As a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers for 31 years now, I go into every spring training with an excitement of maybe this is the year that the Brewers will surprise and contend for a world title. But every year, they some how find a way to let me down. As the years wore on, I began to lose faith and started to wonder if I would ever see my favorite baseball team play in October. Major League Baseball is set-up like no other sport. Only the teams with money can contend because there is no salary cap. It's an unfair system and I can't believe they haven't fixed it yet! Bud Selig has been given so much credit for creating the wild-card berth but I think his legacy will be remembered for the steroid era and not getting a salary cap for baseball.
With that being said, I'm putting all my chips into the middle on the Milwaukee Brewers playing in the fall classic and winning it! In my opinion, they have a one year window to make a run in the postseason because they added some critical pieces through trades. They added a 2009 Cy Young award winner in Zach Grienke and Toronto's ace Shawn Marcum, who was thier opening day starter last year. They strengthened thier bull-pen with the signing of Takashi Saito, who had a great year with the Braves last year after posting a 2.83 ERA! The Brewers took a lot of heat from the media because they thought adding Yuniesky Betancourt was a down grade from Escobar. But, if you compare thier numbers, Betancourt exceeded Escobar in almost every category. And lets not forget, Escobar was shaky at times on defense last year! The last piece to the puzzle that the Brewers added was Manager Ron Roenicke. It's hard to say wheather or not this guy will be a good Manager because there is no history to go by.
ESPN experts Buster Olney and Tim Kirchen have picked the Brewers to finish second and third in thier division and I think thats an outrage! I'm not sure what else the Brewers have to do to get some national respect because I give the Crew an A+, in terms of offseason additions. I truely believe that if the Brewers don't win it all this year, I will die an old man without ever seeing the Milwaukee Brewers win a World Series!
That is very disappointing that Buster and Tim are not picking the Brewers to win the division. This is a big red flag to me, they know so much more than I do. My guess is that the Defense will not be good enough and they doubt that all thre stud pitchers will come through.
ReplyDeleteRealistically one of them could get injured or just not live up to expectations. I don't think Doug Melvin has done enough yet to put the Brewers over the top. Betancourt is not the answer at shortstop and Gomez in Center is still a questionmark. New manager Ron Roenicke will need to push all the right buttons for this team to win the NL Central.
I still see baseball as a month and a half away but I will be excited to see what this team can do. I am not pushing my chips into the middle of the table but if luck is on their side it could happen now. I still think it is a 5 year window, as long as the staff stays together. I know we will lose Fielder and maybe even Weeks after this season but with a solid pitching staff we can contend every season.
I agree with you about baseball not doing enough to balance things out but smaller markets have done well at times and Milwaukee can to. There are many more things wrong with baseball than you wrote about, too many to list. I still like the game and the Brewers do have a shot but...
Chances are our team will NOT be in the World Series in 2011. I would love to be wrong!