Photo by Adam Ryan Morris
You remember Prince Fielder. He was so darn good in Milwaukee. Almost indescribably good. But not quite immeasurably good.
We know this because baseball uses those things called statistics. And we know this because the Detroit Tigers quantified Fielder’s value down to the dollar. They handed one end of the tape measure to agent Scott Boras, and he backed up until the thing read $214 million over nine years, and then everybody was happy.
Well, everybody except Brewers fans. Yes, they’d figured for years that keeping him was an impossible dream, but they dreamed about it anyway. And yes, they’d have newly christened MVP Ryan Braun for the next decade. But there were so many irreplaceable things about Prince – his attitude, his gregariousness, his production, his revered place in Brewers lore. So when Fielder left, many Brewers fans figured any shot at the playoffs left with him.
On the surface, it looks like they were absolutely right. As the calendar inches toward September, the Brewers are closer to Detroit than they are to the playoffs. With nearly 80 percent of the season done, they’re 61-67 and 16.5 games behind division-leading Cincinnati. Their wildcard hopes are nearly as dim. They’ve traded away ace Zack Greinke for prospects. Almost every move they make for the rest of 2012 will be with an eye toward 2013.
It is, in effect, a lost season. But here’s the thing.
It’s not lost because Prince Fielder was lost.
Just check the measurements. You gauge an offense’s success based upon how many runs it scores. And in 2011, with Fielder in the heart of Milwaukee’s lineup, the Brewers averaged 4.45 runs per game. But in 2012, with Fielder off in Detroit, the Brewers are averaging 4.65 runs per game.
Fielder is gone, and the offense is better.
It seems so counterintuitive. How do you lose one of the game’s best hitters and hit your opponents even harder?
But this is exactly how the Brewers drew it up. When it became clear Fielder was leaving, the club admitted there was no way to replace his stellar production with just one other player. The key was to take the money that would’ve been spent on him and spread it among less-expensive players. Then you hope the combination of those guys and improvements from your younger pieces would collectively make up for Fielder’s production.
The Brewers got what they hoped for in spades. Aramis Ramirez and Nori Aoki have done everything you could’ve wanted and more. Jonathan Lucroy and Carlos Gomez have stepped up their games beyond expectations. Braun and Corey Hart haven’t regressed at all. In fact, the offense has improved despite a major regression from Rickie Weeks, who was expected to take up a good portion of Fielder’s slack. So in theory, as good as the offense has been, there’s even more room for improvement.
You can say none of this matters, that the Brewers could miss the playoffs with a bad offense just as easily as they will with a good one. But that’s shortsighted.
Every one of those offensive pieces is available on the Brewers chessboard in 2013. Which means GM Doug Melvin can take his offense for granted and focus on fixing the pitching, which is the only reason the Brewers failed this season.
It will be far from an easy fix. Just about every pitcher that made the Brewers so good in 2011 is either gone already (Zack Greinke and Randy Wolf), will leave soon (Shaun Marcum and Francisco Rodriguez) or bears little resemblance to the player he was in 2011 (John Axford). The Brewers have Yovani Gallardo. They also have some promising young starters, notably the revelation that is Mike Fiers, to help fill the void. But the bullpen needs a major overhaul, and that’s true even if Axford returns to form. Melvin’s winter vacation will be anything but relaxing.
But the biggest worry Brewers fans had at the start of 2012 turned out to be no worry at all. Prince Fielder flew the coop, and his part of the sky didn’t fall.
If anything, it grew a little sunnier.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter, where I tweet as howiemag. And listen to me chat sports with Mitch Teich monthly on WUWM’s “Lake Effect.”
