Scott Paulus \ Milwaukee Brewers
Changes: Former marquee player Ryan Braun is likely to be traded.
The 2016 Milwaukee Brewers season is history, and it wasn’t quite as horrifying as some preseason pundits predicted.
Sure, the Brew Crew finished 16 games below .500 (73-89), and the opening day roster was significantly different from the lineup that took the field for Milwaukee’s final game of the season last Sunday in Colorado.
But if the relaxed smile on manager Craig Counsell’s face after first baseman Chris Carter launched his 41st and final home run of the season in the 10th inning at Coors Field to give the Brewers their penultimate win of the season last Saturday was any indication, we can call this rebuilding season a success. Carter tied Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado for the National League home run title.
And Milwaukee won five more games than in 2015, finishing fourth in the NL Central and above eight other Major League teams.
Realistically, no team other than the Chicago Cubs was going to win the NL Central. They got off to the best start in modern baseball history and only slightly slowed down en route to being the only team this season to win more than 100 games (103-58).
The Brewers, oddly enough, played spoiler in mid-September by taking three of four at Wrigley Field — slightly delaying Chicago’s clinching of home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
Statistics analysis website FiveThirtyEight gives the Cubs and American League East champion the Boston Red Sox the best odds of winning the World Series. Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein was general manager of the Red Sox when, in 2004, that team won its first World Series championship in 86 years. Now he could play an integral role in the Cubs winning their first title in 107 years.
Looking ahead to the offseason, the days of seeing Ryan Braun in a Brewers uniform might be over. Reports last month suggest that the former All Star and discredited user of performance-enhancing drugs could be traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers over the winter for polarizing brat Yasiel Puig — who was demoted during much of the final two months of the season, playing for the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City.
Granted, Braun (under contract with the Brewers until 2020) is not the player he once was, but Puig could alienate fans even more than Braun. For a club still in transition, the question is how much risk this team wants to take.
