The Brewers Will Be Here Again

[Jack Stern]

The dust is finally settling on the Brewers’ World Series win in Tampa Bay last week. Since Jake Bauers secured the final out of Milwaukee’s first championship and stuffed the ball in his back pocket last Wednesday night, it’s been a nonstop celebration. The Brewers partied in Tropicana Field’s visiting clubhouse. They returned home and partied at various Wisconsin sporting events. They partied during a championship parade estimated as the largest single-day public gathering in state history. Some kept partying around Milwaukee, while others continued traveling media tours.

The Brewers should be celebrating. They earned every second of this. For most of them, it’s their first World Series championship. For fans, the end of a 57-year title drought might seem like a once-in-a-lifetime event.

On the contrary: It will happen again, and much sooner than 57 years from now. The Brewers will return to the World Series much sooner than the 44 years since their last pennant in 1982, too.

The word “dynasty” gets thrown around too often in sports, but here, it fits. The Brewers have a talented and controllable core. Jackson Chourio, Cooper Pratt, and Luis Lara are all under 23 years old and signed to long-term contracts. Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson could lead their pitching staff through 2031. Milwaukee also has one of baseball’s deepest farm systems, with talented prospects like Jesús Made, Luis Peña, Tyson Hardin, Blake Burke, and Josh Adamczewski progressing toward the big leagues.

More importantly, they have a process that makes them a perennial World Series contender. David Stearns’s “bites of the apple” metaphor ignited a short-term PR disaster in 2022, but that strategy worked. The Brewers have made the postseason eight times in the last nine seasons. By getting into the dance nearly every year (and perfecting their roster construction along the way), they gave themselves so many chances that the dice eventually had to fall their way. Everything finally came together for a World Series title.

While the Brewers acquire and utilize the right players to win every regular season, they also stay competitive every year because of the players they don’t retain or acquire. Under Stearns and now Matt Arnold, they’ve operated ruthlessly and efficiently, often eschewing sentimentality. The Brewers acquire talented players before they become established major leaguers and maximize their best seasons. Instead of paying to keep those players past their primes, they restart the cycle by trading them before free agency for younger, more controllable players or accepting a compensatory draft pick when they sign elsewhere.

Under this strategy, the Brewers declined to keep former stars Josh Hader, Corbin Burnes, Devin Williams, and Willy Adames beyond their original years of club control. “Bites of the apple” was Stearns’s explanation when they traded Hader for Robert Gasser and Esteury Ruiz, whom they later flipped for William Contreras. The following offseason, they traded Burnes for Joey Ortiz and DL Hall. Next, they traded Williams for Caleb Durbin, then traded Durbin in a six-player deal to acquire Kyle Harrison, Shane Drohan, and David Hamilton. They also let Adames walk in free agency after the 2024 season.

Most of those deals were panned outside of Milwaukee, but they paid off this year. Gasser made three postseason starts to stabilize a shallow rotation, allowing one run in 15 innings. Hall owns a 2.52 ERA as a full-time reliever over the last two seasons and tossed eight scoreless frames as part of a dominant playoff bullpen. Drohan and Harrison threw the second- and third-most regular-season innings, respectively, and Hamilton was one of the Brewers’ best hitters in October.

Meanwhile, Hader, Burnes, Williams, and Adames signed lucrative contracts. Hader has been the most successful but missed time in two straight seasons with shoulder and biceps injuries. Burnes underwent Tommy John surgery last spring. Despite strong peripherals, Williams has limped to a 4.65 ERA over two seasons after the trade. Adames was worth only 1.7 rWAR in the second season of his seven-year deal with the Giants.

Instead of retaining those players, the Brewers invested in scouting and player development. They have an excellent presence in Latin America, where they scouted and signed Chourio, Lara, and Made. In 2019, they renovated their spring training complex into a state-of-the-art player development hub. They employ large coaching staffs at all levels of the organization. Instead of spending on good players, it’s smarter to invest in resources that consistently turn most players into good ones.

Extra revenue from playing in and winning a World Series opens more short-term doors for the Brewers to be opportunistic this winter. They can afford to re-sign Jake Bauers to a two- or three-year deal. They could make more expensive one-year signings this year, as they did for Mike Moustakas and Yasmani Grandal before the 2019 season. Arnold made a serious bid for Tarik Skubal at this year’s trade deadline, a sign the Brewers feel confident enough in their infrastructure to make a splashy exception.

That doesn’t mean they should abandon the approach that got them here. The Brewers should not pony up to extend Contreras, sign a marquee free agent to a nine-figure deal, or trade their best prospects for a star (unless that star comes with several years of control). They spent years building an efficient, cohesive, well-oiled machine. It works. Tearing it down to satisfy the baseball world’s expectations of how a championship winner should operate would be foolish.

The Brewers can’t rest on their laurels. They should keep trying to improve their existing process. Potential changes to years of club control and revenue sharing in the next collective bargaining agreement could force them to alter how they operate. But even after winning it all, the Brewers will still act like the Brewers. They should. If they stay the course, they’ll be the champions again in the relatively near future.

Image courtesy of IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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[keephopealive]

 

The Brewers definitely are ahead of the game with drafting, international signing, minor league development, pitching lab, and picking guys off the scrap heap like Megill, etc. It's not so clear that their trades are so much ahead. Hamilton's October aside, the jury is still out on the Durbin trade, where Durbin just won a Gold Glove, and Harrison is a question mark.  Freddy for Williams and Sproat is its own question mark.  Ortiz and Hall for Burnes? Not so clear. Gasser was great this October, but he hadn't added too much value before that, whereas Hader has been great. Ruiz hasn't been much of a player.  Now, I am thrilled we made these trades because we don't win without Gasser, Hamilton, Hall, even Ortiz, but it's not that these are obvious wins in a vacuum. 

I wonder how much Stearns bites of the apple have driven things. The Contreras trade is the one that was the real fleece, and it even felt that way at the time.  I'd be curious who the brain child behind the trade was.  Arnold was GM already. Stearns was there as an advisor, but much like Greg down in Chicago, Stearns really hasn't had the magic tough with the Mets.   Stearns and his bites of the apple? He drafted signed Cain, traded for Yeli, drafted Turang, Miz, Ashby, Mitchell, Frelick, and signed Chourio - all great moves, but Arnold has continued with acquiring Contreras, Megill, Vaughn, and Bauers, drafting Pratt, signing Made and Peña. For all we know Arnold was the brains behind Stearns big decisions. Anyway, I personally suspect it's Arnold whose bites have mattered more.

[Snoebird]

57 minutes ago, keephopealive said:

 

The Brewers definitely are ahead of the game with drafting, international signing, minor league development, pitching lab, and picking guys off the scrap heap like Megill, etc. It's not so clear that their trades are so much ahead. Hamilton's October aside, the jury is still out on the Durbin trade, where Durbin just won a Gold Glove, and Harrison is a question mark.  Freddy for Williams and Sproat is its own question mark.  Ortiz and Hall for Burnes? Not so clear. Gasser was great this October, but he hadn't added too much value before that, whereas Hader has been great. Ruiz hasn't been much of a player.  Now, I am thrilled we made these trades because we don't win without Gasser, Hamilton, Hall, even Ortiz, but it's not that these are obvious wins in a vacuum. 

I wonder how much Stearns bites of the apple have driven things. The Contreras trade is the one that was the real fleece, and it even felt that way at the time.  I'd be curious who the brain child behind the trade was.  Arnold was GM already. Stearns was there as an advisor, but much like Greg down in Chicago, Stearns really hasn't had the magic tough with the Mets.   Stearns and his bites of the apple? He drafted signed Cain, traded for Yeli, drafted Turang, Miz, Ashby, Mitchell, Frelick, and signed Chourio - all great moves, but Arnold has continued with acquiring Contreras, Megill, Vaughn, and Bauers, drafting Pratt, signing Made and Peña. For all we know Arnold was the brains behind Stearns big decisions. Anyway, I personally suspect it's Arnold whose bites have mattered more.

Matt Arnold immersed himself in the three-team trade that produced Contreras. He says he is a huge fan of three-team trades and stays on the lookout for possibilities. Contreras also looks like the exception as someone the Brewers should consider for a multiyear extension.  For one thing, his work with new batting coach Guillermo Martinez produced favorable results late in the season and postseason. And for another, Baseball Prospectus paints an alarming view of the team's catching prospects. It downgraded Jeferson Quero's and Marco Dinges' ratings, saying neither has shown substantial progress. We know little about Bo Naylor's worthiness as a starter, but we know what we have in Wild Bill. 

[keephopealive]

16 minutes ago, Snoebird said:

Matt Arnold immersed himself in the three-team trade that produced Contreras. He says he is a huge fan of three-team trades and stays on the lookout for possibilities. Contreras also looks like the exception as someone the Brewers should consider for a multiyear extension.  For one thing, his work with new batting coach Guillermo Martinez produced favorable results late in the season and postseason. And for another, Baseball Prospectus paints an alarming view of the team's catching prospects. It downgraded Jeferson Quero's and Marco Dinges' ratings, saying neither has shown substantial progress. We know little about Bo Naylor's worthiness as a starter, but we know what we have in Wild Bill. 

Agree on Contreras. I came to roughly the same conclusion in my comment below Matthew's article on Contreras going forward.  

[Snoebird]

1 hour ago, keephopealive said:

Agree on Contreras. I came to roughly the same conclusion in my comment below Matthew's article on Contreras going forward.  

We have insight into Contreras' bloodlines, and they're impressive. Older brother Willson hit .275 with 27 home runs this year for Boston at age 34, and he has shown defensive versatility as a former catcher. 

[Chris Reinoos]

3 hours ago, Snoebird said:

Matt Arnold immersed himself in the three-team trade that produced Contreras. He says he is a huge fan of three-team trades and stays on the lookout for possibilities. Contreras also looks like the exception as someone the Brewers should consider for a multiyear extension.  For one thing, his work with new batting coach Guillermo Martinez produced favorable results late in the season and postseason. And for another, Baseball Prospectus paints an alarming view of the team's catching prospects. It downgraded Jeferson Quero's and Marco Dinges' ratings, saying neither has shown substantial progress. We know little about Bo Naylor's worthiness as a starter, but we know what we have in Wild Bill. 

If there's a possibility the team has to choose just one current player to whom they offer a large extension, I'd choose Turang over Contreras pretty easily. Turang is the best player on the team, is younger and plays a position at which the attrition and decline rates are lower.

If they're able to sign Turang long-term, then perhaps Pena becomes a trade chip in the search for Contreras's near/medium-term replacement. 

[Snoebird]

1 hour ago, Chris Reinoos said:

If there's a possibility the team has to choose just one current player to whom they offer a large extension, I'd choose Turang over Contreras pretty easily. Turang is the best player on the team, is younger and plays a position at which the attrition and decline rates are lower.

If they're able to sign Turang long-term, then perhaps Pena becomes a trade chip in the search for Contreras's near/medium-term replacement. 

I would've leaned toward Turang before Contreras essentially called his shot. The Journal Sentinel had a story in September that quoted Contreras as saying he had a long talk with Chourio about the postseason in which they agreed that "don't worry, we got this." That Contreras has done such a good job of mentoring Chourio is another huge reason to extend him, given the impending arrivals of Made, Pena, Frontado and Moneys. Contreras doesn't need to catch to be an important member of the roster.

 

[SF70]

“Dynasty” > Jack Stern.

Nice.

[long ball]

I agree with the overall sentiment of the piece. The Brewers have a chance to remain a World Series contender (through at least 2029 which is the end of Turang’s team control and before the pitching staff starts getting really expensive). 
 

Contreras is quite the polarizing player. Trueblood wrote the piece yesterday, and posted on blue sky weeks ago, that Contreras should be extended. I tend to side with Jack on this one that I’m not interested in extending Contreras (even though there is no obvious heir apparent). 
 

either way, this team is going to get expensive toward the end of the decade when these pitchers get into their arbitration years and that Chourio contract starts getting expensive around the same time. The churning of this roster will need to continue. We probably aren’t going to be major players in free agency and as long as our player development keeps doing their thing we won’t need to be. 

[SF70]

13 hours ago, long ball said:

I agree with the overall sentiment of the piece. The Brewers have a chance to remain a World Series contender (through at least 2029 which is the end of Turang’s team control and before the pitching staff starts getting really expensive). 
 

Contreras is quite the polarizing player. Trueblood wrote the piece yesterday, and posted on blue sky weeks ago, that Contreras should be extended. I tend to side with Jack on this one that I’m not interested in extending Contreras (even though there is no obvious heir apparent). 
 

either way, this team is going to get expensive toward the end of the decade when these pitchers get into their arbitration years and that Chourio contract starts getting expensive around the same time. The churning of this roster will need to continue. We probably aren’t going to be major players in free agency and as long as our player development keeps doing their thing we won’t need to be. 

The key to sustaining this beyond 2029 is the pitching development currently going on in the system along with the continued sell-off of SP stars at the right time in adding more young, controllable SP.

The team has drafted more young pitching than any team in baseball the last 3 years and we finally started to see signs of that draft-strategy working with starters like Letson-Knoth-Thompson and Hardin really taking a development leap late in the season. 

If this development continues with the volume of SP talent currently in the system, the team is going to be in good shape pitching-wise post 2029.