Hello Mark and David,

My name is Brad. I’m a huge fan of you two. Honestly, it’s been amazing seeing what you both have done for this organization. For most of my life, the Milwaukee Brewers were synonymous with trash. Now, they went to the playoffs three times in a decade (special shoutout to Doug)! But this letter isn’t just about compliments. It’s actually a plea, a plea to be aggressive in free agency and bring this title home.

Now, I know it’s easy for me - some guy who gets to write on a blog - to tell you - managers of a billion-dollar franchise - what to do with your money. After all, you have profit margins to hit, co-owners to satisfy, and maintenance to manage. Do you know what makes that all easier, though? A championship.

I can appreciate small-market ball, but the farm’s dry. The best talent is years away from development, and a trade for one of those affordable players a team is willing to give up on isn’t in the cards with the pieces the Brewers have. The only way this team is getting better is if you give free rein to the front office to make aggressive moves.

Let’s start with a fact. Mark, you bought the team for just $223,000,000. Now, that’s not cheap, but in 2018, we learned that the Brewers are worth $1.175 billion. That’s nearly a billion dollars more than what you paid for, Mark. Of course, you’re responsible for that by continuing to invest money into the stadium, great marketing, and trying to have a consistent and quality product. Also, the fans are responsible for that. We continue to buy merch, to go to events like Brewers On Deck AND be a top-10 team in attendance for the entire league. Hell, we were even top 15 in attendance during the rebuild. We also had more people in attendance than Houston in three of the last four years, and they’ve been to two World Series.

Kudos to you for spending a little more in 2019. But the team’s only been top-15 in the league in spending for three years in the last decade. It was also bottom five for three years; however, while the Brewers were bottom tier in spending from 2015-2017, we still showed! The team was top 12 in attendance in 2015 and the top half in 2017. We were 16th in 2016, which might have just been a fun thing to line up with the year, but the fans were still there.

Oh, and let’s not forget that you’re not even paying for the home where your toy lives. Yes, there are the day to day costs and other details associated with maintaining a giant facility like Miller Park. Still, the citizens of your five nearest counties paid for that stadium for 24 years. That saved you (and the Seligs) $600,000,000.

While we continue to shell out money to come to your games, you’re also making money off of profit sharing, national and local TV deals, new money for stadium naming rights, and NOW you’re taking away affordable seating to make room for one of those exclusive party viewing decks? Where’s the reward? It has to be in there somewhere.

I’m done giving the team slack because it’s “in a small market.” The city has shown up like a big market....no, it’s outshown big markets year, after year, after year. You can't keep telling me that “We’re stretching the budget.”

Meanwhile, David is great at finding deals that get value. He has put together an entire roster that is built around players putting out production that exceeds the money they make. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, those cheap players aren’t really available in abundance. So there’s only one place to go to get the backup production players like Christian Yelich need. And there’s some bad news about cheap teams: they don’t win. Only three teams won World Series in the last decade without having a payroll inside the top-10 (St. Lous Cardinals, 2011 - 10th; Kansas City Royals, 2015 - 12th; Houston Astros, 2017 - 13th). Even then, they’re still top half of the league.

The team is awesome. I love that the goal is long-term success. Unfortunately, there are too many holes. Thankfully, there’s a lot of ways to fix them. You need to spend, and there are no more excuses.

Sincerely,

Brad

Milwaukee Brewers Fan

Attendance and Payroll Statistics Courtesy of Baseball-Reference