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Now here’s a fun quote that surely won’t come back to haunt Brewers’ principal owner Mark Attanasio:
“Is my job to win a World Series,” Attanasio said, “or is my job to provide a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together?”
That’s from a Bob Nightengale story over at USA Today, on why the Brewers refuse to spend “despite decade of NL Central domination.” First off, dominating the NL Central is a lot like an elementary gym teacher kicking the ass of every kindergartener at basketball. It doesn’t mean he stands a chance against a real team. Second, oh boy, Mark Attanasio.
Seriously, though, “a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together” is the goal of minor-league baseball. The goal of a major league team is to win. If you begin every offseason with, “hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and be more than just some entertainment for families,” then you’ve already lost. Which the Brewers are expert hands at, by the way: NL Central dominance or not, the team hasn’t been to the World Series since 1982. Or, to put it another way, Bud Selig, former Brewers’ owner and MLB commissioner who has been retired from the latter role for an entire decade now, was still in his 40s the last time Milwaukee appeared in the Fall Classic.
Selig is 90 now, by the way. Just to save you some time with the math.
There are teams that are worse than the Brewers about not spending, for sure, and they’ve admittedly seen some regular season success despite their lower payrolls. But if you’re never willing to take that extra push, to risk that spending more money could result in a better team that’ll pull in more significant profits thanks to the success that comes from it, then you’ll be stuck in this kind of purgatory the Brewers have found themselves in for so long now.
Current commissioner Rob Manfred visited the temporary (?) home of the A’s in Sacramento, and described the converted minor-league digs as “charming.” Per Manfred, the former Oakland A’s which are now the Sacramento A’s with hopes of becoming the Las Vegas A’s, are on pace to leave for Nevada in 2028. That still seems a bit optimistic at this point, given that it’s expected ground will break on the Vegas stadium this spring, but the actual paperwork for the project hasn’t been finalized, and owner John Fisher is still looking for someone to buy a chunk of the franchise to help to finance the stadium costs so he doesn’t have to use $1.1 billion of his and his parents’ money to pay for the construction. But hey, 2028, sure. It’s not like either Fisher nor Manfred would ever publicly mislead people or anything, so it’s probably fine to just let this one go.
It’s kind of funny from Manfred’s perspective, actually. He has to take the position of whatever the owners have decided, and they’ve decided they’re fine with Fisher moving the A’s to Vegas, so whether he agrees with all of this or not or knows it’s bullshit he’s spouting, he’s still got to do it. Which makes the specific timetable here the funny part: if Vegas isn’t ready for the A’s in 2028, or the entire deal goes kaput, this whole thing ends up being the final ordeal he has to handle before he can retire in January of 2029 when his deal expires. The new streaming deal of 2028 that shifts the league from local cable broadcasts to nationwide streaming won’t be his final major move, his legacy he can point to, if the A’s are still in limbo. That unfinished and poorly thought out mess residing in Sacramento will be.
My latest for Baseball Prospectus is live, and it’s on the Blue Jays failing to agree to an extension with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The thing I tried to point out is that a player like Guerrero Jr. isn’t going to be any cheaper in the future than whatever his asking price is now. That’s just not how it works for 26-year-old free agent sluggers, as the escalation in cost from Bryce Harper and Mookie Betts to Juan Soto has shown us.
While that piece is for subscribers only, you can get an annual sub with BP for all of $46, and you get a tremendous amount of daily published work plus statistical tools and more for that price tag. If you want to support independent media, said media doesn’t have to be a brand new venture: projects like that are already in existence, and they need your help to stay independent and capable of deals like that one, too.
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