SAN DIEGO — It hardly seems like it, but it’s been 20 years since Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio purchased the team for $223 million from then-commissioner Bud Selig and his family in 2005.
The Major League Baseball meeting where Attanasio received formal approval took place at the Hilton Chicago O’Hare Airport. Attanasio, now 67, was one of the first from the finance industry to buy into the sport, and he received a nice ovation from his new colleagues after the unanimous vote.
“Bud told me that it would be the only time the owners would applaud me,” Attanasio said Tuesday night in the Brewers clubhouse at Petco Park, where his first-place team dropped two of the three games this week to the San Diego Padres. “He was right.”
MLB, now run by commissioner Rob Manfred, has nothing to be ashamed of as the small-market, low-payroll Brewers have recently dominated MLB, at least during the regular season. The unlikely Brewers boast the best record in the league this season, which closes Sunday; they have won their National League Central division for the third consecutive year and fourth time in the past five seasons in pursuit of the franchise’s first World Series title.
Manager Pat Murphy, in charge the last two seasons, called it a miraculous “three-peat,” offering no apologies to then Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley, who trademarked the term back in the 1980s when his squad was trying to win three NBA titles in a row.
“Maybe I can talk to Pat, and we can use the term,” Attanasio said. It’s out there to be licensed on T-shirts and caps, with the licensing fee going to charity.
The fact is, this season’s results were a surprise. “Not one prognosticator predicted us to have more than 80 wins,” Murphy said.
On cue, the Brewers opened the season 0-4, the first three losses coming at Yankee Stadium where the New York Yankees outscored them 20-9 and hit nine homers, sparking the Torpedo Bat controversy. Five Yankees used the bat, but the hubbub has since faded into obscurity.
“Yeah, how did that work out?” Murphy said.
Christian Yelich, the Brewers lone candidate for NL MVP honors, called it a “non-story” at the time. “If we had allowed only eight runs in that series, nobody would’ve cared about it,” he said.
The Brewers were still 28-28 on May 27 and playing lackluster baseball, 6.5 games behind the Chicago Cubs with a much higher payroll. The wins then started accumulating, the Brewers sprinting out to a 79-45 mark, nine games up, on Aug. 18.
They haven’t wavered since.
The Brewers achieved this despite cutting payroll by $21.3 million after the 2024 season, spending $141.5 million for luxury tax purposes, ranked 21st in MLB, to produce a team that has dominated the regular season. That’s $275.1 million less than the top-ranked Los Angeles Dodgers, who have won fewer games. The division-rival Cubs spent an 11th-ranked $226.3 million for luxury tax purposes on players this season and made the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
The Brewers are succeeding by developing good young players, such as center fielder Jackson Chourio, Attanasio said, using the Tampa Bay Rays model. Over the years they traded stellar closers Josh Hader to the Padres and Devin Williams to the Yankees, without missing a beat.
This past offseason, free agent shortstop Willy Adames was allowed to walk to the San Francisco Giants for seven years, $182 million. The Giants were just eliminated from playoff contention.
Attanasio did retain Yelich for seven years, $188.5 million through 2028, but that was an anomaly.
“He’s the core of the team,” Murphy said. “I don’t know where we would be without him.”
The tight-fisted budgeting is the way it’s always been since Attanasio bought the Brewers and under the Selig family before him.
“We don’t generate the revenue to justify that kind of spending,” Attanasio said. “We never have.”
Even in publicly funded and renovated American Family Field, the Brewers generated only $343 million of revenue in 2024, 16th in the league, according to Sportico.
They are valued at $1.63 billion. In comparison, the Dodgers have MLB’s top revenue of $855 million and are worth $7.73 billion in the second largest market in the U.S. Milwaukee is the 33rd-largest.
How does a team like the Brewers compete?
“We just have to be smarter,” Attanasio, whose net worth is $1.9 billion per Forbes, said.
Milwaukee’s success comes at a time when smaller-market owners are trying to level the playing field by evenly sharing all of their local television money and seeking a salary cap in collective bargaining negotiations with the players next year.
As of now, each team gets to keep its own local TV money. In 2024, the Brewers earned $335 million, compared with $752 million for the Dodgers.
Changing the TV revenue structure would take a 75% vote of the owners, like all MLB issues. The players union has already said a salary cap is a non-starter. The threat of another MLB lockout looms when the current Basic Agreement expires after the 2026 season.
Attanasio said he “has no idea” how all of that is going to turn out.
The goal is for the Brew Crew to go where they’ve never gone before. In Attanasio’s 21 seasons, they’ve been to the playoffs nine times—seven in the past eight seasons—but have never made it beyond the NL Championship Series.
The Brewers have only been to the World Series once, losing the 1982 Fall Classic under Selig to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. They are one of five teams to have never won the World Series.
“I’m well aware,” Attanasio said. “But going into these playoffs we’ll have some company.”
Among the playoff qualifiers this fall, the Seattle Mariners have never played in the World Series, and the Padres have been there twice but failed to win.
If the Brewers can finally win it all, perhaps Attanasio will finally hear that second round of applause at the next owners meeting.
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