Fire Doug Melvin

Tom H tweeted the following..

Brewers GM Doug Melvin meeting with owner Mark Attanasio in LA to line up financial ducks for offers to free agent pitchers.

Hopefully is smiling because he made some major off-season front office moves

Marks’ not a dumb guy—he seems to have a grasp of our market and how it all works. Previous posts touched briefly on the fiscal constraints we have. A quick summary is: $90M is our theoretical max, $84M is perhaps a best guess, but in this economy and with a mounting backlash against the Front Office failures could possibly even point to “status quo”.  My best guess is that $66m is already tied up, and we require 4 position players, 1 bullpen arm and a starting pitcher. So there you have it… limited resources that need to go rather far. Mark’s a rich guy, but he can’t afford to throw millions upon millions into the club.

So here’s your chance Mark. Ask the hard question. I’ll even give you a few to get the conversation rolling…

• What is the long term strategy of the club? Right now we aren’t sure what we are doing here. Are we building through the minors to build the majority of our club, or are you trying to finish your career where you started? You know, the Pirates farm club.
• Do you understand the blow back against our club due to not offering arbitration? We already face declining projections for attendance next year due to 2009 performances.  How is waiving the white flag going to inspire fan buy-in? Halama isn’t doing it. This goes back to the lack of a strategy. Yes we understand you can’t simply appease the fans, but what’s the upside of not getting a sandwich pick?
• Spare me the small market team crap. The Twins made the post season while spending $12M less last year then we did. (Looks like the Cubs have a ton of money already tied up for years to come). How are you going to manage the club better in the future to ensure that our strategy matches our market constraints? Stop just bitching about it while not doing anything for the club.  You can work the system while trying to change.
• Why the hell didn’t we figure out our fiscal outlook before declining arbitration to Lopez?

That should start a long conversation hopefully ending in the realization that the club isn’t improving with Doug at the helm. I’d also like to encourage you to not allow Doug to harm the club in 2011 and beyond by making poor decisions now.  2011 is a pretty banner year for the club: Suppan and Halll finally come off the books. $20M dollars are coming off, and you need to protect your investment by not allowing him to make horrible decisions like those. The Brewers need pitching. Randy Wolf and Doug Davis. although better then what we had last year, should not be considered in any long-term strategy for the club. Don’t pick up pitchers to give the illusion you are doing something. Make it count or limit the damage to a year so when $20M becomes available you can do something useful with it. Can you imagine what we could do with that money right now?