As recently as last week, Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin was telling Brewers fans not to get their hopes up for a deadline acquisition designed to help keep the Brewers in the NL Central race.
And then manager Ken Macha went and got Brewers fans’ hopes up.
Of principal owner Mark Attanasio, who was in Milwaukee over the weekend to participate in trade talks, Macha said, “I think Mark is a very competitive guy, and he wants to win. Not only that, but we have a tremendous fan base here and the fans are supporting us. [Attanasio] is very appreciative of that. He showed last year that he’s willing to go out there [and make a trade].”
At the same time, Macha cautioned, Attanasio and Melvin want to field a perennially competitive team, and thus they are hesitant to gut the farm system.
“It’s a balancing act,” Macha said.
The Brewers have been linked oin published reports to all of the supposedly available arms, from Toronto’s Roy Halladay and Cleveland’s Cliff Lee at the top of the list to Arizona’s Doug Davis and Jon Garland, Seattle’s Jarrod Washburn and Kansas City’s Brian Bannister. Brew Beat.
Those are some impressive names, and if any team has the goods to land them, it’s the Brewers. For them, the issue is no doubt the money. Although the team has increase payroll in the last few years, it has been largely to hold onto home-grown talent – something they will have to continue to do if they wish to remain competitive in a smaller market. Thus, it is hard to imagine the team going out and getting a Roy Halladay or a Cliff Lee.