying he required a decision from Gaetti by last Friday, Brown said he hadn’t imposed such a condition.

“I never put a time limit on this. All we said is there’s a built-in time limit of Jan. 29, so to force someone against the wall would be foolish,” Brown said. “We have no deals pending that would be affected by this. All I said was, ‘This has been going on for a long time and dragging on, and we’d like to bring it to a conclusion.’ ”

It will conclude with Gaetti not wearing an Angel uniform if Gaetti and Bronner stick to the proposal they made Wednesday. “I know that on Feb. 1, I’m going to be thinking about other things,” Brown said. “If we don’t get Gaetti, then I’ll be thinking about pitching around him.”