Wallowing In A Season To Forget…Or…

Day after day, night after night, the season lumbers on. The old adage of ‘The Dog Days Of Summer’ is a misnomer as this season has been going down since the beginning of the season for the Pigsville Nine. This neighborhood team is stocked with today’s names of the game, with guys like Cravy, Boyer, Knebel, Marinez, Scahill, Pina, Carter, Villar, Arcia, Broxton, Nieuwenhuis, the Blue’s Brothers lost brother, Jake Elmore and others. Yes, Ryan Braun is still with the team, the only star who remains, and the only player hitting above .300 for the season. Maldonado, Nelson, Gennet and Peralta also are names of familiarity. Each day they face big names on bigger teams. And if you haven’t been paying attention, the Cream City Nine is just a breathe away from the cellar of the Central Division of the National League. Going into Sunday’s play, they are 56-73 with a .434 winning percentage and 26.5 games behind the leader.

After a brief winning streak, Craig Counsell’s team has dropped three straight to the charging Pittsburghers as the second to last month of the season comes to an end. For many, it is way too long to continue through the remaining games. However being very fair, just because there are non-familiar names dotting the box score for the Crew, this does not automatically mean they are not good. You can actually imagine Counsell’s pre-game speeches, pulling from one Jimmy Dugan of the Peaches: ‘All right, everyone, let’s listen up now, listen up. Hey! Something important has just happened. I was in the toilet reading my contract, and it turns out, I get a bonus when we get to the World Series. So, let’s play hard, let’s play smart, use your heads.’

The positivities are a buzz. So let’s follow the Buckminster Fuller philosophy at this point in time. “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

Think about that for a second. Here we have a guy named Pina behind the plate. Did you see that beautiful throw on Thursday evening when he fired down to second and got the runner trying to steal? When putting a puzzle together, to meld the team, the catcher is an important cog. Then over at First, there is Mr. Carter…a behemoth of a man, with the softest, sweetest swing every conceived. He is a giant among men. When he connects, the ball flys beyond belief. At shortstop there is the kid who followed the kid (All-Star Segura) who followed the kid (All-Star Escobar) who followed the local kid (Counsell) who followed the kid (All-Star Hardy) who followed the original Kid (Hall of Famer, Yount). It is called the ‘Litany Position’ in Cream City. A deeply religious town, litany is a perfect name for that position on the Brewers. Five decades of the rosary. Five guys who made a legend at the position located just South of the Stadium Interchange.

At third there is Perez. Taken off the waiver wire last season from the Detroit Tigers, he possesses the ability to play a host of positions and can hit with power. He was a byproduct of Melvin’s last-ditch effort to rebuild a team before departure. While known for his many bad trades, this acquisition may be a touch of genius. But then again, Georg Lichtenberg once said, ‘Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.’ Sorry Melvin.

In center is a perplexing individual. Broxton can run like the wind (although to my knowledge, nobody has ever seen wind running). Thus the kerfuffle. He came up 0-for-forever, then got sent down, brought up, sent down again and then brought up again where he discovered that with a brand new batting style (congratulations to the Brewer’s hitting coach, Coles) has turned him into a real good hitter. While often not taking the correct line in chasing down a ball hit in his direction, he could be the sleeper of the summer.

In right, there is the true definition of a journeyman. Nieuwenhuis is simply a Nieuwenhuis. No more explanation is needed. At times he can hit the cover off the ball, especially when he plays at Miller Park. But there are other times when he can commit two errors in a single inning. He’s a Nieuwenhuis. And that spells trouble for the heir apparent in right, Santana. Hurt most of the season, when he got well, he was at home and nobody was going to out hit Nieuwenhuis at home. Thus, he has to wait until September when the team will be on the road for the majority of the closing month. This is another legendary position for the Brewers. Just a couple of years ago, Aoki brought new life to that position. Before him, Hart and Hall, Bichett and Lescano, Moore and even Braun was the center of fan adoration. It’s just one of those positions that endears for the hometown nine. Perhaps Santana can begin to live up to his great anticipated reputation.

In pitching, there is Nelson, Davies and Peralta, all of whom bring hope. While the two righties have struggled to find their top form, it is left hander Davies who has risen to the top of the staff. There is hope with the trio in the days ahead.

While this may look like a rose-colored view of a team which is struggling to remain relevant to a town that is devoted to…country western…err baseball in the summer (nearly 36,000 came out to see the team Saturday night with the main draw a country western singer who gave a concert after the game), it is still fiction. As Tom Clancy stated, ‘The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.’

Let’s hope that the new constructors of tomorrow’s Brewers create fiction that makes sense.

Play Ball!

#otsmlb.com #win63 #‎watchingattanasio⚾️

Run Like A Hedge Fund Operation

The beautiful thing about life is that the older you get, the more you learn. The same goes for baseball. The longer you are in the game, the more you understand the intricacies of it. The Milwaukee Brewers have decided to turn that on its ear and suggest that a 30-year-old fellow will be the new guru of the organization and build it into a winner.

Attanasio is frugal. At least that is the world we will go with.

Winning is the key.

Brewers have two people in their entire organization who have World Series rings and who have been a part of a winning tradition. Two.

And the new GM does not have that pedigree.

Someone told me this past week that he is convinced that he was a better lawyer at 40 than he was at 30. Point, the longer you work at a job, the more knowledge you have to show success. In other words, the more you know, the better you become.

The Milwaukee Brewers will reduce their payroll this coming season. They will try everything within their power to relieve themselves of Matt Garza’s contract. Kids will be coming up to see if they can grab lightening…at a price. The starting rotation of Nelson, Peralta, Jungmann and Davies will have its ups and downs as collectively they advance in their ‘baseball training program’ while in the Major Leagues. They should trade Adam Lind to reduce their payroll some more and move Jonathan Lucroy to first to give him extra life and avoid further concussions. Lind has gone virtually injury free this season while hitting very well. The Brewers will never have a better time to trade him for value. Khris Davis should move from left to second base because he has the poorest throwing arm for an outfielder in the major leagues. Your daughter can throw better than this guy. But he can hit and hit with power. Putting him at second will give him a chance to be the most powerful second baseman since Cano. Jean Segura should remain at shortstop as Orlando Arcia develops his hitting in the minors, this coming season in Colorado Springs. Segura will be traded next September to allow the advancement of the phenom. Rogers should be permanently moved to third if he can learn to throw. He can hit and hit and hit and he has a chest big enough to knock balls down bruise after bruise. He just can’t throw to first. Domingo Santana should move to left as Shane Peterson will move back into center. He was very good in that position although many said he was a natural corner outfielder. Ryan Braun, one of the league’s best and the secret comeback player of the year, will remain in right field. After all, Ryan Braun is THE most valuable player for the Milwaukee Brewers. Without him there is no pop in the lineup who can be counted on to drive in runs. With him they have a chance to win the game.

As for moves into the future by the new GM, the best thing he can do is avoid talking to Melvin. That is because the message was loud and clear at his opening press conference. When asked, Attanasio stated that the hire of Stearns was the second most difficult move he had to make in his years as the owner, the other being the Greinke trade with Kansas City. The take away from this is that he listened to his hand-picked GM (Melvin) following his buying of the team from Selig, to trade for Greinke and trade away the future of the organization which resulted in the loss of two future All-Stars. By mentioning this, it is clear Attanasio has been burning from this decision for some time. The exclamation on this subject was made by Stearns when he said ‘Building an organization from the farm system is the way to go. You cannot build a winning baseball team through free agent trades.”! So, while platitudes flow, there should be an avoidance to talk to Melvin at all costs. He will now be put into Selig’s dungeon, the place where he sent the most brilliant of all GMs in the history of the Brewers, Harry Dalton. Selig barely talked to Harry for over a year Dalton was paid to be a consultant.

So what have we learned? Attanasio is frugal. He has brought in a newbie with no track record of winning to be his head of baseball operations under the guise that ‘baseball analytics’ are the way to go. He also mentioned the breadth of Stearns background in ‘all-aspects’ of the front office. Think about that. What breadth of knowledge can anyone pick up in a few years at the age of 30? Obviously, hiring Stearns was cheaper than an extension of Melvin’s contract. Money saved.

The Milwaukee Brewers have no legacy of winning. They won one pennant forty some years ago. That’s it. Once.

The Milwaukee Brewers have only two guys with a winning baseball tradition in their entire organization. Two guys.

The Milwaukee Brewers fans will come out because there are two things that drive provincial Milwaukee: FREE and HOPE.
Buy-One-Get-One-Free will fill the park. Hope for tomorrow because it is bound to be better than today is always a good sell in the land of Catholicism, cheese, bratwurst and beer. The Two ‘C’s’ & Two ‘B’s’ will always sell in the land of the Potawatomi on the edge of Pigsville.

Good luck Brewer fans. If you buy this pile of Hollywood BS, I’ve got a movie you can invest in.

Play Ball!