Is Milwaukee a desirable location to Free Agents?

[twobrewers]

I was going to put this in the Cordero thread, as that is where the notion was spun - but that thread is long enough and I have a few other points to make.

 

Do free agents want to play for the Brewers?

 

Schilling said he was interested in the Brewers - and then took a deal worth less than the Brewers would have likely offered from Boston.

 

Kerry Wood was offered a multi-year contract from the Brewers - and took a 1 year deal with the Cubs.

 

Cordero said he loved playing for the Brewers - and left without giving the Brewers a chance to match the Red's offer.

 

Estrada gave a few derogatory remarks on his way out the door.

 

This has been the most concerning part of this off-season for me. The Brewers are loaded with potential, but seem to be unable to attract a quality free agent.

 

Am I overreacting?

[TooLiveBrew]

You're overreacting a tad, but your general point is not off-base imho.

 

Schilling - took a less lucrative deal, but iirc it's incentive-laden, and he pitches on the defending WS champs, not a team hoping to take the title in arguably the weakest division in MLB.

 

Wood - took a 1-yr. deal worth less in the very short term, but which in the very near term may parlay into much, much more moola. If he has a nice 2008, the payday afterwards will be huge. Plus, as has been mentioned, the incentives may be of the 'easy-to-reach' variety, thus making the AAV of the deal better than any other potential deal.

 

Cordero - took more money in what is likely his last 'big' FA deal. Plus, rumored that he didn't like how he was used - seems par for the course with our 2007 bullpen.

 

Estrada - meh. He proved to be a disappointment, and to boot had a crappy, crappy attitude. See ya later.

[Fatter than Joey]

Probably.

 

I think Schilling & Wood made a lot of sense returning.

 

Cordero got offered more money

 

Estrada is Estrada.

 

I think the thing to keep in mind -- 2 years ago we aren't on Schilling's or Wood's radar

[homer]

Speaking of radars....remember when everyone got excited when Matt Clement said he had a friend on the Brewers? My how far we've come.

[MNBrew]

Do free agents want to play for the Brewers?

 

The Brewers are loaded with potential, but seem to be unable to attract a quality free agent. Am I overreacting?

I think so.

 

Aside from the fact that Jason Kendall's hardly chopped liver, there are still 2.5 months before ST, the Winter Meetings are still a week away -- and many years nothing really happens until then -- and this is a weak free agent class. Sure, there are big names. And many of those are toting around performance dropoffs or major injury histories.

 

Also, Schilling never really wanted to leave Boston, and to some extent ditto for Kerry Wood w/ Chicago (which also won its division, and his wife's from there, too). I understand some of Estrada's bitterness, but the Brewers also had a chance to improve the position, and nobody's ego likes to see themselves replaced, regardless of how honest Estrada indeed was about his injuries affecting his performance.

Maybe you're right and there are still issues there. But it's not like the Brewers have re-established a serious winning tradition quite yet, either. I wonder if 90+ wins and a division championship -- and a season without a major slump -- would also make the Brewers look that much more attractive. The current FA crop being what it is, though, other than losing Cordero, I don't see this being the worst year not to be the greatest FA magnet.

Let other teams pay the price for their absurd overspending this year and leave the Brewers out of it except for a careful/shrewd move here or there, I figure.

 

[dadofandrew]

I think MIL is a destination for a thinking man's free agent, at this point. If they start to win, it may be a bandwagon thing.

[twobrewers]

Thanks for talking me down a bit.

 

I was really stunned to hear we offered Cordero so much money - only to be rejected for the Reds. (The Reds!)

 

And apparently the Brewers were quite serious about Wood. (Why can't he follow Cordero's lead and go to the most money!)

 

I would just love to know how players throughout the league look at the Brewers. Do they like the city? Do they like the stadium? Do they like the coach? Do they like the other players? Etc.

[TooLiveBrew]

We still have a year or two before our young guys start making big boy money, so we could conceivably sign 'LF/3B X' to a 4-year deal at $10+ mil., and work with trades as necessary. That is, if the FA turned out to be a better fit, plan accordingly. If this team plays near its ceiling for 2008, we will be north of 85 wins. Well, I guess that's assuming our bullpen will be stronger. I still have some patience for the winter meetings.

[logan82]

Free agency is still all about money. Bottom line is that we will never pay as much as most other teams. I think it is safe to say that we will never see the Brewers sign the biggest free agent in any offseason. The fact that we get mentioned by big free agents is the best we can hope for in many cases. Sorry if you find what I said depressing.

[Big Reed]

rather than looking at just this year, you could say FA 's in general have avoided milwaukee like the plague for the last 25 years. it's not just the corderos and estradas and Woods. it's almost every quality free agent.

 

they say milwaukee is too small of a town. Well, it's bigger than tampa, pitt, cincy, Seattle, and St louis.

 

they say milwaukee's payroll is too small. Last time I checked, Milwaukee's payroll was more than at least 10 other teams.

 

they say milwaukee is too cold. how many brewers live in milwaukee in the off season anyway? This shouldn't even be a factor, but it's used as an excuse. I can't believe how basketball players can complain about Milwaukee being too cold. They get in their cars in their garage, or in a taxi from their hotel. they eat inside in restaurants. they play and work out indoors. they spend less than 1 % of their time outdoors, but complain Milwaukee is too cold. Milwaukee is warmer than boston is , yet weather is never a factor for Boston.

 

they say Milwaukee doesn't like to deal with certain agents. Well, we have a boras client.

 

they say Milwaukee doesn't overpay. We over paid for Suppan, and have offered many agents more money than what they signed for elsewhere.

 

they say free agents like to sign with a winner. So Cordero leaves a winner for a loser?

 

they say milwaukee likes to build it's team through its farm system rather than acquire free agents. to an extent, that is probably true.

 

To say free agents always take the most money is an uninformed lie. The typical free agent today gives his agent a list of about 5- 10 teams he'd consider playing for. he then tells his agent to find the best match. if your team isn't in that list of teams, the agent for that player is not even going to consider your team's offer even if it is the highest offer. a case in point would be Barry Bonds. he has left strict instructions with his agent that he will only play for West Coast teams. No matter what the brewers would want to offer, it's going to meet with deaf ears from Barry's agent. the same was true with Greg Maddux, Glavine, Rivera, Pettite and Posada. These guys informed their agents to only look at certain teams's offers. The brewers could have come up with a bigger financial offer than what the player received, but the player already instructed his agent to only consider offers from certain teams.

 

Most free agents prefer to play for a winner verses the team that offers the most money. The Brewers were not even considered a possibility for Dice KAY! The brewers still have not won a division title or made a play-off appearance in the past 25 years. Most free agents like to be the final piece of the puzzle rather than the foundation for a losing team with an uncertain future. the idea that Sheets might be allowed to leave because he'll cost too much to retain is not attractive to attract free agents. No free agent wants to sign with a team if he "BELIEVES" that team will not retain its other quality players. Think about why Hunter signed with the Angels. The Twins talked about trading away Santana for prospects and rebuilding. While, the Angels have a chance to make the play-offs, and they have a good winning track record for the last 5 years. When the Brewers start hoisting up a few division crowns, and establish themselves as a consistant winner, you will see a lot more quality free agents wanting to sign with the Brewers. But until the brewers are a consistant winning franchise, they will have to find their quality players through the draft and via trades.

 

On the bright side, several years ago, guys like Suppan and kendall would have never entertained offers from the brewers - no matter what the brewers offered. To a free agent, winning is more important than just the money. look at how many quality free agents have signed with Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Tampa bay over the course of the last decade. a 90 win season goes a long way to signing a quality free agent.

 

I know there are always exceptions. I have no idea why Cordero signed with the Reds. that didn't make sense. the reds' budget is tighter than Milwaukee's is. the team is worse. the future does not look brighter for the reds. and cincy's cost of living is higher. although they do have a great BBQ ribs restaurant.

[SeriesFinale]

What comments did Estrada make? I didn't see anything in the media.

[danzig6767]

I think MIL is a destination for a thinking man's free agent, at this point. If they start to win, it may be a bandwagon thing.

I think you're reaching Al

 

Free agents choose where to play for the same reasons they always have. Money, where they and their family want to live, is the team competitive, and for elite players, i'm sure marketing ability enters the thought process. The two things that have changed is we now are willing to pay market value for some free agents, in the past that rarely was the case and without that, a team has no chance. The team also is now competitive enough that free agents with multiple options don't right away cross the Brewers off the list.

 

With that said, Milwaukee is still a city that some players and their wives will pass on if the opportunity is available to make similar money in a more desirable city. We aren't the only city in this situation and there is nothing those teams can do about it. Bigger cities and better climate cities will always have this advantage, but teams in those cities won't always want the same players we do. Players want to get paid and now that the Brewers finally are willing to pay, they at least have a chance and being a pretty good team adds to being more attractive than in the past. That's alot better than good free agents laughing at the thought of playing here.

 

Then sometimes it simply comes down to luck. A fairly wide variety of reasons can make a free agent choose to play here or elsewhere, some of those things entirely out of the Brewers control. On a scale of 1-10, the Brewers pre-Miller Park and being competitive were probably at 1 or .5 in regards to being a desirable team for free agents. Now we're probably in the 5 or 6 range tops, but i question if it can get much higher unless the team starts making the playoffs fairly consistently. I'm not sure that would even be enough for upper tier free agents.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Milwaukee can be a desirable destination for free agents, just not the "Type A" players/pitchers. No matter how much we dream about increasing the payroll from 65 to 75 million dollars, there will always be teams that can afford to pay a quality free agent more than what the Brewers can afford - if it isn't more per year, they'll almost always add a year or two to the length of the contract. The Brewers can't get into a bidding war over players, because paying too high a payroll percentage for one player cripples their organization longterm.

 

The fact is, if the Brewers find more resources/money to increase their payroll and add players, all the big market clubs find 4-5x that amount and can use it to outbid small market teams. This forces the Brewers to improve their roster via trades and the draft. FA signings can only be made to improve roster depth and fill gaping roster holes to "bridge the gap" until younger, cheaper players develop in the minors. Unless some sort of salary cap is imposed on MLB, that's always how it will be. While Milwaukee may be a larger town than some of the other cities with MLB teams, it is among the smallest markets, since there are two teams 90 miles to the south in Chicago, and I believe the Twins consider western WI as part of their fanbase as well. While good attendance numbers help, overall market share and television deals are biggest revenue streams for MLB organizations - neither of which helps the Brewers much at all.

 

I really think baseball will eventually have to either set a salary cap, or contract 3-4 teams the way the economic landscape is going in baseball. Player salaries are increasing at a much higher rate than the overall increase in revenue streams and profits among MLB organizations.

[Patrick425]

Milwaukee can be a desirable destination for free agents, just not the "Type A" players/pitchers.

I really believe this is true and unlike many, I believe money and winning is not the biggest factors when it comes to big name FAs and Milwaukee. I truly believe that even if the Brewers won 3 straight WS and could fork out $30mil/year for a guy like ARod, there is no chance that a player like him would ever consider playing here (unless maybe they are in the final years of the careers or something like that.) Guys like Jeff Suppan is as big as it's going to get for teams like Milwaukee when it comes to signing FA's.

[rluzinski]

Milwaukee as a city has a very boring, blue collar reputation. The midwest doesn't have the best reputation as a whole.

[Patrick425]

Milwaukee as a city has a very boring, blue collar reputation. The midwest doesn't have the best reputation as a whole.

Exactly. If you asked guys like ARod, Ortiz, Jeter, Ramirez, etc to name all 30 Major League cities...I'm not sure that any of them would remember Milwaukee (and not just because they are AL players). If they did remember, it would be one of the last cities they listed. It would be something like "Oh, what am I missing..oh yeah, Kasas City and uh, uh, Milwaukee. Yeah, Milwaukee, that's in Minnesota, right?"

[jason21nl]

whats funny in the list of names you mentioned. Arod and Ortiz both played some A ball in Appleton. but yeah, I don't think big name guys would want to go to milwaukee. I don't even like going to milwaukee.

[twobrewers]

I truly believe that even if the Brewers won 3 straight WS and could fork out $30mil/year for a guy like ARod, there is no chance that a player like him would ever consider playing here

That is the part the really bothers me actually. I don't mind players chasing the highest payday. That is how our entire economic system works. I am all for capitalism.

 

What bothers me is that we even if we were to offer the most money - we would likely be passed over. I hate the idea that someone is willing to take less somewhere else because they would hate to play in Milwaukee.

[pitchleague]

I thought David Ortiz lives in Wisconsin during the off-season. Or he at least visits often since his wife is from here.

[PlayerHader]

Honestly, would you have signed with Milwaukee any time over the last 15 years without them offering the highest deal? We are looking up, but not established yet. Has there been anyone who we know took a smaller deal to sign elsewhere?

[PlayerHader]

Honestly, would you have signed with Milwaukee any time over the last 15 years without them offering the highest deal? We are looking up, but not established yet. Has there been anyone who we know took a smaller deal to sign elsewhere?

[JJHardy7]

I think in terms of location there are a lot more cities free agents would want to go. I think winning does have a large impact on what they do (if money is being equal). I don't want to compare the two that much, but Green Bay (as a city) isn't that great in terms of the NFL, but they can lure free agents to play there.

 

I think the Milwaukee Bucks struggle with bringing in free agents. Most of their players were drafted or traded for.

 

If the Brewers win and make the playoffs, there's not much more they can do to attract players.

[Patrick425]

Green Bay (as a city) isn't that great in terms of the NFL, but they can lure free agents to play there.

Yes, Green Bay is an exception to the rule. I think the difference is that if you ask the casual football fan (or non-football fan for that matter) to start naming NFL cities and teams, I think Green Bay is going to be one of the first 10 mentioned more often than not.

[TooLiveBrew]

Plus don't forget the ultimate equalizer - the salary cap in the NFL. Apples to oranges.

[JJHardy7]

The salary cap thing is true, but I do believe winning has a large role to play. Maybe I'm just hoping it's not always about money. The winter weather doesn't help Milwaukee since the average player enjoys warmer weather. Between the weather and the history of losing I think Milwaukee is a tough sell...but that could all change soon.