Major League Baseball’s exhibition season will get underway on Thursday, marking the official end of the offseason. That doesn’t mean certain franchise owners are ready to move on from a winter that saw the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers continue their free-spending ways and the New York Mets sign Juan Soto to the richest contract in the league’s history.
Count Milwaukee Brewers steward Mark Attanasio as the latest owner to weigh in on the league’s financial state as part of a chat with USA Today about the state of things published Tuesday. Attanasio took the opportunity to claim (without evidence) that the Brewers struggle to break even on an annual basis. He also openly yearned for a revenue-sharing structure similar to the ones employed by the NFL and NBA.
But, perhaps, the most notable part of Attanasio’s venting came in the form of this existentially tinged question: “Is my job to win a World Series,” Attanasio said, “or is my job to provide a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together?”
A fair response would be: how about both?
The Keepers of Baseball would be wise to remember the league is part of the entertainment industry. That’s an undeniable truth too easily disregarded by the corners of the game obsessed with efficiency above all. At the same time, alarms should sound whenever an owner tries to downplay or isolate team quality from their responsibilities to their fans. It’s somewhat reminiscent of this scene from John Helyar’s Lords of the Realm, featuring former MLB commissioner Peter Ueberroth chiding the franchise owners for putting team quality above profits:
“Let’s say I sat each of you down in front of a red button and a black button,” he said at one early meeting. “Push the red button and you’d win the World Series but lose $10 million. Push the black button and you would make $4 million and finish somewhere in the middle.”
He paused to look around. “The problem is, most of you would push the red one.” Ueberroth chided them for checking their business sense at the door. “You are so damned dumb.”
Intentionally or otherwise, Attanasio’s framing here is a sleight of hand if taken to its logical extreme. Consider that last year’s Chicago White Sox technically provided a summer of entertainment and passion for families en route to the worst season in modern history. It wasn’t the right kind of entertainment or passion, but hey, they put on the games every night and that’s what counts, yeah? Putting a product out there for consumption, with no concern about whether it’s worth consuming.
So yes, to pretend team quality is outside an owner’s purview — that it’s a mere matter of Providence or Chance rather than something that can be focused and improved upon — is a terrible perspective to embrace if you’re a fan. It allows owners cover for all kinds of undesirable behavior, including refusal to spend money on player retention and acquisition. (The Brewers are under heat in this respect, having traded Corbin Burnes and allowed Willy Adames to leave through free agency over the past two offseasons, all the while seeing manager Craig Counsell and executive David Stearns depart for larger markets, too.) Besides, it’s not as though teams are in the business of reducing ticket prices (or their public funding asks) following lean years. (Ask the Pittsburgh Pirates all about that.)
To be fair to Attanasio, he probably didn’t mean to tiptoe to the precipice of nihilism. The Brewers have reliably fielded a good product under his guidance. They’ve reached the playoffs in six of the last seven years, albeit without advancing beyond the Divisional Series since 2018. It stands to reason Attanasio’s quip was fashioned as a defense against people wondering why the owner of a consistent contender is unwilling to fund his brilliant front office with more resources — just to see if it can help deliver his franchise its first World Series title. (The Brewers haven’t ranked higher than 19th in Opening Day payroll since 2019.) Despite the implication of Attanasio’s question, he almost certainly cares about his team’s quality; he just might care a little more about something else.