Is Mark Attanasio too close?

Some of your points seem good, but it wasn’t a good read. A little too jumpy – not cohesive enough.

that people almost always over value their own “property”, you see it when people are selling vehicles, homes and other posessions. They have a perceived value based on sentiment and personal attachments to their “property”.

In this respect I feel DM probably over values the guys that his organization developed and brought up. Its one thing to talk about potential and upside of the players on the trading block, but that normally does not equate to increased trade / resale value.

If the Brewers are looking for a major league arm and prospects for Fielder, getting that package during the season from a team in a pennant race is virtually impossible. They’re not going to blow-up their rotation just to pick up a slugger. Pitchers win playoff series.

The best chance to get an “overwhelming” deal done with Fielder and/or Hart is going to be done in the off-season. I don’t see any deals getting done before the deadline (I know, a big shocker given the time frame remaining). However, I think our team is going to look pretty different come spring training ’11.

(a) rumored deals aren’t always the same as real deals, so who knows if any of those offers were even made?
(b) one could also argue that we’re too close. i think fangraphs did a GM ranking and thought very highly of melvin, but we’re here and many of us don’t. so maybe we’re overreacting as well. i think melvin is a good GM, but has issues and maybe we’re just overly aware of those OR he’s not “new school” enough for the likes of this blog.

I’m not sure why that’s a problem. But then, I don’t regard the word as a put down either. I have heard Attanasio say some things that make me wonder if isn’t a little too loyal to Melvin, though I doubt it has anything to do with the notion that Melvin taught Attanasio what he knows about baseball.

Instead, I think Attanasio simply credits Melvin with the success the franchise has had since Attanasio bought the team. I don’t really agree with that appraisal myself, and I’m not sure a lot of fans do either. That’s where the disconnect is, in my opinion, rather than the possibility that Attanasio is a fan in addition to an owner or that he regards Melvin as too close a friend to hold him accountable for the teams failings. But if you attribute that outlook to Attanasio, everything else makes sense. The team’s down the last 12 months (they were above .500 last year until July), and the window of opportunity with this core of talent is closed. I think Attanasio knew that the team was built to win in 2007 and 2008 (before Sheets’ departure). Things didn’t fall together the way they’d hoped and some retooling is clearly inevitable at this point, but if Attanasio thinks Melvin put the pieces together in 07 and 08 that got them a playoff appearance and might have gotten them a lot further if not for injuries to Sheets and Gallardo, then I can understand why that would be the basis of him saying that fans would be “dealing with” Doug Melvin for “years”, as he did a couple of months back.

I disagree with that evaluation, but I think that (and the possibility that Attanasio knows things btc and I don’t) are far more plausible explanations for the apparent between his view on Melvin and ours (meaning those of BTC and myself, and anyone else who thinks Melvin should be fired at the end of the year).

He was so involved in baseball he took over the whole league

I agree with most of this. While buddy buddy may sound to far, I’d say that MAs nativity on how this sized market is supposed to run enabled DM to have a very long leash. Mark will eventually grow into a better owner and understand that perhaps DM isn’t doing what’s best for the club. This kind of stuff happens in every business, new guy is hands off for awhile and buys into the system in place… then changes things eventually.

So much of sports is based on personalities and if your boss likes you and can find reasons to keep you, he doesn’t just dump you, especially if he doesn’t have faith that there’s someone out there better. Only time will tell if Melvin is allowed to build the team for 2011. At that point we will know something is happening behind the scenes.

Not that we have the right to a completely transparent organization, but if DM isn’t gone at the end of the season, I’d like a specific justification as a fan. Nothing vague about the ups and downs of baseball. He’s made so many bad decisions that it’s hard to look past them unless you’re someone actively looking for M&M’s in a pile of sh*t. If I don’t have long-term faith in the club, I’m not going to be paying as much attention to them, either.