Ten Years of Milwaukee Brewers Baseball [OPINION]

In sports there is a simple phrase that as a Brewers fan I am all too familiar with, “Only one team ends the year happy.” It is entirely too true but, as a friend of mine has said seemingly every year since I’ve known him, “I’m tired of being a bridesmaid.”

I try my best to remain optimistic, but I am on the same page as him. The Brewers have been in Milwaukee since 1970 and been to the World Series just one time, in 1982.

Right now it is time to reflect as the dust settles on a disastrous loss in the Wild Card game to the World Series bound Washington Nationals. The year, however, is 2019 and we have more to look back on than just one season. We are closing the books on an entire decade.

So it is as good a time as any to answer the question that has been floating around Brewers Twitter for about a week: Were the 2010s the best decade in Brewers franchise history?

My honest knee jerk reaction is no. That is for one simple reason: 1982. One thing to keep in mind: the 1980s had vastly different division and playoff formats than today.  

Numbers do not care about feelings, however. So lets see if the numbers agree with me, and see where the Brewers go from here with a critical offseason looming.

The Brewers finished the 2010s with a record of 824-797 and had only three managers at the helm over the last 10 years. Meanwhile in the 1980s the Brewers finished with a record of 804-760 and had five managers over that period.

The first thing that should jump out at you is that the Brewers played 57 more games in the 2010s. A big reason for this is that in 1981 the baseball season was only 109 games instead of 162 because of a strike that happened in the middle of the season.

In order to compensate for this we need to look at win percentage to simply know which decade was the best on that front.

In the 2010s the Brewers finished with a win percentage of .508, and a .514 in the 1980s.

So the 1980s had a higher win percentage, but that difference is honestly negligible.

What do those numbers mean though, and why does that mean it is a wash? Well that means that if they win percentage stayed the same for every 1000 games played the 1980s team would get six more wins.

Honestly that says almost nothing, six more wins out of every 1000 games means .6 more wins per season.

So lets look at trips to the postseason instead. For this it is important to clarify how different the 1980s post season was.

Anyone who has grown up watching baseball since the ‘90s, like myself, knows that there are two leagues, three divisions per league, and one wild card team per league. The ‘80s had the same two leagues, but with only two divisions per league, and no wild cards.

All of that means that in the ‘80s only four teams made the post season. Meaning that it was entirely possible for a team to finish 91-71 and miss the post season. That record is not random, and is the record the Brewers had in 1987 when the team finished third in the American League eastern division.

Yes the Brewers were once in the American League. Honestly ask your parents about the days when the heated Chicago rivalry was with the White Sox. 

That leads to the next point: post season appearances. The Brewers made the postseason three times this last decade but only twice during the 1980s. Do I think that number would be different if the Brewers had modern playoff standards back then? I absolutely do. A team doing that well in a season and missing the postseason in modern baseball is almost unheard of.

The next thing to consider is the World Series. The Brewers have only made the World Series once in franchise history in 1982 when Brewers fans had the treat of watching three future Hall of Fame players on the same field at the same time: Rollie Fingers, Paul Molitor, and Robin Yount.

The last thing to think about before coming back to where the Brewers go from here would be accolades. The Brewers players won three Most Valuable Player awards (MVPs) in the 1980s, and one Cy Young award given to each league’s top pitcher. The 2010 Brewers own two MVPs, no Cy Young awards, but Christian Yelich did win the first batting title in franchise history in 2018.

All of that tells me that my gut was right. The 1980s by each major metric were better for the Brewers than the 2010s, except playoff appearances.

The narrative must now switch to: where do the Brewers go from here? The long and the short of it is that I do not know.

The Brewers still have a good young core of players and 2018 MVP winner Christian Yelich, but are likely to lose fan favorites and 2019 All-Stars Mike Moustakas and Yazmani Granal.

With a host of players due for big-time pay raises and the Brewers still holding onto Ryan Brauns massive contract extension, money is tight and several players that have been fixtures to the Brewers roster might be gone.

The smart moves to make for the Brewers moving forward would be keep Grandal. Move Heaven and Earth if you must, but Grandal was one of the top catchers in all of baseball and that is what he has been for his entire career. I love Moustakas, but he plays a position that is much easier to replace in third base.

Next it is time for the Brewers to fold on Orlando Arcia, a slick fielding shortstop, but that’s about it. The Brewers should probably move on from Travis Shaw as well, simply for the same reason as Moustakas.

If 2019 showed us anything about the Brewers it is that they have to add a starting pitcher in order to compete in 2020. We have heard it each year for seemingly the last four or five, but we saw clear examples in 2019.

Finally the Brewers must do whatever necessary to keep Christian Yelich in Milwaukee long term. There is no quantifying what he means to this city, and the Brewers need to give him the Aaron Rodgers treatment and keep him happy in order to keep winning in the future.