It’s unclear where Perez will play next season — with Orlando Arcia likely up for good and Jonathan Villar locked into one of the remaining infield slots and Scooter Gennett still hanging around, Perez may have to float around the infield or even play some outfield as he did last season. But either way, the Brewers will have to find somewhere to play him — there was too much life in his bat in the late season to keep him on the bench. Perez has managed to play his way into the Brewers future after the Tigers cast him off, and if he can keep up this improvement in 2017, he’ll become the latest in what has become a tradition of Brewers waiver claims (or otherwise freely available talent) making good on a last chance in Milwaukee.

To me, that was the defining aspect of Doug Melvin’s tenure as Milwaukee Brewers general manager. Sure, there was the club’s great record of drafting talented hitters, as the wave of prospects that Melvin, Jack Zduriencik and company hit on in the mid-2000s — Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Corey Hart and J.J. Hardy — comprised the core of Milwaukee’s recent playoff teams. But that wasn’t enough to push the Brewers to victory, as we saw in the years between postseason appearances when there just wasn’t sufficient talent surrounding them. What pushed the 2011 club in particular above the rest was Melvin’s ability to grab players off the scrap heap who fit perfectly around the stars who powered those teams.

That list includes the likes of Casey McGehee, a waiver claim from the Cubs in 2009 who gave the Brewers four years as the starting third baseman; John Axford, who went from minor league free agent to nearly infallible closer in 2011; Chris Narveson, another minor league free agent who held down critical innings in the rotation; Nyjer Morgan, who was given a last chance in Milwaukee after the Nationals were all but ready to cut him before the 2011 season; Marco Estrada, who only needed a chance to prove the power of his changeup after the Nationals discarded him over supposed attitude problems; and Gabe Kapler, who was managing in the low minors before he became Milwaukee’s spark plug off the bench in 2008.

Hopefully this is an area in which the Brewers front office can learn from the continued presence of Doug Melvin as an adviser. Milwaukee will always be limited by market size. While they should have no problem getting the payroll over $100 million when the club is ready to go all in, the Brewers can’t match the spending power the Cubs displayed this past offseason in adding Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward and Jon Lester to their rebuilt core. And that’s why they’ll need to be able to acquire difference makers off the scrap heap much like Melvin did in the latter half of the past decade.

Even with his slow start last season, Perez finished with a solid 2.4 BWARP thanks to his pop and defensive versatility. He won’t even be arbitration eligible until 2018 and free agent eligible until 2021, meaning if he can prove 2016’s second half wasn’t a fluke, he will almost certainly be a part of the next contending Brewers squad. Now as the Brewers turn their attention from scorching the earth to building a new core, they’ll need to keep their eyes trained on the waiver wire and the minor league free agent list. There are more Perezes out there, and if the Brewers are going to compete sooner rather than later, David Stearns will need to keep finding them like his predecessor Doug Melvin did so well during his time at the helm.

At this point, though, we have collectively made it past the dreaded winter months and sit on the precipice of regular-season baseball. People have renewed their subscription (either purposely or otherwise) to MLBtv. Better yet, pitchers and catchers have reported, and spring training games are underway. Some of those games are on television. Otherwise, the familiar sounds of baseball emanate from the radio.

This ultimately signals one of the most exciting times of the year – at least for baseball fans. As far as the Milwaukee Brewers are concerned, interest in the club may never be higher than it will be on opening day. The team is projected by experts and computer systems to be one of the worst in baseball; therefore, as the season progresses and the expected losses pile up, it will be difficult for even the biggest fans to keep more than a passing interest in the team.

Interest in a specific team can be a difficult thing to measure. I, therefore, looked at Google trends to see how often people searched “Milwaukee Brewers” on the search engine. The numbers, as defined by Google, represent the level of search interest in the term specified, but it is in relation to the highest point, which is known as the 100 interest score. To risk being redundant, it is a relational measure, rather than simply spitting out raw counted data. This will help get a sense of general interest. It’s not a perfect way to measure a fanbase’s level of interest, to be sure, but it’s a start.

Since 2004, the term Milwaukee Brewers was most often searched on Google in April. In fact, it was the month that generated the most interest in eight of the eleven seasons since Google has tracked interest. Which makes intuitive sense. Opening day typically occurs in April, or very late March. For Brewers fans, the excitement of a new season is generally stronger than any other moment in the baseball season — largely because the Brewers don’t often make the playoffs. This makes the team less interesting during the month of October.

With all of that said, the month that, by far, showed the most interest was October 2011.

This shouldn’t be overly surprising (though one would be excused for thinking the 2008 season may have ranked highest). Not only was the Brewers 2011 season the most successful during that time frame, but it was one of the best in franchise history. The Brewers achieved 96 wins that season, a franchise record, and reached the National League Championship Series. The interest trends on Google only rises as the season progresses, reaching an apex in October during the playoffs.

Yes, as mentioned above, there was increased interest in the Brewers 2008 campaign as well — especially in September as the team frantically scrambled toward its first playoff birth since 1982. The problem is that the 2008 team quickly got eliminated from the playoffs by a superior Phillies team, which ended up winning the World Series that year, which left very little time for the interest level to accumulate throughout the month of October in 2008. The Brewers didn’t play long enough into the postseason.

What’s even more interesting is that in 2008 the peak interest in the franchise occurred in July. Typically, this wouldn’t create more buzz than a playoff birth, but on July 7, 2008, the Brewers pulled off a blockbuster trade and acquired ace CC Sabathia for prospects Matt LaPorta, Michael Brantley, Zach Jackson, and Rob Bryson. This forced the baseball community to treat the Milwaukee Brewers as a serious contender in the National League. For the first time in many years, the team was finally signalling that they had an opportunity to go for it.

In 2011, though, the seminal moment in recent Brewers’ history occurred. The Brewers won the NLDS against the Arizona Diamondbacks by a single run in extra innings. The final game of the series probably generated the most interest for Brewers supporters, not to mention general baseball fans who wanted to pull for the traditional underdog.

The fifth and final game of the series was tightly contested, as the Diamondbacks rallied in the ninth to tie the game and send the series into extras. The tenth inning of the series yielded the most exciting moment for Brewers fans when, of all people, Nyjer Morgan knocked an RBI-single up middle, which scored Carlos Gomez to walk off the NLDS division series.

The Brewers then moved on to the NLCS, where the team faced the dreaded St. Louis Cardinals. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, the magical ride ended when they were defeated by the Cardinals. It ended one of the most exciting and interesting times in the franchise’s history, one that is even captured in something as simple as raw “search engine” data.

BONUS INTERACTIVE GRAPH [CLICK HERE]

This graph illustrates interest in the Brewers in a more geographical sense. Wisconsin is obviously the state that shows the highest interest in searching the term “Milwaukee Brewers.” The city that showed the most internet interest, however, might surprise you. It wasn’t the city of Milwaukee itself, which is probably the case for a lot of non-baseball reasons, but this graph paints an intriguing picture of what Brewers fandom looks like around the club’s hometown.