Looks like Christian Yelich is staying put after signing a $215 million, nine-year deal with the Brewers.
A few weeks ago I offered mild constructive criticism for the owners of my beloved Milwaukee Brewers in a blog post I gently entitled “Cheap bastards.”
My point back then was that, with only three years remaining on all-star outfielder Christian Yelich’s contract, the club should spend some money now on surrounding Yelich with the best players possible and try to win a pennant. Instead, they’ve opted to save money by signing mostly journeymen on the backsides of so-so careers.
And the few promising younger players they’ve acquired come with serious question marks. A case in point is their new catcher, Omar Narvaez, who is spending this spring training learning how to...well, catch.
The Brewers have only been to the World Series once and they’ve never won it. In my half century of following them, the chance at a title has only come along in a handful of seasons. It seems that the Brewers’ owners owe it to their long-suffering fans to grasp for the golden ring while they have the chance.
So maybe you would think I would be happy that last week the team announced that the Yelich window will now stay open for almost a decade. The club signed Yelich to a nine-year, $215 million deal. The Brewers don’t reveal contract details but I’m pretty sure it includes a guaranteed assisted living arrangement into their star’s golden years.
Well, I’m happy for Yeli. He likes playing in Milwaukee and he’s now guaranteed his future no matter what might happen. And what might happen happened last year when his season was ended by a fluke after he slammed a pitch off his own bat into his kneecap. He recovered, but that’s the kind of stuff that can end a career, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if it entered into his thinking about signing the long-term guaranteed contract.
But I’m not happy at all for the fans. Here’s the thing. It’s not just that the Brewers had a three-year contract window before Yelich became a free agent. These will also be the best three years of the rest of his career. Baseball players’ abilities decline predictably and precipitously in their early to mid-thirties.
Yelich is 28 now and 31 at the end of his old contract. So it makes obvious sense that the smart thing to do would have been to spend money now on other top-notch players rather than spending a lot of money later on during the declining years of Yelich’s career.
What’s likely to happen now is that the Brewers will use the Yelich contract as an excuse not to spend money on anybody else over the next nine years. In a few years he’ll be making about $27 million a year or about a quarter of their current total payroll. They will no doubt argue (as they have since the dawn of the free agent era some 40 years ago) that they just can’t compete for talent as a “small market” club. That’s ridiculous. As I noted in my blog post, the Brewers’ chief owner, Mark Attanasio, was worth $700 million back in 2012, the last year I can find a report on that. And, of course, he’s just one member of the group of millionaires and probably billionaires that owns the club. What’s more, the team is worth over five times more than it was when they bought it.
What this deal will do for sure is keep people showing up at the ballpark and watching the games on television. Yelich is not only a draw as a player but he has a well-earned reputation for being a good guy. And Brewers fans, most of whom kicked in $600 million for the Brewers’ stadium through a local sales tax, outperformed all but seven teams last year in terms of attendance despite being the smallest market in the major leagues. Yelich will keep them coming in and keep printing money for the owners.
So, the owners’ strategy seems to be to invest some money to keep their biggest star drawing in fans instead of spending the money they need to in order to make a legitimate run at a pennant. It’s a formula that should guarantee mediocrity for a decade. Two similar long-term deals with Ryan Braun, the first one for eight years signed back in 2008, have resulted in exactly that.
Nonetheless, I love baseball. If this season is like most, I’ll listen to, watch or attend in person about 150 of the Brewers’ 162 games. I only wish the Brewers’ owners would show the same loyalty to fans like me as they show to their own bottom line.
