The manager of the team that most needed Tarik Skubal sat in his office Sunday at Angel Stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers, the team that opened play Sunday with the best record in the major leagues, did not get Skubal.
The Dodgers did. Of course they did.
“L.A. is America’s team,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
Not based on the cries from across America, from fans outraged that the Dodgers helped themselves to the best available talent yet again to baseball insiders mystified that the Detroit Tigers could not land a better return for Skubal than the three prospects the Dodgers swapped, or at least taken a couple more days to pursue a better return.
“Was I rooting for the Dodgers to get Skubal? Personally, no,” Angels pitcher Brent Suter said. “I was hoping another team that hadn’t won the World Series the past couple of years was going to get him.”
Suter pitched for the Brewers for seven years.
“They have a loaded farm system,” he said. “I thought they were going to get him.”
The road to the World Series runs through Los Angeles. The Brewers also posted the best record in the majors last year, then the Dodgers swept them in the National League Championship Series.
In last year’s NLCS, the Brewers started an opener twice, Freddy Peralta once and José Quintana once. In a five- or seven-game series this October, the Brewers could have started Jacob Misiorowski twice and Skubal twice.
That could have mitigated the Dodgers’ huge advantage in slugging. The Dodgers have seven players in double digits in home runs. The Brewers have four.
But any and all statistics obscure the larger point: If you’re a Brewers fan, when is your year?
The Brewers never have won a World Series. They are in line for their eighth playoff appearance in nine years.
Sustainable success is nice, and difficult to achieve. Much credit to the Brewers, who play in baseball’s smallest market.
But the point of the game is to win the World Series. If you’re not going all in when you have the best record in the majors for the second consecutive year, when are you going all in?
If not now, when?
“I know we made our efforts, too,” Murphy said. “I trust the way we operate. I understand the way we operate.”
This is all the more maddening in Milwaukee because, in 2008, the Brewers tried their best. That July, they traded four prospects for Hall of Fame pitcher CC Sabathia. Only one, outfielder Michael Brantley, developed into a productive major leaguer. That’s the norm, not the exception, in multiprospect trade packages.
As it turned out, the Brewers lost in the first round of the playoffs, and Sabathia did not survive the fourth inning of his lone postseason start. So what? The Brewers went for it, and their fans believed.
After the trade for Skubal, Fangraphs increased the Dodgers’ chance to win the World Series from 25% to 31%. That still means a two out of three chance the Dodgers do not win.
“He’s an amazing player,” Suter said, “but it doesn’t mean a guaranteed World Series. It doesn’t guarantee anything.”
I could not believe the number of fans that reached out to say small-market teams could not match the Dodgers’ proposal because they had little chance to re-sign Skubal as a free agent.
Again, so what? We’re playing to win the World Series, not the Baseball America prospect rankings.
The Brewers, with small-market resources, touted former Angels infielder Luis Rengifo as a significant winter free-agent signing. The Dodgers countered with Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker.
“L.A. is America’s team and has all the big names,” Murphy said. “Now they just added to that, with maybe the best pitcher in the game, certainly one of the greats in this era.”
If the Brewers and Dodgers meet again in October, Murphy will only be too happy to tell us who the underdog is.
“It’s going to be David and Goliath,” Murphy said. “We haven’t earned that right yet. We haven’t got there yet.
“If we get there, I’m sure the narrative will be pretty similar: the haves and the have-nots.”
Murphy wanted to make one thing perfectly clear: Fans across America might despise the Dodgers, but he does not.
“They’ve got a bunch of great dudes,” he said. “Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Teoscar [Hernández]. I don’t know [Shohei] Ohtani. He doesn’t even know who I am. But I feel like Ohtani is a great dude. I can just tell by his presence.
“How can you not love [Max] Muncy? Doc [manager Dave Roberts] is my good friend. [Coach Dino] Ebel, we’ve got his whole family playing for the Brewers.”
The Brewers made first-round picks of Ebel’s sons Brady and Trey over the past two years, paying $5.55 million in signing bonuses. The Ebel boys are top prospects. They can look forward to a long stay in Milwaukee.