from Amazon
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Selling the present for a better future
Matt offers:
It is hard to imagine Brewers fans rallying behind the premise. Fielder has been a big part of the franchise’s ascension to relevancy, and trading him would be a pretty clear admission that they are likely to be irrelevant for the next couple of years. However, the Brewers are not a good team right now, and there isn’t much help on the horizon. Thus, the smart thing for them and others in such a situation to do is admit that losing five more games a year for a couple of seasons is worth winning five more games a year in a couple of seasons after that. If the Brewers wait until this season is over or until the 2011 trade deadline, they likely won’t get half of the return they would get for trading Fielder now as the acquiring team would have his services for 1 1/3 seasons. Trading Fielder is likely to keep the casual fans away from the ballpark in September, but it would give the Brewers a better chance of having them show up in droves for a playoff run in a few years.
I agree with Matt’s point in principle and in isolation. But, that’s alot of trust the fanbase has to accept from management, which is why dumping talent like this probably doesn’t work in practice.
The NY Rangers had a policy that they would hold the line on ticket prices until they made the playoffs. As luck would have it for me, I moved to the NYC area at the start of their 7-yr drought of non-playoff (hard to do when 16/30 make the playoffs). They held the line for those last 5 or 6 years (whenever the policy was implemented).
So, in order for fans to buy-in to getting rid of Fielder, there has to be some promise back to the fans.
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