My ultimate frustration with the Brewers as a franchise: their inability to sustain success

[folly412]

So much of sustaining success comes down to the Stearns mission statement: acquire and develop young, controllable talent.

 

Notice how the prime buyers this year are expected to be the Dodgers, Yankees, Astros and Braves: teams that already have young, controllable talent on their rosters, have already traded prospects to improve their MLB roster, yet still have an abundance of minor league talent to either call up or use for acquisitions. Yes, being able to dish out a nine figure contract helps, but payroll doesn't explain how they can call up homegrown All-Star level talent, trade away prospects, yet still have loaded farm systems.

 

We haven't had that luxury - if the Brewers are winning, our farm is generally bottom 10 in baseball. When we were rebuilding and trading away talent for prospects, we had a top five farm. The Stearns objective is to have so much organizational talent that we can be a playoff contender, replenish with an incoming pipeline of talent, make upgrades to the MLB roster, and still have a strong system.

[stalton]

Should a team that makes the post season on a regular basis, but doesn't win the World Series, still be considered successful? Yes, I believe so...

 

Could not agree more. This is entertainment. It's entertaining when they're in the mix and it's not when they're not. It'd be fun to win it all, too, but after that... it would be entertaining when they're in the mix, and not when they're not.

 

Different sports, systems, mechanics, salary cap styles, and fruit types immensely, BUT the rest of Wisconsin have had plenty to say on the Herb Kohl Era Bucks and the perennial 8th seed in the playoffs and the only 2 Lombardi trophies in the Favre/Rodgers Era.

 

Also, kudos to the well researched, well written thesis on things. Without seeing who started the thread, I assumed it was going to be a gripefest with other word misspelled or capitalized. I appreciate all the effort that went into that post.

[owbc]

Different sports, systems, mechanics, salary cap styles, and fruit types immensely, BUT the rest of Wisconsin have had plenty to say on the Herb Kohl Era Bucks and the perennial 8th seed in the playoffs and the only 2 Lombardi trophies in the Favre/Rodgers Era.

 

People will complain no matter what, that's for sure. One only needs to look to Boston.

[josh]

Different sports, systems, mechanics, salary cap styles, and fruit types immensely, BUT the rest of Wisconsin have had plenty to say on the Herb Kohl Era Bucks and the perennial 8th seed in the playoffs and the only 2 Lombardi trophies in the Favre/Rodgers Era.

 

People will complain no matter what, that's for sure. One only needs to look to Boston.

 

People would. I wouldn’t.

[rickh150]

So much of sustaining success comes down to the Stearns mission statement: acquire and develop young, controllable talent.

 

Notice how the prime buyers this year are expected to be the Dodgers, Yankees, Astros and Braves: teams that already have young, controllable talent on their rosters, have already traded prospects to improve their MLB roster, yet still have an abundance of minor league talent to either call up or use for acquisitions. Yes, being able to dish out a nine figure contract helps, but payroll doesn't explain how they can call up homegrown All-Star level talent, trade away prospects, yet still have loaded farm systems.

 

We haven't had that luxury - if the Brewers are winning, our farm is generally bottom 10 in baseball. When we were rebuilding and trading away talent for prospects, we had a top five farm. The Stearns objective is to have so much organizational talent that we can be a playoff contender, replenish with an incoming pipeline of talent, make upgrades to the MLB roster, and still have a strong system.

 

Being able to dish out big salaries to FA builds and holds your depth. So much of MLB is tied to how much money you can dish out to good/great players. It doesn't take a genius to sign players when you have the cash, and the crap shoot that the draft is levels the playing field there too. Oh, there is some skill to putting a team together, recognizing talent, and popping your personalized algorithm in to minor league stats, but money trumps all of it, from getting free agents to hiring guys with the talent to run a team.

 

You are right that we do not have the luxury to have a deep farm and great roster at the same time....Rarely happens for baseball's bottom half. Stearns and Melvin know this better than most.

[The stache]

I also don't think you can simply look at postseason appearances when determining success. Regular season wins has to be the determining factor. Almost every year there are teams with records that would win a division that don't even make the post season or lose the wild card game. Hard to call having a top 5 record in your league but not advancing to the "final four" a not successful season.

 

I agree completely. I know it's a rather long post, but if you go back and re-read the whole thing, you'll see I not only alluded to regular season performance being a part of a team's success, I awarded points to teams for division titles won.

[treego14]

Great, great, great post! Thank you for the hard work of proving some things here.

 

My takes

(1) it's particularly hard for small market/low payroll teams to overcome -- it's a shame that MLB has not been able to keep better balance on payrolls.

 

(2) Brewers fans have suffered like few other fan bases for the past several decades

[sveumrules]

So what you're saying is we're overdue for positive regression to the mean?

[JohnBriggs12]

It would be nice if the Brewers had someone who isnt a top prospect come up and have sustained success too. It seems like the Cubs, Cards, and Dodgers have someone who know one has really heard of come up and make a multi year impact. Or maybe they were highly touted prospects and I just hadn't heard much about them. Bote, Muncy, DeJong, etc.

 

The Brewers have had their share of guys like that. Unfortunately, Stearns has traded them away for little return or released them. Scooter Gennett wasn't a highly touted prospect. Nor was Khris Davis. We're still waiting on anyone they received back for Davis to make any impact in the major leagues. The latest example is Garrett Cooper who the Brewers basically gave away despite the fact he was the best hitter on a AAA team that included prospects Lewis Brinson and Brett Phillips.

[homer]

Cooper realistically had nowhere to play above Triple-A in the Brewers' system with Thames and Jesus Aguilar excelling at first base at the time. Also, I believe he had to be added to the 40 man after the season or they probably would have lost him in rule 5 anyways.

[bill hAll Star]

I realize that Aguilar is having a down year with this same advantage, but I'd suspect if Cooper was hitting .265/.340/.450 and 8 HR in this half season...nobody would care. I hate to keep bringing that up but the timing of him getting full-time playing when they changed the equipment drastically for baseball is also a factor.

 

Ditto on Scooter with the first go-round of the juiced ball.

 

Not that these guys can't hang in the majors but they changed scenery right when the game changed. I'm sure Cleveland would say the same about Aguilar who started clubbing the ball with the Brewers right when they juiced it the first time.

[MrTPlush]

Cooper realistically had nowhere to play above Triple-A in the Brewers' system with Thames and Jesus Aguilar excelling at first base at the time. Also, I believe he had to be added to the 40 man after the season or they probably would have lost him in rule 5 anyways.

 

Yah, you could make an argument with Khris Davis and Scooter Gennett that maybe they could have done things different...but Garrett Cooper? That is really stretching it to the point one is just complaining to complain without considering the situation at the time and the future.

[sveumrules]

Having the DH as an option likely would have prevented us from losing one (or maybe even more) of the "ones that got away" over the last few seasons.

[bill hAll Star]

There are legitimate gripes potentially on Khris Davis and a few others, but I only have to go back about 11 months to recall when people were clutching the, "I KNEW we shouldn't have traded ____" where "____" was Villar, Luis Ortiz, Jorge Lopez, Phillips after they all were doing OK for tanking teams or were overvalued prospects (Ortiz). Or there's the fun case of guys like Miguel Diaz.

 

I suspect that Cooper may one day fall back with this caliber of player, the fans that are still crying about Khris Davis or Scooter's other forgotten complaints, which comprise about 90% of total complaints.