Jonathan Lucroy’s exit following this month’s trade deadline deal with the Rangers has left the Brewers with just one player left on the roster who suited up for 2011’s National League Central championship squad: Ryan Braun. The Brewers, having shipped out much of their relevant talent, are likely to take a beating throughout the dog days of summer, with Braun the only remnant of the last time they were competitive.
Braun has spent his career hitting alongside players like Lucroy, Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy, Carlos Gomez, Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart, amd Aramis Ramirez, all of whom appeared in All-Star game for the Brewers. Sunday against the Reds, Braun was not only the lone All-Star in the lineup, but also the only one to ever win a Silver Slugger or receive an MVP vote.
Braun destroyed the Reds on Sunday, as he drove home six batters and hit two home runs in a 7-3 Brewers victory. Among the home runs was his longest of the season, a 444-foot blast that clanked off the center field scoreboard. Even as the team has shed the talent around him, Braun has been on fire all August. In 11 games, he has hit a ludicrous eight home runs to power a .381/.449/1.000 batting line. Braun is in the midst of a unique power surge; no other major leaguer has hit more than six homers this month.
Ever since Braun signed a five-year, $105 million contract extension to remain with the Brewers through 2020, Braun has been destined to be the last one standing from those previous competitive Brewers squad’s. Braun’s deal, which lasts through his age 36 season, would be a large enough financial commitment to deter many teams from acquiring him even if he wasn’t carrying the baggage of his performance enhancing drug suspension.
Attendance at Miller Park is down this season, at 28,987 per game after eight consecutive seasons averaging at least 30,000 a contest. Still, Milwaukee is sitting at eighth out of 15 National League clubs, and they are slated to finish in the top 10 of the league for the 10th straight season. For context, from 1993 to 2006, all seasons in which the Brewers finished .500 or worse, the Brewers finished better than 10th in the National League in attendance just once: in 2001, when Miller Park opened, per Baseball-Reference.
Attendance tends to be a lagging indicator of team strength. A team that has a surprising winning season isn’t likely to reap the benefits at the gate until the next season, and conversely, teams that see a sudden dropoff in quality don’t often lose the fans until the next season. Baseball games are an expensive outing for many families such that they must be planned weeks or even months in advance. The Brewers may not have felt the pain of their recent years outside of playoff contention yet, in part because of the excitement the 2014 squad generated before the season slipped through their figures in August and September. But too many more years in rebuilding mode will send Milwaukee right back to the attendance cellar it previously dwelled.
But for now, there are still butts in seats, and the fans who pay good money for the right to put said butt in said seat deserve something for the price of admission. Sports teams exist to be more than just soulless title-producing machines, especially in smaller markets like Milwaukee. They also exist to showcase the greatest talents in the world.
Brewers fans may not have much hope of watching a winner for a while, but in Braun, they at least can believe they will be seeing one of the game’s best hitters any time they come to the ballpark. Even in his worst month this season by OPS, July, Braun still hit a cool .307/.381/.387. He owns a ridiculous .453 batting average and .744 slugging percentage to right field as his reformation into one of the league’s best opposite field hitters has continued. And as Sunday showed, he is always a threat to deposit the ball into the seats. After hitting 25 home runs in 140 games last season, he already has 22 dingers in just 96 games in 2016.
In a season that was lost before it even started, sacrificed to the ideals of rebuilding, Braun has continued to reward Brewers fans by ascending once again to the ranks of the National League’s best hitters. Hopefully he can stay in this form long enough that these kinds of performance can not only reward squad loyalty but fuel a playoff berth. But for now, Braun is at least doing what he can to justify the price of admission.