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Green Bay Packers fans were deluded [and this is where I could place a period] into thinking that Mike McCarthy was a quarterback whisperer and Ted Thompson a sort of demigod when in reality, the team won a single Super Bowl despite the former's buffoonery and lost many more chances at one as a direct result of it. They held onto that idea because Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers played exceptionally well for a long enough time. The generations that remembered the 70s and 80s aged out from being peak fans. Now, younger Packers fans do not remember when Lambeau Field was a simple bowl, an oval dumpster containing a fire worthy of its location.
Milwaukee Brewers fans face a similar, tantalizing stupor. Now that we have arrived at a time when the club is perennially competitive and has been involved in October baseball for an unprecedented four consecutive seasons, fans -- and perhaps some of the front office -- have become convinced of some myths about their club.
Compare these two players:
Player A: 280 PA, .238/.307/.347, 12 2B, 5 HR, 11 GIDP, 30 RBI, 24 BB, 57 K, -0.548 WPA
Player B: 258 PA, .219/.349/.381, 8 2B, 9 HR, 6 GIDP, 24 RBI, 43 BB, 57 K, 1.337 WPA
They're both not very good at the plate, but one gets on base reasonably well and doesn't get more guys than himself out at once by half.
Player B was Dan Vogelbach last season. Player A was Omar Narvaez from June 15 through the end of the 2021 regular season. Many of us ignored that his offensive game completely disappeared because the Brewers played very strong June-July-August baseball. There was also the fact that Christian Yelich and Keston Hiura's bats, in particular, remained MIA, and the pitching rotation was all-time great.
The Brewers can develop catchers. They cannot -- and they should not -- reconstruct them.
Since Jonathan Lucroy left the Brewers in 2016, the Brewers have featured Manny Piña, Jett Bandy, Andrew Susac, Erik Kratz, Luke Maile, Jacob Nottingham, and Yasmani Grandal behind the plate. Stephen Vogt spent most of his time as a Brewer injured; Pedro Severino's career reclamation project with the Crew was largely the byproduct of better yet banned pharmacology.
Piña's defense was never in question. Aside from having a flair for the dramatic and being a beloved clubhouse stalwart by teammates and fans alike, his bat has always been beneath league average. In that respect, you knew what you were getting with him and could marshal resources accordingly.
Bandy, Susac, and Maile were barely major league-caliber players. Kratz, a Brewer folk hero for his triumphant 2018 NLDS, was traded for C.J. Hinojosa and Hinojosa continues to bounce around the minors. Grandal bet on himself in 2019 and cashed in with the White Sox, where age would appear to be catching up to him finally.
If the Brewers were truly good at catcher fixer-upper projects, they wouldn't have needed seven different catchers in the last five years, and Narvaez would have something to show for his Brewer career beyond backing into an All-Star because Yadier Molina recused himself from the proceedings. Further, if the Brewers wanted a strong defensive catcher with whatever they get from that catcher as a bonus, they should have kept Piña. Narvaez' defense may have improved by the metrics, but many of those metrics are still below average; while his skill as a receiver did improve in 2020, he reverted in 2021.
There's a reason the Mariners were all too happy to move Narvaez for little more than a bucket of baseballs in 2019: the Brewers paid him to do nothing with his bat in 2020, nearly $1.5M per (BRef) win above replacement in 2021 and he's scheduled to make $5M this season. Last year, the only 5-bWAR players on the Brewers' roster were Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes, which says more about the Brewer offense than anything, but expecting Narvaez to pull a Salvador Perez (5.3 bWAR in 2021) is expecting far too much. Plainly put, Narvaez represents a sunk cost.
Mario Feliciano should be ready to take over behind the plate in 2023, and Jeferson Quero, the Brewers' No. 5 prospect, shows considerable promise further up the pipeline. Still, for a team that has deep October and even World Series aspirations, hope doesn't help them right now.
Neither do myths.
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