BuckyBrewer61

Without looking - I would assume the Brewers have spent more than that in last place. Like, the whole season?

As I post this, the Brewers are currently 3-14: - This is the worst start in franchise history by 2 full games. The 1970, 1972, and 2002 teams started 5-12. - At minus-48, these Brewers have the worst run differential through 17 games in franchise history by a mile. Previous worst was minus-33 in 2003. No Brewers team with a run differential of minus-20 or worse at this point has finished with more than 69 wins. - The 46 runs scored by the Brewers is the 3rd least through 17 games in franchise history. The 1972 Brewers were worst, with only 30 runs scored in 17 games (yikes!), which was the 4th fewest through 17 games in the modern era. That team started 5-12. - The 94 runs allowed is the 4th most through 17 games in franchise history (Most was 104 in 2003). None of the 3 worse teams finished with more than 69 wins. - This is the worst start for a National League team in 18 years (1997 Cubs started 2-15). - Only 6 National League teams in the modern era (since 1900) have had a worse start than this year's Brewers. - Just 14 teams total in the modern era have started worse, including the 1988 Orioles who started 0-21. Most recently, the 2010 Orioles started 2-15. - Only 1 team in MLB history has finished above .500 after starting 3-14 or worse - the 1996 Red Sox started 3-14 and finished 85-77. - No team that has started 3-14 or worse has ever made the postseason. However, 101 years ago, the 1914 Boston Braves that started 3-13-1 finished 94-59-5 and won the World Series. They are the only team in history to have less than 5 wins through 17 games and make the postseason... http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/a-chance.gif

PrinceFielderx1?

^This. It's ok to trade prospects when your team is close to being a REAL contender (a la 2011, not 2102-2015). Even a free agent signing isn't the end of the world, though I'd rather the Brewers avoid it. But for a small market team, you have to recognize the value you have in your players and sell high unless you have an immediately legit division champion quality team. For years the Brewers have held on to valuable pieces until they depreciate, then sell them for less than peak value. Unless you routinely dominate the draft, which the Brewers clearly don't, that is a perfect strategy for mediocrity with steadily diminishing future returns.

Fair enough, point is they make that much because of fan interest - ticket sales, sponsors, TV deals, etc. Not because their service is exponentially more important to society than police officers, construction workers, teachers, etc. IMO they deserve every penny they get because their talents draw in that money and people are willing to pay them - but that money is rooted in fan interest, so it drives me nuts when athletes act like dolts when it comes to not understanding the media.

I know it's yesterday's news but a thought on the Bryan Price rant since this game is terrible - I can't stand when athletes (or coaches/managers for that manner) complain about or snub the media. The reason you get paid millions to play a game is not because you provide a service worth millions, it's because of the fans. Period. Without them, you're looking for a real job. And the media is the fans' access to the game. You don't like the media? You can make a perfectly comfortable living as a professional baseball manager in AAA. If you want to work in the MLB and collect your millions, then this is part of the job. Deal with it. It's like saying you want to make millions starring the world's greatest movies, but don't want to be a celebrity. Doesn't work that way.

Curtis Granderson?

Most all time - Manny Ramirez Most in a season - Todd Helton? I feel like someone had like 8 in a season sometime recently. Like within the past 10 years. Edit: I'm going to switch my 2nd answer to Curtis Granderson, just popped in my head for some reason...

These Brewers are now the baseball equivalent of Herb Kohl's Bucks. Refuse to rebuild despite clearly not having a championship caliber team and toil in mediocrity for years without any hope or thought for the future. Is it bad that I am to the point where part of me is rooting for the Brewers to lose? I want the Brewers to win a World Series, and year after year management finds some thing to hold on to (first place for 150 days in 2014! A decent 2nd half in 2013!) to convince them to "go for it," which apparently means assemble a team that could maybe be 5th best in the league if things go right. I now hope they fall apart and management finally decides to rebuild, because without that mediocrity will be this team's ceiling for a long time.

This. It's not about what could've been if we didn't trade away prospects to build the 2011 team. It's that immediately thereafter, we no longer had a World Series caliber team - not even a playoff caliber team really. But regardless we've refused to rebuild, not even in a minor way. Instead we've signed free agents in lieu of draft picks, held on to aging players in lieu of trading them for future prospects, all to hold on to a mildly competitive team. If the goal is to win a World Series, the strategy since 2012 has been horrendous, and now any pieces of value we once had to rebuild are mostly gone or aging to the point of decreasing returns. The Gallardo trade was the first move since 2011 that was the slightest bit encouraging that Doug and Mark are realizing the rebuild must begin. The rebuild has had to happen for 3+ years now, and the longer we wait, the longer and more painful this process will have to be.

If I ever spot a SOLVVD jersey, I will definitely shout out "WOAH!" or "Lou Palsmo!" This needs to happen.

The "advantage" of not being stuck with big contracts on declining players is outweighed by the advantage that, for large market teams, these contracts are not crippling. Large market teams can throw money at players, and if they do not live up to the money they are being paid - no big deal - just throw some more money at someone else. Have a rough year and finish in last place? So what, just go buy Sandoval and Moncada. If they don't work out, anyone think the Red Sox will be strapped for cash next offseason or the one after? After the large market teams have been throwing out outlandish contracts in past years, some of which players haven't lived up to, anyone think the Brewers will assemble a World Series contender sooner than the Red Sox? Or Angels? Or Yankees? Or Tigers? Me neither.

Quick, name the last huge NFL free agent signing. That is, huge star in the prime of his career who's own team, and everyone else, wanted to sign him and he bolted for more money elsewhere. I can't think of one either. Now try the same for baseball - off the top of my head - CC Sabathia, Prince Fielder, Zach Greinke (yes I know we traded him but of course because the writing was on the wall), Max Scherzer, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Robinson Cano... It really hardly ever happens in football. That's why there are teams that can be consistently good for long periods of team, because you can build a team and keep it together, including keeping your star QB. But the playing field is even from the start, it's up to the teams to build success and maintain it. In baseball it's up and sell to the highest bidder year after year, and oh by the way not everyone can afford to bid the same amount. How is that fair?

Mildly interesting article by Jayson Stark http://espn.go.com/blog/jayson-stark/post/_/id/1075/think-nfl-has-greater-parity-than-mlb-well-think-again But, as a small market fan, I get very annoyed when baseball journalists talk about parity in baseball. They also do so by citing the number of different teams that have won the World Series recently. And by that measure, yeah there is some parity, likely more than some perceive. But IMO the reason many different teams win the World Series each year is that the playoffs are a crapshoot, and whether you're best or 10th best, your odds to win the whole thing aren't that wildly different. It's not because all the teams are equally competitive year after year. This perceived lack of parity, at least to me, is not at all the issue I have with baseball as a small market fan. The issue is there is an uneven playing field. At least when the Jaguars go out and lose year after year, they at least know they started with the exact same opportunities to build a team as the Patriots, Seahawks, Packers, etc. They just did it worse. But when it comes to baseball, it takes a lot more to build a winner at a signficant financial disadvantage. Just because one or two low-income teams figure out a way to do it each year, and occasionally do well in the playoffs, does not equal parity. I'd love to see someone make a list of total team salaries over the past 20 years. Then make two more lists of regular season wins and playoff appearances by franchise over that time. I bet good money they'd look pretty similar.

I guess I have a hard time seeing what would be so difficult to pass about this outside of politics given the lack of a tax. It's taking and investing money from a pool that, if not harvested, won't exist in the first place because the Bucks will almost assuredly be gone. Regardless of whether or not you're a Bucks fan, that means $6million+ annually from the state budget gone for years to come, plus that money going into the budget years down the line will increase exponentially once the arena is paid off. I'm the furthest thing from a financial whiz, but to me that's a good thing no matter what part of the state you're from and whether or not you'll ever watch a Bucks game again. If they were proposing this with the same numbers to build a new arena for a professional ice dancing team in Rice Lake, I'd be 100% for it.

Agree with this completely (including the end of basketball games). There has to be a better way to shorten this delay though - do pitchers really need 8 warmup pitches after they just threw 30 in the bullpen? Do they need to wait for the manager to walk out....talk on the mound for a little bit.....get the call....saunter out of the dugout.....slowly jog to the mound....talk to the manager about scouting reports for the upcoming batters......take their warmups....wait for the batter to saunter over from the on deck circle so his walkup music can play....readjust the gloves he hasn't even used yet.... I don't know the answer, but why not just sub the pitcher in and out like any other sport. Manager makes the call from the dugout, last guy leaves, new guy come in right away. Maybe throw 2-3 pitches to adjust to the ballpark, then batter up. There are clearly 2 things on Manfred's agenda - shorten games and increase scoring. The 1st can be done by eliminating so much of the wasted time not playing baseball and not changing the game itself one bit - this idea seems to be trying to masquerade the 2nd as trying to accomplish the goal of the 1st.

It does stunt a revenue stream, but at the same time without a solution that revenue stream doesn't exist. Let's face it, if there's no new arena by 2017, Giannis and Jabari will be Seattle Supersonics - then none of this money exists in the first place, not even the $6+mil that is being held steady in the budget going forward. Seems like a pretty creative and smart plan to me.

Anyone with a financial background (unlike me) have any insight as to how much sense this plan makes? Seems to make plenty of sense to me - either let the Bucks spend the money they are making for the state in the first place and reap the rewards down the line, or watch them leave and take all that future money with them. Plus with the fallback of making any new ownership pay off the rest of the arena in a hopefully-never-gonna-happen scenario of the Bucks getting sold and leaving town, seems like worst case scenario is we get a fancy new arena out of it (NHL team anyone??? A guy can wish) But, then again, all I saw was the man who implemented the plan talk about it... Please leave politics out of it, just curious about the financial nuts and bolts, precedents, etc.

This is just so ludicrous the more I think about it. Can 2B/SS not play at DP depth any more? Less DP's = more base runners = more points! Awesome! No more playing the outfield deep in the 9th to prevent extra bases = more walk offs! Yay! First baseman can't shift next to the bag with a man on first = more steals! Neato! I also hate when announcers say something to the affect of "the defense would love if (fill in slugger who has no ability to go oppo) would just lay down a bunt or slap one the other way." I guarantee if David Ortiz was batting .800 with an OBP of .800+ and a slugging percentage of .800 by bunting every at bat, teams would stop shifting against him. Also, it would be an excellent strategy on his part - problem is these players never bother to learn to bunt or go oppo so they can't do it and teams, in some crazy scheme to win games, strategize for this. This is a strategy that is, and probably should be here to stay because it's smart and it works. Like a previous poster said, if you don't like it, find some players and managers that can adapt to it and beat it, don't ruin the integrity of the game.

Already miss good ole Allan after seeing this... http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=12221038 Seriously? It's the commissioner's job to eliminate "really smart people in the game" from gaining "a competitive advantage?" That sounds like good strategy to me. Sounds like the new commish just wants to increase offense artificially and pander to the marginal fan to seek the almighty dollar - not that this should be surprising.

Not a huge mascot fan, but this guy is awesome. Bernie, sausages, and now Barrelman are all great mascots. Now, as for Hank...

Exactly. He may have been worth one more year of 3.75-4.00 ERA, which has some value in a vacuum, but the most important question IMO is always "will this help us win a World Series?" At this point, Yo was not going to be a part of a world championship Milwaukee Brewers team, and while I admittedly know little about the guys we got back, they are already more likely to help the Brewers win a World Series than Yo.

I just love the fact that for the first time in seemingly awhile (I'm sure I'm forgetting a move here or there that someone could point out) the Brewers are not just trying to hold on to this increasingly slim "window" and are looking towards restocking the farm system. You can still be competitive at the Major League level while pursuing this strategy - a la the Rays - but a small market team like the Brewers cannot sustain a model of signing aging free agents to plug holes year after year and expect to build a championship team. Plus, given Mark's history, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if there weren't more moves to come at the MLB level.

Well, Brewers On Deck is coming up this weekend...

When Jonathan Lucroy wins a Denslow Cup he can be in my avatar