I wonder if the venerable Mr. Selig will allow MLB to operate the team should a buyer not be found within a year. And should the unthinkable happen, and no buyer come forward by the time the CBA expires, will he offer them up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of contraction?

(And risk re-alienating all those Seattle Pilots fans?)

http://economics.about.com
I wonder if the venerable Mr. Selig will allow MLB to operate the team should a buyer not be found within a year. And should the unthinkable happen, and no buyer come forward by the time the CBA expires, will he offer them up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of contraction?

Maybe he'll contract the Brewers then move the Expos to Milwaukee so his family can watch a good team.

Cheers,

Mike

So, with all that in mind, what would be YOUR first order of business if you'd just purchased the Milwaukee Brewers?

You mean after the complete psychiatric examination?

I'd need to know a few more details --- for starters, the nature of the Miller Park arrangements, income from and control over the stadium, concessions, parking lot, etc. (not to mention the potential liability from the stadium construction lawsuit), as well as outstanding debt. Also, local TV and radio broadcast rights, contracts, revenue, etc. Assuming these and similar elements aren't back-breakers....

All things considered, I'm actually not in terrible shape. Yes, the team is a train wreck, local goodwill is exhausted, and talent is scarce. But the worst of the payroll hacking has already been done by the previous administration, so I don't need to start my tenure by throwing bodies over the side. The farm system isn't great, but I've had a couple of pretty decent drafts recently and I can probably count on high draft positions for the next few years as well. The local fan base is actually solid: good baseball fans who, if given a team that is honestly trying hard, will respond. I won't have a contender on my hands for at least three years, but I can at least make a good start.

Here are a few of the items on my to-do list:

1. Hire Paul DePodesta as my General Manager.
2. Hire Paul Molitor as my manager and Robin Yount as an executive VP in charge of community relations.
3. Get Rickie Weeks into the lineup at the earliest reasonable opportunity.
4. Repair relationships with local businesses and political bosses.

There are worse major-league teams to buy, and I'll be coming in at the very bottom of the market. There's nowhere to go but up.

So, should we put together a consortium? I've got $500.

Oh, great: now I've got to rewrite my Milwaukee team preview. :-(

It's going to be good for baseball to get the Brewers out of the hands of the Seligulas. Maybe the new owners, if any can be persuaded to pay the (presumably large) asking price, will actually try to compete.

Re-hire Harry Dalton and George Bamberger (or their ghosts if they've passed on from this mortal realm).

The Brewers aren't in that bad of shape on the field. They had an excellent second half last year. Melvin and Yost have done a good job acquiring and developing talent. Jenkins, Helms, Podsednik and Danny Kolb are useful players. Richie Weekes and Prince Fielder are going to be studs and the Sexson trade netted them some much needed depth. What they need more than anything is starting pitching behind Sheets and bullpen depth. If they continue the course they are on, their fan base will see the light in 2 years, just like JP has done with the Jays.

Jordan,

You forgot to send Assistant GM Gord Ash on a special long-term scouting assignment to Mongolia (firing him would be so banal).

All of this is firing from the hip...

Actually, I think the Milwaukee baseball ops guys (Melvin and Ash) are pretty decent... provided Gord doesn't get his fingers into the budgetary pie, he'll do fine. I would be tempted to leave them in place and see what they can do. DePodesta hasn't proven much of anything, frankly, and while I'm sure he's an excellent number 2 I'd have to know him well to say he's a good candidate for a number one. They have a very competent field manager, though Paul Molitor would be a selling point.

My first order of business would be repairing fences with the fans, and that means a few token free agent signings, a heavy promotion campaign, and a big reduction in ticket prices. I am going to have to eat money for a couple of years (and yes, that means paying a bargain price for the franchise - there's no other way) in order to recoup my losses.

Second thing, I think, is a rethink of the organization's approach to marketing itself. More than just a promotion campaign, the Brewers need to be about something. I am not the expert in that field, I would want to leave it to someone who is.

Third thing, and maybe the most important from a longterm perspective, is I would want to completely renegotiate the team's financial arrangements, which have become a bizarre and rococo mess under the Selig/Selig-Prieb regime. That means renegotiating the team's debts with an arm's length lender and getting rid of the web of frankly shady cross-deals that only serve to fetter the discretion of the owners. It also means working somthing out with Miller Park, hopefully by working out a longterm favourable tax deal with the city/county/state and taking over ownership of the park. That means one of the conditions of buying the team... a classic quid pro quo... is that the Commissioner's Office repudiate the ridiculous 60/40 rule. Not a special dispensation or promise not to enforce some other half-assed thing... it's gotta be an utter and complete repeal, by vote of the owners.

Fourth thing is a longterm project, in fact a longshot project as well. The only way to scam a generous TV deal for the Brewers, stuck in a small media market as they are, is to take the TBS approach, and go national. I have no idea how to go about it, but you have to convince a media partner somwehere in your "local" area to take an aggressive national strategy, with Brewers Baseball (backed by my pledge to be trying to win every year) as a part of it. Remember, when the Braves went national they were a terrible team. It can be done.

Fifth is an aggressive, balls-out push for total TV-revenue sharing. That means hitting every available media slot (from Jim Rome to Maria Bartiromo, from Crossfire to Baseball Tonight), repeatedly, day after day, week after week, year after year, pushing the idea and bringing people onside, with a loud, aggressive paid marketing campaign to boot. Convince everyone of the desirability of pooling and sharing all TV revenue... eventually some owners will start coming around.

This is an awful business decision by Milwaukee's owners, incidentally... selling at the moment when the value of the franchise is at low ebb. Unless there's more problems to this team than meet the eye. So I think there's more problems than we know about.

This is an awful business decision by Milwaukee's owners, incidentally... selling at the moment when the value of the franchise is at low ebb.

An excellent point, because the franchise isn't winning and isn't on their way up. The new stadium effect is wearing off à la Comerica and PNC and their fan base isn't loyal to the point that they will watch losers.

I don't think that bringing in Molitor and Yount is a good idea yet, beacuse of the lack of success of Trammel in Detroit. When they begin to win, however, Yount and Molitor are both great baseball men and great Brewers, a great combination.

A good way to pique some interest and generate some revenue would be to go back to their 1980s yellow and blue unis.