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Radio critics second guess every Brewers’ move

It’s odd that after 25 years of frustration, the better the Milwaukee Brewers get, the louder grows the chorus of self-styled experts second-guessing their success.

Midway through the season, Brewers’ General Manager Doug Melvin just completed an eye-popping deal. He traded the team’s top minor league prospect for one of the best pitchers in baseball—last year’s American League Cy Young Award winner, C. C. Sabathia.

That the once lowly Milwaukee Brewers were involved in such a major deal is a clear demonstration of how far the Brewers have come under owner Mark Attanasio since the bargain-basement Selig family years.

So what’s all that whining in the background?

The rise of the Brewers to the point where we can imagine another World Series in Milwaukee has coincided with another development in sports.

That is the proliferation of sports talk radio in Milwaukee. There are now three post-game shows after every game on three different radio stations. That means a cacophony of broadcasters and fans debating every single move in every game as well as every move that wasn’t made.

That’s one of the beauties of baseball, really. It’s a made-for-barroom-arguments kind of game. You and any bozo can second-guess the manager and, a fair amount of the time, you’ll be right.

Manager Ned Yost has been the primary victim of all the blather. A fair number of sports talkers won’t be satisfied until they run Yost out of town. Their worst fear is he just might win a World Series first.

For the last month and a half, Yost crossed up the talk shows by leading the Brewers to one of the best winning stretches in baseball. Only equally amazing play by the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals has prevented the Brewers from running away with their division.

Now the second-guessing has started to spill over to include Melvin, the general manager. This is the man who not only presided over drafting all those great young players but has an uncanny ability to unearth remarkable veteran talent, often from other teams’ discards.

In 2003, Melvin picked up Scott Podsednik, a career minor leaguer, for $20,000. Two years later, Melvin traded Podsednik, who became a starting centerfielder and top base stealer, for slugger Carlos Lee. When the Brewers were about to lose Lee to free agency, Melvin traded him for Francisco Cordero, one of the best closing pitchers in baseball.

Now Melvin is dealing from strength. Not only does he have an owner who is willing to spend money, but the Brewers also have more top-rated prospects in the minors than they can possibly put on the field.

So it’s practically a no-brainer to trade their top hitting prospect—third baseman Matt LaPorta—and some other minor leaguers for Sabathia.

That doesn’t mean you won’t hear plenty of pretty brainless criticism of the deal over the next few weeks.

Why, this guy LaPorta, whom most fans hadn’t even heard of before the trade, could be the next Ryan Braun. In fact, he’s developed even faster in the minors than Braun did, which was incredible.

What kind of idiots would sacrifice the chance to have another Ryan Braun to their lineup for years to come for a starting pitcher who might only play for the Brewers for a couple of months?

You see, Sabathia will be a free agent after this season. He’ll be looking for one of those $100-million-plus deals that only major media market teams hand out. So the guy’s more of a rental.

The answer about the idiots is a general manager and an owner who are ready to win everything they can this season up to and including winning it all.

If the upgraded Brewers’ second half lifts off from its already impressive trajectory, this is the year we get to jump up and down again downtown.

But if you enjoy really dumb sports talk, tune in any day to hear somebody yelling that the Brewers should trade Prince Fielder because he didn’t hit a home run today.

Joel McNally is a syndicated columnist. His e-mail address is jmcnally@wi.rr.com.