The Brewers are in trouble. Im not just talking this year, or next. I'm talking about the next 3-5 years. What is holding the Brewers back so much? A lot. There is a lot going AGAINST them in the foreseeable future.
The Brewers play in Milwaukee
I'm sorry to all of you guys out there that are diehard Milwaukee Wisconsin fans, but Milwaukee is small. It's the smallest market in the majors. it's one of the smallest in professional sports. It's just a fact of life.
A few things to consider in modern baseball, with the current money structure:
1) How many small market teams are relevant for extended periods of time (longer that 5 years)? Not many. The Cardinals are about the only team that has stayed competative over a long period of time not from a very large market, but they had Albert Pujols for most of the decade.
2) How often do small market teams get to the playoffs and/or win the WS then dump their team and suck the next year? Without looking it up I can think of at least 3 or 4 instances. But why does this happen? The team cannot generate enough money to pay its players. They trade long term team health for the short term win now mentality.
3) The fans are finicky. When the team doesn't win, the fans don't show up. This is a truism throughout most of baseball. The larger the city, the easier it is to maintain the seats full (Chicago has sucked for over 100 years and they sell out all the time). If the Brewers don't compete, people stop going to the park which means we have even less money to pay players.
4) Once the brewers stop winning they won't be able to pay players.
The Brewers team is in shambles
Currently our entire lineup has a lot of holes filled by stopgap players that are not going to help us in the future. To me here is the list of players that will not be of much help to the club in trying to compete (note: positional players not pitching which is harder to predict)
1) Rickie Weeks. I've never been a fan, but to be fair he had a good year last year. As of right now he's hitting about .170 and has about a 30% strikeout rate. he is pressing, but he has ALWAYS pressed. He's not a good defender either, which is an organizational weakness overall.
2) Aoki: bad signing. He wasn't going to help the club win games if Braun went down, and now he's basically a third center fielder when we had at least some outfield depth.
3) Aramis Ramirez. I never liked the signing, but it made SOME sense. unfortunately this one is blowing up in our faces right now and was unnecessary. Taylor Greene, our only truly good hitting prospect, should have gotten the callup. he cannot possibly be worse than Ramirez is right now and cost next to nothing. Instead the team has a player that will be hard to trade and costs a lot while the team is going nowhere.
4) Alex Gonzalez. we should have gone after Clint Barmes. He was cheaper and a better defender and very reliable. I don't bemoan this signing, but it is noteworthy that we HAD to sign someone because we lacked anyone in the minors to even consider bringing up.
5) Carlos Gomez. he tries to hit with too much power for a speed guy. a plus defender, but a bad hitter overall. I don't like guys you have to platoon to make them a worthwhile player. It takes up a valuable roster spot.
6) Nyjer Morgan. My mom would kill me for suggesting this, but Morgan is no longer needed on the club. He cannot get away with his antics if the team is not winning and it looks like he lost his stroke. Another guy thats necessary to platoon, another reason i dont like him. He also lost all of his speed (i.e. he doesnt steal bases anymore)
I list these players because they are not the future of the franchise. Unfortunately it's who we have right now and it's expensive.
The Brewers farm system is in shambles too!
Please, if you read this do not get me wrong. I know why the farm teams have a derth of talent. I get it. We successfully traded for Greinke and Marcum to make a Playoff run last year and i fully support it. The Brewers HAVE to do that if they ever want to win. Its how small markets survive.
But look at what we gave up for last year and you will understand where the Brewers stand.
Brett Lawrie for Shaun Marcum: Lawrie is considered a "special" talent. he is likely going to be a David Wright type of player (though not necessarily to his caliber) for a lot of years. I personally think that this was a bad trade by the Brewers if they could have gotten Greinke regardless of the Marcum trade. This trade paved the way though as it showed we were serious about winning now. What we gave up though was the 3B we could have used for the next 5-7 years or longer that would have been a cornerstone of the franchise (along with Braun)
Alcides Escobar/Lorenzo Cain (and others) for Greinke: Compaired to the Marcum trade, this one was a steal (but again, doesnt happen unless the Marcum trade happens). Unfortunately we did give up our next starting shortstop and Center Fielder for 5-7 years.
Here is the best way to describe how bad farm system is. 2 out of our top 3 rated prospects were drafted last year.
Here's another way to put it. We have season ending injuries to 2 positional players and are relying on Travis Ishikawa and Cezar Isturis to score us runs.
Were ranked 28th with our farm system.........
Going forward
If I was GM for the Brewers for the next 5 years this is what i would do:
1) Trade Trade Trade: The whole small market team thing ONLY works if we can get a good farm system.
a) If Ramirez gets hot, trade him immediately and put Taylor Green at 3B. We don't need Ramirez, he's not a long term solution. Getting Greene some consistant AB can only help the club. If he starts panning out, sign him to a long term contract.
b) Weeks: try to get whatever you can out of him at this point, which might not be much.
c) Marcum: trade deadline guy. He's not in our future either.
d) Greinke: I know people want to keep him, but I'm renigging on this. We need to get as good of a prospect as we can out of him if were going to retool for the future.
2) Draft some hitters for crying out loud! Hitters take the longest to get major league ready, pitchers can come up in their rookie season and be successful. We have been dreadful at drafting hitters. This years class looks really really bad though. There is no "cant miss" players coming up ready to be drafted, but we need to try to get as many valuable hitters as possible.
As it stands we currently do not have an in house answer that could actually help us win in the future for the following positions: 1B, 2B, SS, CF. RF (assuming Hart leaves which he probably will after his contract is up). We also currently have almost no power in the minors. we have speed, but without on base skills. we have a couple of on base guys, but who are terrible defenders.
3) Philosophy change. The Brewers overall need a change of philosophy on how they draft, pick up free agents and hand out contracts. Overall the team's front office has done a decent job the last couple of years, but a lot of that was based off a foundation created nearly a decade ago with the draft when the team was so bad, they overloaded on top tier hitters.
Its hard to mess up a team when within a few years you draft Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Yovanni Gallardo, Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks (though he has always underperformed). That team was assembled in pretty short order and laid the groundwork for the two playoff berths.
Baseball has unfortunately changed since then. Hitting is down, pitching is generally up. There are plenty of debates as to why this occurs (the most common is the end of the steroid era) but thats the trend as of right now. Were stuck in the same mode as before however with how we assemble our teams (be it drafting or free agency or trading).
We need to develop hitters in house. Hitters have the lowest success rate of being long term players, and as this year has taught us, not having hitting depth can ruin a franchise. We knew Fielder was leaving, yet we had no true replacement for him. The organizations soft spot for players like Carlos Gomez and Rickie Weeks to me is frustrating, and their lack of even a good attempt to have organizational guys to replace them when they struggle is not a good thing.
The Brewer need to make a concerted effort to draft on base guys and guys with speed and good defensive skills. Ultimately these are the things that consistantly kill the club. The best part of this approach is that it comes cheaply, meaning we can spend more on free agents, specifically pitchers.
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