Opinons of Attanasio?

[Rowdy]

Sounds like your owner might be investing in my Football team in England. What are your guys thoughts on him? Should we be excited or pissed off? Cheers from Norwich, England

[NBBrewFan]

1 hour ago, Rowdy said:

Sounds like your owner might be investing in my Football team in England. What are your guys thoughts on him? Should we be excited or pissed off? Cheers from Norwich, England

If you get excited by an owner who makes a great return on his investment then you should be really excited.

[AdvantageSchneider]

There are 28 owners of MLB teams that aren't corporations.  Of the other 27 owners I'd really only want to trade Attanasio for 6.  He's clearly a better owner than half the other teams.  

He seems to be a smart guy and appears to be committed to owning the team for a long time.  

I would think you could do worse.  I don't know anything about football in England.  I doubt he's going to spend a crazy ton of money to improve the team but he probably won't be a penny pinched either.   He's generally a smart guy.  I assume he will hire smart people.

[MVP2110]

26 minutes ago, AdvantageSchneider said:

There are 28 owners of MLB teams that aren't corporations.  Of the other 27 owners I'd really only want to trade Attanasio for 6.  He's clearly a better owner than half the other teams.  

He seems to be a smart guy and appears to be committed to owning the team for a long time.  

I would think you could do worse.  I don't know anything about football in England.  I doubt he's going to spend a crazy ton of money to improve the team but he probably won't be a penny pinched either.   He's generally a smart guy.  I assume he will hire smart people.

This is a great way to put it l, he's not the best owner but he's far from the worst. 

[Rowdy]

Thanks all. Not expecting silly money to be spent, but perhaps more than we can currently afford. Our team has been up and down from the top league for the past 3/4 seasons. Hoping someone might come and give us a real crack at staying up if we get promoted again next season! As long as he isnt going to bankrupt us and leave us for dead, he cant make us any poorer ?

[Brock Beauchamp]

The best way I've heard it explained is:

"Europeans expect socialism in their economy and capitalism in their sports, while Americans expect capitalism in their economy and socialism in their sports".

How Attanasio adapts to that massive gulf in perspective is... *shrugs*

[Brock Beauchamp]

And while it's easy to be skeptical, I will say that under Attanasio's run, the Brewers have been pretty successful, especially recently. Maybe the most important role of an owner is to choose the right people to run the organization and Mark Attanasio seems to be, at minimum, pretty good at that job.

[Playing Catch]

I think the Brewers franchise is one of the most well-run professional sports teams in the United States. Attanasio has continued to invest in the organization in a responsible, long-term outlook. Throughout his time as owner of the Brewers he has earned the admiration of the employees of the organization as well as continued to center the importance of fan experience.

I think the only reason Brewers fans would like more from him, is that they would like him to spend more money on free agents.

[JimH5]

The Brewers organization is in a much better place than it was when Attanasio bought the team.  They have more engagement with the community than just about any club in the sport.  They're successful on the field.  He seems like a nice man with a good family.

 

He said he wanted to be competitive every year, and the Brewers are just that.  That the Brewers aren't players for the top of the free agent classes hasn't hurt them in putting together competitive rosters.

[AdvantageSchneider]

On 5/27/2022 at 5:30 PM, MVP2110 said:

This is a great way to put it l, he's not the best owner but he's far from the worst. 

And the only reason he isn't listed as the best is because they haven't won the WS yet.  If he can pull that off than I'd have zero complaints at all.  That's a big mountain to climb for a small market franchise like ours.

[Austin Tatious]

He’s a great owner for this market.  

The prior owner put a doozy over on the fan base.  He had an ulterior motive to demonstrate to the league that small market teams were in a hopeless situation. That’s how he marketed the team to the fan base and the fans fell for it and repeated his talking points.  Sadly, the Brewer fans were collateral damage to Bud’s agenda.

The new owner never played that card.  He has built the franchise up.  He’s made shrewd decisions in terms of getting Stearns and Counsell and a good infrastructure in here.  The fans have gone from hopeless to picky and harder to please.  The defeatist attitude is gone.  He spends in a targeted way and he’s kept the team competitive.  

[Jopal78]

On 5/29/2022 at 6:40 PM, Austin Tatious said:

He’s a great owner for this market.  

The prior owner put a doozy over on the fan base.  He had an ulterior motive to demonstrate to the league that small market teams were in a hopeless situation. That’s how he marketed the team to the fan base and the fans fell for it and repeated his talking points.  Sadly, the Brewer fans were collateral damage to Bud’s agenda.

The new owner never played that card.  He has built the franchise up.  He’s made shrewd decisions in terms of getting Stearns and Counsell and a good infrastructure in here.  The fans have gone from hopeless to picky and harder to please.  The defeatist attitude is gone.  He spends in a targeted way and he’s kept the team competitive.  

Attanasio is a hedge fund guy.  Team from the 3 big leagues in America have been the ultimate investment: there are not that many, their business doesn't fail, they don't depreciate, they generate operating revenue etc.  He's a fine owner as a venture capitalist. I don't think he puts out the cash call to his minority investors/partners to "add that last missing piece";  and if the team didn't have the talent to compete, I have no doubt he would take it down to the studs and run a payroll of 70 million dollars. 

However, he has hired decent folks to run the team for him, has not (at least publically) interfered much in the day to day, and with the exception of Ned Yost has been patient and loyal to the people he has hired to run his team. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Jopal78 said:

Attanasio is a hedge fund guy.  Team from the 3 big leagues in America have been the ultimate investment: there are not that many, their business doesn't fail, they don't depreciate, they generate operating revenue etc.  He's a fine owner as a venture capitalist. I don't think he puts out the cash call to his minority investors/partners to "add that last missing piece";  and if the team didn't have the talent to compete, I have no doubt he would take it down to the studs and run a payroll of 70 million dollars. 

However, he has hired decent folks to run the team for him, has not (at least publically) interfered much in the day to day, and with the exception of Ned Yost has been patient and loyal to the people he has hired to run his team. 

Agree 100% with every word of this.

[owbc]

Attanasio is the best small-market owner in MLB. There isn't another small- or even mid-market owner who has come close to matching his combined success both on and off the field.

He keeps getting smarter and learning from his mistakes.  I have no doubt that he wants to win, but he's seen nothing but failures from other teams who have tried to build through free agency. Including many with way bigger budgets than the Brewers. His own attempts to sign large contracts have yielded mixed results at best. I'm sure that he will never sign another contract like the Yelich one. If he overpays, it is for one or two year contracts at most. 

The Royals are the only small market team to win the World Series in the Attanasio era. The Rays are the gold standard for baseball operations, but any owner that threatens to play 50% of games in Montreal immediately moves to the bottom of the list. 

I'm going to knock Attanasio, it's mostly for the fact that he hasn't fully embraced the Rays' strategy of baseball operations. The Braun contract hurt us in the mid-2010s and the Yelich contract is the reason we are failing to get over the hump in the 2020s. Before that it was other stupid free agent signings like Garza. He's a fan and has his heart in it, so he inevitably gets too emotionally attached to our star players and doesn't trade them when he needs to, despite the analytics clearly showing he needs to do so.

I think he has learned and will trade Hader and eventually Burnes, but we'll see...

 

[Samurai Bucky]

20 hours ago, owbc said:

I'm going to knock Attanasio, it's mostly for the fact that he hasn't fully embraced the Rays' strategy of baseball operations. The Braun contract hurt us in the mid-2010s and the Yelich contract is the reason we are failing to get over the hump in the 2020s. Before that it was other stupid free agent signings like Garza. He's a fan and has his heart in it, so he inevitably gets too emotionally attached to our star players and doesn't trade them when he needs to, despite the analytics clearly showing he needs to do so.

I think the long-term signing of Yelich embraced a bit of the Milwaukee culture.  We yearn to have a player stick around because "Milwaukee is home." Yount, Braun, Yelich, Antetokounmpo, Rogers, Favre are examples of this.

Another thing that is interesting is how their marketing department comes up with so many different deals to get people to come to the games.  I don't mean the special giveaways, but I'm thinking of the $9.99 field level ticket promotion as an example.  I saw a story that in Oakland, they are averaging under 8,000 per game Link here.  The Brewers are averaging over 28K.  Yes, the Brewers have a good team, but there are affordable options to come out to a game.  

20 hours ago, owbc said:

I think he has learned and will trade Hader and eventually Burnes, but we'll see...

People have been calling for Hader to be traded for years.  I'm not sure how having a 0.00 ERA produces a WAR of only 1.4, but I guess that means that any arm can step in and be just as effective.  The .600 WHIP is suspect too... let's go Hader... be better!

All I know is the Brewers have been competitive for a while now -- something I don't want to take for granted.  In Stearns I trust.

[TheAnalytics]

3 hours ago, Samurai Bucky said:

I'm not sure how having a 0.00 ERA produces a WAR of only 1.4, but I guess that means that any arm can step in and be just as effective. 

Maybe not the place for this discussion, but it seems like there’s a misunderstanding of the WAR framework here so I’ll explain. 
 

I’ll use Hader’s current 16.2 IP, 0 RA, and 1.5 RA9 WAR (per Fangraphs) over 18 games and assume that a “replacement”/baseline reliever has a 4.50 ERA or so. This means that Hader has allowed 8-9 fewer runs than the replacement player thus far. If we randomly distribute those runs over the games that Hader has pitched in, sometimes we still hold on to the game because the lead is more than a run or the replacement player happens to have a clean inning, sometimes the replacement player blows the lead and we end up going to extras or losing.
 

Imagine running this random run distribution thousands or millions of times. On average, the Brewers will have won roughly 1.5 more games with Hader against using the replacement pitcher.

I’ll also say that 1.5 WAR through 16-17 innings is incredibly good! A reliever that puts up 1.5 wins over a whole season is a solid back of bullpen contributor and he’s done it in two months of work. 

[sveumrules]

3 minutes ago, TheAnalytics said:

Maybe not the place for this discussion, but it seems like there’s a misunderstanding of the WAR framework here so I’ll explain. 
 

I’ll use Hader’s current 16.2 IP, 0 RA, and 1.5 RA9 WAR (per Fangraphs) over 18 games and assume that a “replacement”/baseline reliever has a 4.50 ERA or so. This means that Hader has allowed 8-9 fewer runs than the replacement player thus far. If we randomly distribute those runs over the games that Hader has pitched in, sometimes we still hold on to the game because the lead is more than a run or the replacement player happens to have a clean inning, sometimes the replacement player blows the lead and we end up going to extras or losing.
 

Imagine running this random run distribution thousands or millions of times. On average, the Brewers will have won roughly 1.5 more games with Hader against using the replacement pitcher.

I’ll also say that 1.5 WAR through 16-17 innings is incredibly good! A reliever that puts up 1.5 wins over a whole season is a solid back of bullpen contributor and he’s done it in two months of work. 

Yeah, WAR is context neutral, though I believe FanGraphs includes a leverage adjustment for relievers. Win Probability Added is context dependent & Hader is an MLB best (among relievers & starters) +2.23 so far.

For reference only 36 relievers all last season tallied 1.5 or more rWAR and only 24 topped a +2.23 WPA over the course of 162 games. 

Over the last 30 years only 4 relievers topped 4.5 rWAR & only 5 topped +6.00 WPA in a single season, so I think the advanced stats are doing a pretty good job of capturing Josh's dominant start.

Hopefully Attanasio understands how unique Hader truly is & the Brewers end up as the team that signs him to that record setting contract he has earned.

[brewers888]

Attanasio is a pretty decent owner who would be even better if he stopped interfering and signing guys on his own. 

[brewers888]

1 hour ago, sveumrules said:

Yeah, WAR is context neutral, though I believe FanGraphs includes a leverage adjustment for relievers. Win Probability Added is context dependent & Hader is an MLB best (among relievers & starters) +2.23 so far.

For reference only 36 relievers all last season tallied 1.5 or more rWAR and only 24 topped a +2.23 WPA over the course of 162 games. 

Over the last 30 years only 4 relievers topped 4.5 rWAR & only 5 topped +6.00 WPA in a single season, so I think the advanced stats are doing a pretty good job of capturing Josh's dominant start.

Hopefully Attanasio understands how unique Hader truly is & the Brewers end up as the team that signs him to that record setting contract he has earned.

Brewers are never paying a reliever 20 million plus per year on a long term deal. We can debate the merits of it but a small market team just cannot afford that type of money for that few innings pitched no matter how exceptional Hader is. I also question how we can possibly not trade him before losing him for nothing but as a contending team that is probably the direction we will take.

[Samurai Bucky]

2 hours ago, TheAnalytics said:

I’ll use Hader’s current 16.2 IP, 0 RA, and 1.5 RA9 WAR (per Fangraphs) over 18 games and assume that a “replacement”/baseline reliever has a 4.50 ERA or so. This means that Hader has allowed 8-9 fewer runs than the replacement player thus far. If we randomly distribute those runs over the games that Hader has pitched in, sometimes we still hold on to the game because the lead is more than a run or the replacement player happens to have a clean inning, sometimes the replacement player blows the lead and we end up going to extras or losing.

Imagine running this random run distribution thousands or millions of times. On average, the Brewers will have won roughly 1.5 more games with Hader against using the replacement pitcher.

I’ll also say that 1.5 WAR through 16-17 innings is incredibly good! A reliever that puts up 1.5 wins over a whole season is a solid back of bullpen contributor and he’s done it in two months of work. 

Thank you for the detailed explanation.  I also thought that his performance this year is exceptional and have been curious why, for the past few years, there was a desire to trade him.  Today, I understand the merit of the argument -- is he really worth a big chunk of change?  If the Brewers are in the hunt for a World Series, I don't see how they can trade him because he is too valuable.

To bring this back to the main topic (a rabbit hole I, admittingly, went down), I think Attanasio goes as Stearns goes.

[NBBrewFan]

29 minutes ago, Samurai Bucky said:

I think Attanasio goes as Stearns goes.

Yes.  And we should keep in mind there haven't been a lot of GMs/heads of operations who have been able to succeed long-term with very restrictive budgets.  Beene and Friedman (when with the Rays) are really the only 2 in the current baseball environment.  Now add Stearns. I'm resigned to the fact we might not get lucky again when Stearns moves on (maybe Arnold has some of that magic).