What former Brewers are doing in 2015, and why it's time for Melvin to go

[MrTPlush]

I had to stop after you started talking about Fielder and comparing him to 3 players combined with the longest contract being 4 years.

 

At that point I knew it was just a rant about any little thing you could find...even if it didn't make sense.

[monty57]

My take is the state of the farm is on Melvin and should be held responsible but I really don't think the trades were the killers at all, it was the horrific drafting/development.

 

That was certainly part of it, and as I have mentioned before, I think a lot of that was because the Brewers decided to put all of their available funds into the MLB payroll, while focusing on "signability" picks in the draft. Had they trimmed a couple of million off the MLB payroll, they probably could have drafted and signed the best player instead of simply looking for someone they could sign cheaply. Melvin was very vocal about his dislike for teams being able to sign players over "slot value," which is a big reason MLB changed the rules to the current "pool" of funds. Since that change, the Brewers seem to have done better in the drafts.

 

Wait, they traded away guys that didn't have any real trade value for Sabathia and Grienke? Melvin must have Jedi mind powers.

 

They traded Cruz for Nix and Brantley was the PTBNL for Sabathia. Either of them are worth far more than half a season of a pitcher nowadays. Greinke was traded for Odorizzi, Cain, and Escobar, who may not each be able to bring back two years of Greinke, but they're valuable. Yuni was negative trade value in that deal, so there's that too :-)

 

I just feel like it wasn't necessarily for one season as we had a shot all years from 08 until the Braun suspension, which helps shift me into my side of the argument.

 

Where I started to get concerned was the 2010 offseason. The Sabathia deal was completely understandable, due to the long string of sub-.500 and playoff-less baseball in Milwaukee. In 2010, they still had a good team, and everyone thought they were going to trade Fielder and Hart to get some good young talent. Melvin insisted on two pre-arby MLB pitchers for Fielder. The only team that would trade for one year of a guy is a playoff-hopeful team, and no playoff-hopeful team would trade two good, young pitchers from their rotation, so what he was asking was completely unreasonable. When he couldn't get the deal he wanted, he shifted course, traded the farm for Greinke and Marcum, extended Hart and decided to let Fielder play to free agency.

 

At that point, I said "I hope we win it all, because we're going to pay for this later." I enjoyed 2011, but knew it wouldn't last, and when 2012 rolled around, I said they better have a quick trigger to start trading guys if things weren't going well. They got off to a bad start, but waited too long, so Marcum was untradeable, and they refused to trade Ramirez when the Dodgers really wanted him. Since then, it's been a whole lot of spinning the wheels trying to sell tickets as they became "top heavy" on contracts for aging vets, without the young talent to complement them.

 

I loved where this team was, felt they could have kept it going if they had played their hand differently in 2010, cheered them on in their one real chance at a title, but knew from then that if they didn't change tack a big rebuild would eventually be necessary. Since then, I've just been hoping Brewer management would realize it before it became too painful. I actually hope to start getting optimistic again if they can make some good trades soon, but until they occur, I'm skeptical.

[xisxisxis]

Somebody please....talk me down. Please tell me that I'm overreacting, and that despite all this talent we've given away, we're going to turn this organization around. Mark Attanasio won't let this continue to go on much longer, will he?

 

Unfortunately, Attanasio is the head of the problem, Melvin and the rest of the goons are the body of the problem.

 

Cry. I love this team. I've been loyal to the Brewers for 37 years. But my patience is wearing thin.

 

My patience is gone. I have already walked away from the Brewers, but here is my take on what needs to be done:

1) The next GM has to be straight up with MA and tell him that he is part of the problem. An owner who thinks he knows more about player evaluation & development than his GM is one of the following:

 

A. An egomaniac that a good GM wouldn’t want to work for;

B. Mistaken and Naïve who needs to be taught that the GM runs the baseball operations and the owner takes the credit;

C. If the owner is more qualified than the GM then the owner hired the wrong GM in the first place.

 

If I was being interviewed for the GM job I would hand the owner a signed resignation letter that he can date and record when he wants to and I would tell the owner that this is the letter he would receive from me the minute I heard he had a conversation with a players agent before I had given an OK from me to talk to said agent. Yeah MA you would have to go cold turkey on Boras, but he really doesn’t think you are cool and he only talks to you because you are so in need of being a part of the in-crowd in baseball that you will be a sycophant to an agent….

 

I am sure that MA won’t get a candidate who is honest with him because most candidates who aren’t honest don’t have any options so they will just keep their mouth shut and flatter MA so they will be hired. When MA goes over their head they can just grab their ankles and enjoy the ride. Step 1: the GM is the GM and the owner is not and each is accountable as such.

 

2) Talent identification and development is the most significant goal, purpose and objective of any professional sports team. Those people who are hired to take on that role for the brewers will be reviewed regularly and any individuals who are making it will be let go (whether that is the GM or the northern territory of outer Mongolia chief scout…). Again, as the hypothetical next GM candidate I would ask to get all documents, videos, etc. of the ranking and evaluation that the current organization staff has done over the years to review. If the job that these individuals has done is good then they will be offered a position in the new organization, if not then goodbye and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. This process is not unlike what you have done here Stache, but it needs to be comprehensive and there needs to be a set of criteria. Regional scouts rank the players in their area. If players they have ranked high fail and players ranked lower succeed then they won’t score well. If scouts are consistently ranking players who succeed lower than those that fail then that scout needs to be working for the Cardinals, Cubs, Pirates or Reds and not the Brewers… You can’t be successful in baseball with a small market if you don’t identify good and remove poor talent evaluators. Step 2: Complete review of personnel responsible for player evaluation and routine (yearly) reviews put into place to identify and retain those scouts who are good and remove those who are not good.

 

3) Install an organizational philosopy and stick to it or at least make sure everyone is on board. The first step is to ask everyone in the organization how they would fix the players on the big league club who are underperforming. For batters, if the response is that they aren’t aggressive enough then terminate that employee immediately. A successful organization doesn’t need someone who thinks so little about a topic so critical to the team that their idea of success is be more aggressive. The same question and response can apply to base running. If I was the hypothetical GM candidate I would insist on starting all players in the organization with a series of meetings discussing the importance of an out in baseball. Position players need to know how important not making an out is and pitchers need to know how important it is to maximize the ways to make an out. Use high tech charts including *gasp* numbers to illustrate the point. Step 3: Put into place an organizational philosophy to stress the importance of outs and how batters, pitchers, fielders, and base runners maximize their roles.

 

4) I would also hire people in the player development side that can identify players weaknesses and strengths then put into place a plan to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. I see too often situations where leaders want a certain type of person and try to fit everyone into that mold when they really don’t fit and not playing to those peoples strengths leading in the end to a frustrated manager and employee. Not every 1B will mash tons of home runs and not every SS will be a stolen base wizard. Hitting and pitching instructors will be evaluated on their ability to be flexible with players and to have an eye for identifying strengths/weaknesses. Of course you will miss on players, but how come the brewers miss so bad on pitchers that they don’t even have competent relievers out of the pile of disappointment. Many other organizations fill there bullpens with young, competent relievers while the brewers can’t even find that. Part of it is talent evaluation and part of it is player development. Step 4: revamp player development.

 

5) Add a sabermetric component to organizational talent evaluation & identification. There are a ton of fundamentals of advanced metrics that are clearly not known or understood by this organization from the value/harm of walks to giving up outs on the basepaths to sacrificing runners over to taking pitches. A successful organization that says OBP is important also PRACTICES that OBP is important, on the other hand the Brewers don’t …. Step 5: Put into place and practice sabermetric player analysis.

 

6) Define a dollar value per win and use that for guidelines in evaluating trades, signings and player contracts. If you want to spend $1.2M per win and player X (lets say Broxton) will cost $8M and give you about 3 wins then you would clearly not spend the $8M….. While this is really part of sabermetrics, it also needs to be a part of the evaluation process when acquiring talent. It also is important in evaluating the lost value of trading prospects for veterans and understanding not only short term costs but long term costs. There is nothing wrong with trading prospects for veterans if it puts you over the top (i.e. a world series), but if it gets you to the playoffs and you don’t advance then you may have given too much of the future to secure a mediocre present . I certainly wouldn’t ever encourage trading a minimum wage slightly above replacement level SS to obtain the worst player in baseball (waiving at you Dougie and Batter nine u sucky…) Step 6: Use value of a win to help guide decisions.

 

7) Maximize talent in the organization across all levels. Draft for impact and best player available in the draft. If it means you just picked up your 5th straight shortstop in the 5th round of the draft then you do it, if every shortstop was the best available player. Don’t waste player value by holding onto them till free agency and you have no hope of signing them to a cost effective extension. In my model of organization building if you can’t sign a stud player to a market value or better extension by the end of their 4th season then trade them and add talent in return. If on the rare occasion that the planets align and you are favorites to go to the World Series with that player and not likely without then you would trade the future value for the shot to go and keep him. Step 7: draft/acquire impact/best available player talent. (once you have a scouting/player evaluation group you trust or hasn’t been convicted of malpractice).

 

8) Evaluate every employee who has a direct role in player evaluation & development at least once a year if not twice (beginning and end of year). This includes the manager. While some people think that the manager doesn’t matter they are wrong. The manager matters, the team doctor matters, the weight/conditioning coach matters, but there value and importance is much less than the player’s talent matters. However, that doesn’t mean you ignore these positions. If a really great manager is worth 2 wins and a really horrible manager is worth -2 wins then overall it won’t matter with the current team if you have the -2 manager (RR) or a 0 wins manager (CC) or a top flight manager, but if you are really trying to contend or make it to the world series that 4 game swing of going from a bad manager (RR) to a good manager may be the difference of winning a WC round game and losing in the Divisional playoff instead of making it to the World Series. Getting to 81 wins can be done with a baseball prospectus or with another handbook to predict OPS/WINS/etc. The hardest part is getting from 81 wins to 90+ where you need a lot to go right at every decision. The problem with the Brewers is that they spent a lot of value to get to 85+ wins, got lucky once to get 90+, but mostly have failed to get past the 81 win mark consistently. Having Doug Melvin as Stache has pointed out is a handicap and having the guys he picks as manager and for coaches doesn’t help it only hurts. The current organization that I work for is going through a crisis because we went from a leadership group that believed in hiring people that were smarter than them to a new wave of leadership that hire people dumber than them because they are insecure. We now have layers upon layers of idiots and we are failing miserably because we are being led by a bunch of morons…. The one thing that always struck me was that Dougie appears to hire the dumbest managers, except for the one who was smarter than him he canned the fastest…. Step 8: Evaluate everyone yearly and maximize quality at EVERY position.

 

There isn’t an easy solution to the mess the brewers are in when the buck stops at the owner. MA is NOT a part of the solution unless he hires a good GM and then just steps back and lets him do his job. I am not sure MA has it in his DNA to do that. Getting a good GM is hard as there isn’t a school that trains them. The best I can hope for is that MA interviews at least a half dozen candidates and eliminates a few then keeps Doug Melvin on as an advisor to rank the candidates. If he turn the list upside down and negotiates with the “top” candidate then the Brewers may have a chance. The current Brewers organization reminds me a bit of the 1970s and 1980s Packers in that they had horrible leadership. The Packers solved their problem by going to experts from outside the organization and I think the Brewers need to get someone qualified from outside who will come in and just sweep EVERYTHING out the door. When Dougie was hired he inherited his scouting staff (Jack Z, etc.) and when he brought his people in after Jack left he missed horribly across the board. We are suffering from the incompetence of that period, but to have the same people in place 7 years later smacks of an organization/leadership afraid at reviewing others in the organization in case someone actually says “hey why aren’t we evaluating the boss”…..

[tmwiese55]

Monty, at least you're going all in on trading the fielders/harts/weeks in the way you preferred and then it's sound logically. I totally get it. Much better than the others (most here) who would have just not done the trades in of Greinke, Marcum, etc. I see how this attitude could flip things in your way. My whole view on it was to just look at the players we gave in the trades and think, really it's not that much and wouldn't make a big difference right now. But if you add in 10 other players we could have gotten for those our own stars it would have really created a glut of talent similar to the Cubs now. I get it but I'd still lean the other way since we hadn't been good in forever but more importantly that when do you ever get good? When those prospects come up you would be trading them right away again and just become a farm system.

 

Wow, what a post xis.

[monty57]

I get it but I'd still lean the other way

 

And that is what has always made this site special. We're all die hard Brewer fans, we all want the best for the franchise, and when we view things differently we should always be able to understand the other side. I get why people like going for it, I'm just hard-wired into always looking at future consequences of present actions :-)

 

but more importantly that when do you ever get good? When those prospects come up you would be trading them right away again and just become a farm system.

 

Baseball's salary structure is goofy and it screws the young guys, but it plays very well for teams that want to take advantage of it. A player spends years of "seasoning" in the minors getting paid nothing. Theoretically, when they make it up, they should be pretty ready to play, but they still get paid relatively little compared to most pro athletes for six full seasons. That's crazy when you look at other sports. So, even without extensions, you generally get the player's six best years, with the small exception for guys so good they're up when they're really young. Those are the guys you try to extend when you have a ton of leverage over them... they are playing for $500,000, which means if they get injured they will have to find a "real job" somewhere. Transferring that risk to the team means the team gets a steal of a contract to buy out a couple of years of free agency, so they get the player for eight years instead of six. Eight years is a looooong time in the sporting world, but that's not all. The team has every right to uproot the player and trade him off whenever they want, which should be either when the player's "team control" is getting short or when a younger, cheaper guy allows them the luxury of trading the older, more expensive guy away. It's not easy (nothing is), but the system is in place, so I think teams so do what they can to take advantage of it.

[Patrick425]

No, they traded away the young, cheap guys who would later become all-stars before they had any real trade value.

 

A) They couldn't all become all stars. There were not enough openings for all of them.

 

B) You only know they became "all-stars" because you have the power of hindsight. They could've turned into nothing and had zero trade value. If you really knew that Brantley and Cruz would be all-star caliber players..then yes, you should be the GM.

[igor67]

Only one other person briefly truly touched on the central problem with the original post. Namely it conflates the strategic debate about trading prospects, which is something reasonable people can disagree on with attempting to sort of kind of score various trades and or FA signings that all happened at different times. The major problem with the second point is that it arbitrarily gives all kinds of points for how those players are doing right now without looking at the total value accumulated over all of those years. So many of those young players took multiple years of major league time to develop, time when they had very little value, and or especially given the number of OFers would have likely been benched or traded in favor of someone else. Similar inconsistency arises with Fielder who certainly looked like he was potentially done coming into the year and has a much less favorable contract than Braun.

[TheCrew07]

No, they traded away the young, cheap guys who would later become all-stars before they had any real trade value.

 

A) They couldn't all become all stars. There were not enough openings for all of them.

 

B) You only know they became "all-stars" because you have the power of hindsight. They could've turned into nothing and had zero trade value. If you really knew that Brantley and Cruz would be all-star caliber players..then yes, you should be the GM.

 

Why does it always come back to hindsight? That has nothing to do with the argument being made and is being used as a crutch in all of the various threads.

 

The "how was management supposed to know" argument goes both ways. You can't say that about the players traded away while ignoring the flip side of the argument for the player acquired. It's somewhat baffling that while people remember the playoff appearance in 2008, they seem to forget that the Mets had to collapse for the 2nd year in a row for that to happen, Sabathia or not.

 

I'll say this as simply as I can here, then explain in great detail below, but I don't give a damn about the value traded away, I'm concerned about the total value coming back. The shorter the duration the player is around, the less likely I am to be on board with a deal.

 

Of course there's no guarantee that prospects traded away will have successful MLB careers, but there's no guarantee that rentals or short term solutions will make enough of a difference for the MLB team either. If you look around baseball, how many "blockbuster" trades at the deadline actually made a significant impact for the club acquiring the MLB piece? Honestly... did Teixeira put the Braves over the top in 2008? Greinke with the Dodgers in 2012? Price to the Tigers in 2014? Did any of the A's acquisitions get them over the top last year? Bud Norris for Baltimore in 2013? Garza to the Rangers in 2013? It would be hard to argue that Hunter Pence's .670 playoff OPS and and .671 regular season OPS with the Giants in 2012 was a difference maker, it was their pitching, Detroit only managed 5 runs in 4 games. I think the industry and most fans vastly overrate the trade deadline in baseball, it's more publicity than substance. Sometimes even bad teams try to improve, the 20 games under .500 2004 Mets team tried to improve by swapping Scott Kazmir and other prospect for aging Victor Zambrano and Bartolome Fortunato... neither of whom made a legitimate difference for the Mets long-term after they were acquired.

 

It's no different than signing FAs to contracts, people seem to think you can just assume career norms for the duration of the deal but that's not the way aging works, there is a risk to those deals as well. If the player acquired is any better at all than the player he's replacing the deal is viewed as a win, but is it really that simple?

 

The risk of selling prospects is relative, it depends on market size and the state of your farm system, or put a different way how many resources you have available for your team to plug holes, but even then the teams that are/were perennial buyers with prospect and who plug holes in FA eventually all end up in the same place... with an aging and expensive roster that can no longer compete at a high level.

 

It's not about hindsight, it's about the risk that even one player traded away becomes a top notch talent, which is why I've never been in favor of any short duration deal, nor will I ever be. I could maybe be convinced if the Brewers won a WS with a player acquired in that manner, but they haven't and I can say with certainty that they won't in the near future. I've always wanted players with longevity, and I'll always take a prospect over a draft pick, because I can assign a value to a prospect.

 

Sabathia was worth 5.2 WAR to Milwaukee which was incredible (4.9 pitching, .3 batting), it was one of the historically great stretches of pitching in MLB history. Michael Brantley has been worth 14.6 WAR over his career to date, including the -1.2 WAR in his 2nd short stint with Cleveland in 2010. Could the Brewers reasonably think that Sabathia would be historically good after being acquired? Is that deal ultimately a win from a player value standpoint? Sabathia became Max Walla who never made it past the Timber Rattlers.

 

Zack Greinke was worth 3.7 WAR with the Brewers. Every player traded for him is a big leaguer... Alcides Escobar (13.2 WAR), Lorenzo Cain (13.3 WAR), Jake Odorizzi (3.6 WAR), and Jeremy Jeffress. I understand that Jeffress flamed out before finding success with the Brewers a couple of years later but the point is look at all we gave up to acquire 3.7 WAR from Zack and ultimately Jean Segura's 7.2 WAR, the bulk of which came in 2013? Was Zack a difference maker in the post season for us? Is that whole chain of deals a win for the Brewers from the player perspective?

 

I didn't like those deals, and I've hated on just about every Melvin and Mark A. move because I was sure we were giving up more than we were getting back in terms of player value, I didn't think the Brewers were legitimate WS contenders in any of those seasons. Guys like Brett Lawrie and Matt LaPorta were douchey enough I wasn't sorry to see them go at all, but I would have rather gotten back similar young pitching talent in those trades. For me it's not so much about the players given away, it's about the long-term value that comes back. In a way I felt like Melvin crapped on me with Marcum because I felt he should have been the only target of the Overbay trade in 2006 (which of course certain posters blasted me on afterwards for using "revisionist history") and then we spent our best hitting prospect at the time to acquire him after TJ surgery and his velocity had dipped below 90 MPH, it was like a kick in the nuts. I didn't care about trading away Lawrie, I cared that we were acquiring a 29 year old pitcher with bad mechanics whom I didn't believe would stay healthy who was totally reliant on location and his change-up.

 

I suggested a ton of trades for young pitching over the years, some would have been bad deals, some would have turned out wonderfully in hindsight but I would have rather taken a shot with those guys than gone the Bush, Jackson, Looper, Davis, Wolf, Lohse, Marcum, Greinke, and Sabathia route. The good pitchers were never going to stick around the average guys weren't going to put us over the top.

 

I've been incorrectly labeled a DM and/or MA hater for a long time, but in truth I've just been coming at organization building from an entirely different perspective. It's never been personal, I don't even have a personal attachment to players on the MLB roster, I've come to view them as commodities or maybe resources is a better word. I'm looking to maximize the organization's talent level, not the MLB payroll, because I believe talent is the true currency of baseball, and nothing is more valuable than young impact pitching.

 

BTW, normally I pull pitching WAR from baseball reference and position WAR from Fangraphs, but I was lazy and just used baseball reference for everything for this post.

[RobertR]

Fielder and Aoki, with free agency being a concern, don't belong in the same conversation as Escobar, Odorizzi, Cain, and Brantley. And Cruz is something of a special case as well.

 

I'm surprised the initial post doesn't mention Grienke as well.

 

I don't care what Prince is doing this year. I want no part of that contract. He's been paid nearly $100 million over the first 4 years of his contract and been worth it maybe 2 so far, assuming he doesn't breakdown before this year is over. He's owed $120 million more over 5 years. No thanks. Sabathia had a couple of fine years with the Yankees, but that long term deal is going to end up a disaster and nothing I've seen to date convinces me that Prince's deal isn't going to be just as bad.

 

Aoki is a nice complementary piece, but given his age he's not someone you build around. And, again, with free agency pending moving him was probably a smart choice. And I expect for him to regress to being a mid .700 OPS guy by the time the year is over.

 

I think we all would have been frustrated with the first 5 years of Michael Brantley, who probably would have been a 4th outfielder on the Brewers. There really wasn't room on the roster for him to develop at the big league level. Certainly between Braun, Gomez, Hart, and Aoki, Brantley would have been riding the bench a lot. Really, I don't see how you can list Brantley and Aoki at the same time as it seems like an either/or choice to me.

[3and2Fastball]

From a marketing standpoint the Brewers missed big on the Braun vs Fielder debate, as to who to sign longterm and make the "face of the franchise". That is "if" Fielder could have been legitimately signed longterm and that is a big "if".

[Boomer5]

Fielder wasn't an option to keep. No one was going to out bid the Tigers.

 

Braun at the time was a brilliant signing based on the information Braun gave us at the time.

 

I don't have a problem with the CC ZG moves. We gave up a lot and we got a lot. Being to the playoffs twice in the span of 4 years is huge. Had they drafted better the packages wouldn't be all that painful in the rear view mirror.

 

It all comes down to ability to draft and develop. To upgrade to an elite department wouldn't cost all that much but I guess egos get in the way from making real change and bringing in better evaluators.

[RobertR]

If there's one thing I don't want to hear ever again it's front office excuse making when Baseball America, or whatever other credible outfit is rating farm systems, comes out with a rating of the farm system as bad that "they don't know what they're talking about. Our system is underrated."

 

Yeah, BA may miss on an individual prospect level, but, for the most part, the system rankings bear out over time.

[tmwiese55]

Yea I don't think Fielder was even a possibility with his body type and no DH. Couldn't play adequate D when he was young, how's he going to do at 35. It's funny what two months changes, before the season no one would have been saying we should have kept him as the first 3 years of that deal weren't really good and he's only getting older, two month hot streak and all is forgotten I guess. I think it was reported they gave a 6/120 offer to him which I thought was about right, if he wouldn't take that or something very close they had to let him go.

[Patrick425]

My patience is gone. I have already walked away from the Brewers,

 

Seriously? Pretty much stopped reading your long post after this statement because apparently you were never really a fan to begin with.

 

I've been a Brewer fan for close to 40 years. I've seen much worse than this.

[yfinn6]

My patience is gone. I have already walked away from the Brewers,

 

Seriously? Pretty much stopped reading your long post after this statement because apparently you were never really a fan to begin with.

 

I've been a Brewer fan for close to 40 years. I've seen much worse than this.

 

I did the same thing. This season is frustrating and the future leaks a bit bleak at the moment, but c'mon.

[TheCrew07]

So we're back to making "true fan" arguments again? I cancelled my limited season package (I live 2.5 hours from Miller Park) after 2008 because it obvious where this was going.

 

Read or don't read the posts, but calling out posters for their "fandom" is over the top from my perspective. I can understand being tired of the Brewer act, that's where I am and why I spend most of my time on the minor league side.

[TooLiveBrew]

Yeah, the "true fan" stuff & ad hominem stuff in general has to stop or this thread won't last long.

[adambr2]

'Walked away' to me just means mentally checked out of the season this year. I think that describes a lot of us. It doesn't mean we don't still love the Brewers, but I can't blame anyone who would rather invest their time and money this summer in things other than this team.

[brewmann04]

I love the brewers and still bought the baseball package from direct tv but at least this year i won't plan my summer around the crew.

[danzig6767]

I can't ever totally walk away from watching the Brewers in a season even if they are bad simply because i love watching baseball to much, specifically Brewers baseball. The main difference for me in a season like this is i DVR most games and fast forward through stretches of the games. I'll watch say Nelson pitch, but fast forward through innings with Garza or Lohse on the mound. Watch any new guys who are called up.

 

Without a DVR though, i'd very likely watch much less. For example, wouldn't watch the Brewers game with Game 7 of the Rangers/Lightning game that was on tonight or when the NBA Finals start.

 

As for attending games, i'll still go now that summer and warm weather has arrived. I've always attended games as much or more for hanging out with friends and tailgating on a hot summer day/night than caring if the team wins the game i'm at.

[SoupTown]

"I've always attended games as much or more for hanging out with friends and tailgating on a hot summer day/night than caring if the team wins the game i'm at."

 

A true fan, and Mark and Doug love you for it.

 

I wonder if the MLB squad would get the 'message' if there were a few nights where they were venue swapped with Appleton. Since that would not fly, how about double headers. The Brewers play an early, entree game, then the Rattlers put on the main show. Even our AA team with no home ground would likely be happy to have the Brewers be an intro act for them at an MLB stadium. It could be billed as 'the past' and 'the future' double header. (since there is no present)

[Boomer5]

My patience is gone. I have already walked away from the Brewers,

 

Seriously? Pretty much stopped reading your long post after this statement because apparently you were never really a fan to begin with.

 

I've been a Brewer fan for close to 40 years. I've seen much worse than this.

 

I've been a fan equally as long and I'm not sure I've seen much worse. The record, the farm system, the Herb Kohl style of management.

 

The park is nicer. I will give you that.

[3and2Fastball]

I will remain a Brewers fan but I won't buy any more tickets until at the very least Doug Melvin is fired. Our extended family always gets together for one game a year, so tickets are already bought for that game in August, other than that I won't spend a dime on Brewers tickets or merchandise.

 

I'll watch the games on TV, especially to see my favorite players like Segura & Scooter. Looking forward to seeing Wagner pitch. Hoping we get some exciting prospects in trades this year. Excited about the possibility of a Top 3 Draft pick in 2016

[Patrick425]

So we're back to making "true fan" arguments again?

 

 

Yes I am. Sorry if you walk away from a team every time they are not doing well, then, as far as I'm concerned, you are not a fan.If someone says to you "Hey did you see the game last night" and you respond with "I don't watch the Brewers. They suck", then how can you call yourself a fan? Great things can still happen within games that make it fun to watch even if they lose a majority of their games. So easy to love a team when they are doing well. I don't cheer for the management, I cheer for the players on the field.

[Invader3K]

I really don't see how bringing back Melvin after this season is justified. If you want to keep him around the rest of the season so he can oversee the draft and whatever else, fine. However, the team is currently 16-33. We're two months into the season, and the team hasn't even amassed 20 wins! The Brewers are currently on pace to be a historically awful team... We're talking 2002 Milwaukee Brewers terrible.

 

Of course, I would have fired both Melvin and Roenicke after last season's collapse, so what do I know?

 

I will be at the game today...only my second one so far this season. I have been finding myself watching and listening to far fewer games then in years past. I still consider myself a diehard fan...but I don't feel the need to subject myself to awful baseball put on by a seemingly directionless franchise right now.