1992 Brewers: What If...?

[jaybird2001wi]

Since 1992 was our previous last winning season prior to last year, I have thought about how some of the decisions made pre-1992 and post-1992 made a domino effect on baseball. Here are some things to mull around in the head:

 

1) What if Gary Sheffield wasn't a head case?

Scenarios:

a) We would not have gotten Matt Mieske, Jose Valentin and Ricky Bones; therefore we would have never been able to re-acquire Jaime Navarro (Valentin) from the White Sox and Gerald Williams (Bones) and Bob Wickman. Then there may not have been a Richie Sexson since we traded Wickman for him.

b) If Sheffield would have the season he had in San Diego in 1992 and played third base, Kevin Seitzer wouldn't have made his way to Milwaukee and we may never have gotten Jeromy Burnitz and made that awful trade with the Mets and received Alex Ochoa and Glendon Rusch. Maybe we would have won the 1992 American League East over the Blue Jays? There would have been a totally different World Series Champion. Maybe Paul Molitor would have not signed with Toronto and gone to another team instead, therefore creating a different 1993 WS Champ.

i) Joe Carter's legendary World Series blast would have also changed and Mitch Williams would have been a different guy today.

c) We would have eventually had the outfield of Yount, Greg Vaughn and Gary Sheffield and never would have dealt with Kevin Reimer.

d) Would Sheffield have ended up in Florida?

 

2) What if the Brewers would have handled the Molitor situation differently by allowing him to play first base instead of being labeled "as nothing but a DH?"

a) We never would have thrown money on Franklin Stubbs and Jeff Bagwell played 1st Base for Houston the year Stubbs made his Brewer debut.

b) John Jaha would have been relegated to Designated Hitter in 1993.

c) We may have had more winning seasons between 1993-1998 because we had a few "fringe years" where we were a game or two away.

 

With these two decisions, Sal Bando's job would have been FAR more different. He wouldn't have touted Jose Valentin as part of the "Miller Park core" and we would have had a completely different shortstop for the mid 1990's.

 

Also, Molitor played the last six seasons of his career primarily on artificial turf. Would he have been able to play another year or two?

 

3) What if Bando listened to his scouts and not drafted Antone Williamson and drafted their guy, Nomar?

a) The shortstop question above would have been solved and we would have had this LineUp in 1997, Nomar's first full season

1) Molitor 1B

2) Cirillo 3B

3) Nomar SS

4) Sheffield RF

5) Nilsson C

6) Chuck Carr CF

7) Vina 2B

8) Julio Franco DH

9) Matheny C

Keep in mind, things would have been a lot more different and there may have been an alternate plan in place for the outfield had everything panned out, we may never have gotten Chucky Hacks and Surhoff may have never moved out of the catching position (and going to another team) and we could have a different DH.

 

Would anything else have drastically changed if these three different scenarios played out differently?