Playoffs might be easier for Brewers than payoffs

They're a real threat in the National League, but silly fights over stadium enhancements cast a shadow.

Freddy Peralta

Bud Selig, 89, is still alive. He watches the Milwaukee Brewers he once owned with a smile of a gratified parent. Thanks to the people who now own them now, he might be tempted to dig a premature grave so he can roll around in it.

The Brewers are leading the National League Central, and if you’re looking for a team to bust the buttons of the assumed Atlanta-Los Angeles Championship Series, they are your best bet. But, under the stewardship of Mark Attanasio, they are pretending they might explore the possibility of playing elsewhere if they don’t get their stadium “enhancements” built and paid for by the citizenry.

This is not just any stadium. Miller Park, now known as American Family Field, opened its doors in 2001. It also opened its roof on nice summer days. It was, and is, among the deluxe ballparks ever built. One can understand the need for maintenance after 22 seasons, but the Brewers want at least $428 million for, among other things, a replacement plan for all of its seats, new cables and electrical system, and a new LED display and another one after that. Some expenditures, like the air conditioning system, are required. Some are frivolous. The larger point is that all could be furnished by the owners themselves, but it’s hard to pull them away from taxpayer-provided mother’s milk.

The park was financed largely by Wisconsinites, thanks to a sales tax that was implemented in Milwaukee County and four surrounding counties. That tax was supposed to disappear in 2020. It did not, and the Milwaukee County Board voted unanimously that the Brewers would get no more of its money.

“Promises have to be kept,” said supervisor Sheldon Wasserman. “And now it’s being turned on us all these years later and I’m supposed to vote for this again? Hell no.”

Another supervisor, Steve Taylor, pointed out how “interesting” it was that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was in town on the precise day that the Board rejected the Brewers. Apropos of nothing, Manfred mentioned that Oakland is losing the Athletics to Las Vegas because “it made some unfortunate decisions not to maintain the ballpark in the way that it needed to be maintained.” In other words, nice stadium you have. It’d be a shame if your ballclub wasn’t playing in it.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wants to use part of the state budget surplus to pay for the spruce-up. State assembly speaker Robin Vos wants to use the sales tax revenue, because it doesn’t come from the whole state. Another plan would be the institution of a sales tax that would go to the state pension fund and thus free up pension money to give to the Brewers.

MLB has a nebulous clause in its bylaws that requires clubs to perform “Major Repairs” that would match what the top 25 percent of MLB stadiums have already done. There’s no information on who decides what those 25 percent are. But it’s the same mechanism the Rams used to flee St. Louis.

“It is not reasonable to assume that every stadium be in the top 25 percent of stadiums,” said Ryan Clancy, a Democratic state representative. “This is not Lake Wobegon. We can’t all be above average.”

Anyway, the Brewers can escape the lease in 2030. The mere discussion of the Brewers leaving tends to break loose the stitches on a wound that the Braves inflicted in 1965. Just seven years after they played in back-to-back World Series, they left Milwaukee for Atlanta. Selig, an auto dealer in Milwaukee and one of the civic catalysts, helped lead the effort to get a replacement, which happened to be the Seattle Pilots of “Ball Four” fame. Milwaukee was a major league town again in 1970.

It also has become the smallest market in MLB. But the Brewers have topped 3 million in attendance three times. In 2019, the year before Covid-19, they drew 2.9 million and ranked fifth in the league.

They have been to only one World Series, taking the Cardinals to seven games in 1982 with Robin Yount, Paul Molitor and a bunch of loading-dock sluggers, but they’ve generally been entertaining and efficient, out of necessity. Craig Counsell, who used to sit in the County Stadium bleachers to watch those Harvey’s Wallbangers teams, is in the process of managing the Brewers to either a winning record or a playoff spot, or both, for the seventh consecutive year.

Selig owned the Brewers and then became baseball’s commissioner, dealing with and sometimes triggering crises on a weekly basis. On Friday night the Brewers fell behind Washington, 3-0, in the first inning, then won 6-3 on the power of three homers, two by Carlos Santana and one by William Contreras. The crowd was almost 36,000 on a football Friday night.

Selig wouldn’t have been surprised by any of that. He is a natural optimist. But surely he wouldn’t have envisioned the Brewers’ pitchers leading the National League in WHIP and ERA. That hasn’t happened since 1992.

Here’s what Milwaukee’s playoff opponents will have to deal with:

— Brandon Woodruff is 5-1 with a 1.93 ERA and a WHIP of 0.786 in nine starts. He’s given up 13 walks and struck out 13.

— Corbin Burnes, the Cy Young winner two years ago, is 9-8 with a 3.48 ERA and a 1.056 WHIP, second among qualified starters.

— Freddy Peralta has 200 strikeouts, third in the league, and his 1.098 ERA is fifth. For his career, Peralta’s batting average-against is .198. He has not lost a game since July 21.

— Lefthander Wade Miley is 8-4 with a 3.38 ERA and a 1.143 WHIP.

— Closer Devin Williams has 35 saves in 39 opportunities, and a 1.62 ERA with an 0.898 WHIP. He has allowed 26 hits in his 55 and two-thirds innings and struck out 82.

—  Abner Uribe has steamed his way into the majors with 13 hits and no home runs in 26 innings, and 31 strikeouts.

There’s more, but eventually the party ends and the Brewers have to hit, or try to. They are the only National League team with a sub-.700 OPS, and they rank next-to-last in batting average. But since the All-Star break they’re eighth in OPS and seventh in batting average, thanks to a quietly effective redo of their lineup card.

When it became clear that Jesse Winker wasn’t the answer at designated hitter, the Brewers got Santana, the 37-year-old who loves to walk and got his 1,000th career RBI on Friday. His next home run will be his 200th.

They replaced third baseman Luis Urias with Andruw Monasterio, a Venezuelan who was on his fourth franchise. Monasterio is now a .270 hitter. Rookie Brice Turang is a magnet at second base, and the club is happy with rookie outfielder Sal Frelick, formerly the best high school football player in Massachusetts with 30 touchdown passes.

The Brewers are 20th in payroll, with only Burnes, Woodruff and resurgent outfielder Christian Yelich making eight-figure salaries. Their baseball future is good, thanks to smart scouting and management, but it does make you wonder why it’s easier to put $119 million to work than $428 million. Give or take.