jjgott

New Brewers Rap just dropped

THE ERA OF UNBRIDLED OPTIMISM IS HERE!

Gotta put the 11-2 in context for who we beat for those 11 wins too. To be the best we beat the best.

Yeli called his shot

Thanks so much for starting this thread. My entire family is from Milwaukee. My parents left after college to take a job in Connecticut, where I was born in '87. I grew up following Wisconsin sports because of my dad. Because my parents were both teachers, I'd get to spend parts of summers in Milwaukee. It felt like how it must feel for kids born to immigrant parents to return to their homelands. It felt incredible to be around people who rooted for the same teams you did. Who knew the names and stats of the same players you did. I can't tell you how lonely it was being a Brewers fan in CT in the 90s. Sure, we'd get up to Boston for a game when the Brewers were in the AL, but it's not like the Brewers were on Sunday Night Baseball or featured on Baseball Tonight. I feel like the only time I'd hear about the Brewers on TV was when they'd trade guys like Greg Vaughn or maybe see someone like Jeff Cirillo or Dave Nilsson in the ASG. I remember how excited I was my senior year of HS/freshman year of college that the Brewers finally finished 81-81. As I went off to college, the Brewers were the thing that kept my Dad and I close. We were able to meet up in AZ during Spring Training a couple of times and actually ran into Mark A. down there the year he bought the team. I remember us thanking him for buying the team and how important it would be for us fans to find a way to finally break through and get to the playoffs. In college I found Brewerfan.net and remember being a part of the live chats in '08 watching a horribly pixelated version of MLB.tv with some of the posters on here. I couldn't believe my eyes when CC and everyone celebrated on the mound, hearing Rock scream "Yes!" over and over again. Even though we were pretty handily beat, '08 validated my "choice" of fandom and allowed me to finally feel like a normal baseball fan. Like @craigharmann, my dad and I don't have a lot in common either but we've always had the Brewers. I spent the bottom of the ninth on FaceTime with my dad. When the grounder went to Turang, I had to hold my reaction because his feed was behind mine by about a pitch and a half. We both just let out the same loud "Yes!" Rock did in '08. In some ways, this is the culmination of the bond my dad and I have shared these past 39 years. While I hope we have more memories of watching baseball together, I'm happy we can both now die in peace a la Bill Simmons. So happy for the Brewers, for the city of Milwaukee, for the fans on here where I've become more of a lurker than a poster. We are WORLD CHAMPS!!!

Ugh I'm going to the game today and was excited to see The Miz. Oh well, hope it's a short stint to let the swelling come down.

Because we build our roster to be competitive over a 162 game sample size and not a 3 game series. We’ve proven we can build a roster to get us to the playoffs but we’re not willing to invest in the marginal improvements to be dominant in the postseason. Last time I felt we could go toe to toe with anyone was our 2018 and 2019 teams when we paid guys like Moustakas and Grandal vs trying to get buy with cheaper alternatives.

Dom Cotroneo: Certified Ball-Knower

Signing Snell would be for a potential postseason run. Do we really want to rely on so many young players against the likes of the Dodgers or Braves? Having Adames and Williams would give at least some level of experience at key positions.

Relevant column on ESPN: https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/39465574/baseball-payroll-gap-mlb-polarization-index Baseball has never really been a sport in which you'd enter a season by saying "everyone has a chance," and it never will be. But it's closer to that than it ever has been, especially if you widen your lens from any one season to that of a decade. The longest playoff drought in the majors is just nine years, a mark held by the Tigers and Angels. While those have surely felt like nine long years for fans of those teams, think about what that means: Every single MLB franchise has made the playoffs during the past decade. Whatever you think about team spending or the playoff format, that's something. This offseason has been a little weird, one that has featured the landmark contract in sports (Shohei Ohtani) but has also seen defending division champs tightening their proverbial belts. If you feel like the game has become a little more polarized, it has. But that polarization is not historically extreme, not yet. Even better, as things progress, it might not last.

This is where I'm at. This team reminded me of a mid major basketball team that pulled off the first round upset but eventually the luck (no pun intended) ran out. We very much could've won this game but I don't know how much further we would've gone. Also not sure what would've been worse: losing to the Niners like we did or losing to either the Lions or the Bucs next week.

One man's Junk is another man's Takaramono

It's unclear why the only entity required to sacrifice in the name of more parity is labor . Why, as fans, do we not demand more from the owners/executives? Let's get real progressive: 1. A profit cap - Owners are capped at an annual 1% profit margin. Ticket prices are also capped across the league and, like rent control, are capped at how much they can be increased year over year. 2. An "estate" sales tax - MLB receives a tax payment upon the sale of a team. Money can be used to subsidize player salaries for smaller market teams. Like real estate, the tax is assessed on the gain from when the team is purchased to when it is sold. 3. An employee salary cap - Managers, GMs, trainers, etc. have a fixed pay scale akin to players. So, for example, the GM of the Dodgers cannot make more than the GM of the Pirates, no matter how much better the GM of the Dodgers drafts. Or teams have a capped pool of money they can use for support staff. So you can hire that star GM, but the head athletic trainer is just a kid straight out of PT school. That way, owners can't just "buy" their way to a better run team. I understand why the owners would never agree to this, but if parity is what we're after, might as well make it parity across the board.

Yes and no. I was describing what I thought the attributes a competitive small market owner needed to possess. I wasn't necessarily thinking that Mark A. owed us in any way to act like that. But his statements and actions the first few years, specifically the investments he made in player salaries (basically doubling payroll in two years), seemed to indicate he was willing to sacrifice short-term profits for long-term on field success. Primarily because the cost of acquiring teams was so cheap, there actually were quite a few local owners in the 60s-80s like the type I described. Guys like Selig, Kohl, etc. owned teams not principally for the annual returns, but in order to provide their local community with major league level sports teams. As you say, really rich guys now just buy whatever team they can afford, without regard for how the team fits into the fabric of the community. I think that certainly has contributed to the disparity as the pursuit of off-field revenue has dwarfed the commitment to the on-field product. Alternatively, maybe Mark A. can talk to his fellow soccer team and golf league-owner Yasir Al-Rumayyan and sell the Brewers to the Saudis?

People still go to Purdue football games even though there's a 0.0% chance they'll play in the CFP, let alone the Big 10 Championship. Maybe owners should take a page from the minor leagues and make gameday an enjoyable experience for families so it doesn't matter if the team is in contention or not? What any small market team needs is an owner who is aligned with the fans more than their own desire to get rich; who understands that owning a team is a public trust. Obviously owners all want to make money, but ideally it shouldn't be their first priority. Mark A. seemed to be that type of owner the first decade or so of ownership. However his investments the last few years in soccer and soon the PGA Tour shows that he views the Brewers as merely one of his many sports investments as opposed to his #1 priority. As for baseball finances at large, I really don't have a problem with it because at the end of the day, the league revenue is going to one of two places, the owners or the players. There's absolutely no evidence that instituting a salary cap will mean lower prices for fans. Instead of demanding labor accept less money for the same amount of work, why not pressure Mark A. to spend more of his money to compensate his employees?

As you may or may not know, the PGA Tour is currently negotiating with the Saudi Public Investment Fund/LIV Golf. At the same time, they are also negotiating an outside investment from the "Strategic Sports Group." The SSG is a consortium of U.S.-based professional sports team investors. https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2023/12/10/policy-board-unanimously-agrees-to-further-negotiate-with-strategic-sports-group-continue-pif-negotiations Below are the investors who comprise Strategic Sports Group: Mark Attanasio Arthur Blank Gerry Cardinale Cohen Private Ventures Fenway Sports Group Mike Gordon Wyc Grousbeck John Henry HighPost Capital Marc Lasry Tom Ricketts Tom Werner

He doesn't seem to be hitting the hole as aggressively as he's done in years past, or at least not as consistently. Like AJ Dillon on the Pack, a lot of runs that used to go for 6-7 yards are now going for 0-2.

Didn't we learn our lesson with Bush last season? How the heck did he make the team?

@JeffPassan The New York Mets current payroll is estimated to be around $384 million. The luxury-tax payments alone will exceed $111 million. Their total payroll projects to be $495 million.

What's the rot? $$$ exploded because live sports became the one thing that networks could count on getting viewers. That money was going to one of two entities: the players or the owners. Given the two choices I would much rather the windfall to go to the workers who actually provide the product. Steve Cohen explicitly said he is going to do whatever it takes to deliver a World Series to the fans because he is a Mets fan himself. If any of the posters here owned the Brewers and had unlimited funds, I'd hope they'd do the same.

Well sure Padres fans are cheering on an NLCS run this year, but this trade sets us up for 2026 by which I mean all the players we acquired for Hader will be getting too expensive and will be traded. I really think 2028 will be our year. Just be patient!

Sad to see the Best Fans in Baseball head to the exits. How will Cris Carpenter explain this to his son?

The same reason coaches want to take jobs at Florida, Ole Miss, Tennessee, etc. You're coaching in one of the three conferences where a CFP birth is likely to come from. And Wisconsin is in a division where they should be one of the favorites year in and year out with maybe USC now added to the mix. I think Wisconsin can be a very attractive coaching destination once they figure out how to recruit QBs and WRs again.