NL WILD CARD SERIES: METS VS BREWERS

October 1, 2024

Mark Attanasio

American Family Field

Milwaukee Brewers

Pregame Press Conference

Q. You've had a lot of different playoff teams in your run here as Brewers owner. What distinguishes this one in your mind?

MARK ATTANSIO: Well, a number of things come to mind, starting with youthful energy and that spirit. This team has had more -- we've had some really good teams, but I don't know that we've had any team with this amount of energy and this amount of players pitching in.

There's an expression in, I guess, all sports, but especially baseball, when it comes down to crunch time, all hands on deck. We've had all hands on deck: 17 starting pitchers, 12 guys who had saves this year. And Pat Murphy's focus on a win tonight got us 93 wins and home field in the Wild Card round. Pretty great.

Q. I've asked you this a couple of times. Now that the regular season is over, I don't know if you've had a chance to look back on the last 12 months, some difficult decisions made at the end of last year, the trade of Corbin, the managerial change.

Do you feel a sense of vindication, satisfaction? When you look at the 2024 season and the last 12 months, how do you kind of process all of that?

MARK ATTANSIO: Our team had a number of organizational challenges this year. Change is something that's present in all sports. Maybe it was our turn to have a lot of changes thrown at us at once. And opportunities, right?

It was a real challenge to decide whether or not to trade Corbin Burnes, but the opportunity to get Joey Ortiz and D.L. Hall is the other side of that. We had a number of other opportunities we didn't take. We had an opportunity to trade Willy Adames. We fortunately didn't go forward on that. All of our better players were asked for, several of whom are in the lineup today.

So I think we, as an organization, surmounted those. Then this is more of a reflection at the moment, but we really thought about people. Importantly, our entire coaching staff, even though Craig was the winningest manager in our history and obviously extremely talented, we decided to go with our people and trust our people, and I'm very gratified by that because Pat and the whole coaching staff -- there's a whole coaching staff behind him that has been here. They've been here for a long time, and I'm very proud of the job they did.

Q. You mentioned Willy Adames. Obviously he's certainly raised his stock with the way he's played this year. What has he meant to this organization for the last few years, and what's your confidence level about him being here beyond this year?

MARK ATTANSIO: From the day he got here, he brought -- I talked about energy. He brought an infectious energy, and teammate first and leading by example, and he wanted to play 162 games this year. It got to the point when we clinched that he really needed a day off, probably for a month. So he took one day off.

That sends a great example to all these young players. In particular, bringing Jackson Chourio to the Major Leagues at a very early age. I think some of Jackson's success obviously starts with who he is and his performance, but having Willy -- by the way, Freddie Peralta and William Contreras as role models definitely helped him. So it starts with that.

He's one of the greatest shortstops, he and Robin Yount, in our history, and he'll always be part of us. The challenge, the great news for Willy and his family is I think the free agent contract's going to be very valuable for him and quite high, and we'll do what we can do to stretch, but others have bigger pocketbooks. We'll see what happens.

Q. After seeing Sal Frelick go down the other day, what do you think about him being on the roster and in the lineup tonight?

MARK ATTANSIO: I just heard walking in that Murph said he was in the lineup. I saw Sal two days ago when he was sort of not walking great and saying I'm going to do it. The same guy at Yankee Stadium last year, he and Joey Wiemer collided. Joey Wiemer is like 6'4", 220, full speed, they collide. One guy is 6'4". One guy is 5'8", 5'9". They crash into the Yankee Stadium's scoreboard, and who comes up with the ball? Sal Frelick has the ball. Joey has a bloody mouth. That is Sal Frelick. I'm not surprised he's not playing today.

Q. You have leadership and expertise as a leader of people. What is it that Matt Arnold and Pat Murphy have shown you in the way they lead their groups this year, especially in the changeover from a year ago?

MARK ATTANSIO: Starting with Matt, Matt has been the glue in our baseball ops group, and he has steadfastly advanced the careers of many, many people in his group. I think therefore with him, it starts with the fact that his team knows he's looking out for them.

I'd say the same thing with Murph. I had an opportunity to see how Pat handled being the No. 2, the bench coach here, for nine years, and with Murph, it's always been about people.

That's been the case for both. What we learn about -- not every No. 2 can be a No. 1. We learned that Murph is a true No. 1.

Q. Obviously you guys are going up against the Mets, and Dave Stearns is somebody you helped bring into a really high role in this game. I'm curious as to where your relationship is with him now. Have you guys talked leading into this series at all?

MARK ATTANSIO: I guess me old school talk means talking -- this generation is texting, so we texted. I congratulated him after the game last night, after they clinched, and he wrote back when they were on their way here.

He met with a lot of our folks on Friday. I didn't get here until Saturday, so we mostly texted.

He texted I know from seeing how hard Matt's been working the last few days, it's an enormous job to think which, as you know, who's going to go on your roster depending on who the matchup is, so he's been pretty busy. But I'm sure I'll see him at some point during the series here. I'm very happy for the success he's had. He was very happy.

Q. Getting back to Willy, as a competitor, I don't think people realize how fiery you are when it comes to this stuff. Is it frustrating that there are teams with the way the pay structure works in baseball that you can't sometimes compete because you have the fans in town not understanding that, yet you want to be able to pay this money and retain these players?

MARK ATTANSIO: We have an extremely informed fan group, so I think they recognize there's some limitations on how we can put a roster together. Of course when there's a player that you love, that can have some frustration that goes with it.

The way we try to manage it is there's sort of a traditional small market analytics model where after three years, you start to look to trade players. We do the opposite. We try to figure out how many players we can keep here for their full-time, starting back with Prince Fielder.

You can't -- unfortunately, we haven't been able to keep everybody, but a lot of them. It felt really good to give Willy that standing ovation the other day when he walked off the field knowing it could be his last regular season game with the team. By the way, I made sure I was in my seats down next to the dugout so I could stand and cheer for him as well.

We all know what we deal with, and I think, if you give in to we're too small, we can't compete, we don't have the money, you've lost it. What I do like -- you know, there's been questions about the fact that our fans now expect more than just making the playoffs, I love that.

When I was first sitting in this seat in 2004, it was all about we had lost for 11 seasons at that point, we hadn't been in the playoffs at that point for over 20 seasons, and we had no expectancy. Now we have a high expectation, and I prefer that.

Q. Having worked with David Stearns and having him been here for as long as he was, you probably had a suspicion that you he would be facing your with team again at some point. Are you surprised it happened so soon in his first job after this coming back to you guys in the first round?

MARK ATTANSIO: It's a little -- look, we know how formidable and how smart he is, so probably would have not preferred to face him. We also know how formidable Francisco Lindor is at the top of the lineup, and probably going to be close to the MVP voting this year.

That said, I'm really proud that David was able to turn the Mets around in one season. And if you look at how he did it, he sort of did it the same way he did things here with a lot of small moves that any particular move didn't really -- didn't even notice, but then in the aggregate, made a real difference.

Probably had more to do with -- who's the mascot, the McDonald's --

Q. The Grimace.

MARK ATTANSIO: The Grimace, right. Probably if you have a purple seat for the Grimace, probably have some sort of seat for Stearns.

Q. I think somebody had to explain to David who the Grimace was.

MARK ATTANSIO: Me too.

Q. Kind of along the same lines, we can draw a line to the players that David Stearns acquired for the Brewers, but are there tendrils of David Stearns still in this organization, things he maybe put in motion, that you're kind of seeing come to roost over the last couple of years?

MARK ATTANSIO: Sure. The organization -- starting with he hired Matt Arnold, so it starts with that. David, what you do as a best practice in all business when someone's departing, you have what's called an exit interview. Set an exit interview with David on the whole group, in particular on Matt, and he was very positive on Matt, and you can see we haven't missed a step.

So, sure, his fingerprints are throughout Matt's group, but Matt has certainly made it his group over the last couple of years.

Q. We know you have a long history of loving the Yankees. I've never asked you how do you feel about the Mets?

MARK ATTANSIO: Growing up as a sports fan in New York and as a Yankee fan, as it turned out, I really started to love the Yankees in the '64 series and was sure they'd be back. Now, I was 7 years old or something. That was the start of the big decline.

At the very same time, the Amazin' Mets with Seaver and Koosman and Tommie Agee and all those players. I grew up as a New York sports fan.

By the way, part of me is very nervous about this obviously, how good the Mets are, but it's great to actually have the attention we have in this series because the Mets are playing, and I embrace that.