Brewers Notes: Santana, Attanasio, Pitching

Despite a lackluster Spring Training performance, Domingo Santana doesn’t believe he was distracted by the trade speculation that followed him all winter, the outfielder tells Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  Though he said he didn’t worry about the rumors because they were out of his control, Santana admitted that “it would have been hard to get traded. I’m really attached to this group of people here. Even the staff, they have been really good to me since Day 1.”  Since Santana didn’t get dealt, he now faces some type of reduction in playing time with Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain moving into everyday outfield roles and Ryan Braun also in the mix for left field or a first base timeshare with Eric Thames.  It remains to be seen how the Brew Crew will juggle all of these players, though it also isn’t out of the question that a trade could still solve this logjam.

Some more from the Brewers’ camp…

• In an appearance on the “Power Alley” show on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM (audio link), Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said that the team exhibited “a little bit of discipline in some of our signings” during the winter in order to save some resources for potential trade deadline pickups.  “Some of the decisions we made in the offseason here were more keeping our powder dry for midseason acquisitions,” Attanasio said.  The team will already go into 2018 with an estimated payroll of almost $93.5MM, as opposed to just over $70MM at the end of last season, with the Cain and Yelich salaries representing the biggest new outlays.
• It could be that the Brewers explore adding a pitcher at midseason, though in another piece from Haudricourt, Brewers GM David Stearns discussed how the Brew Crew simply weren’t comfortable spending at the levels necessary to land a major free agent arm like Yu Darvish, Jake Arrieta, or Alex Cobb.  Stearns feels his team already has some good pitching on hand, which he realizes runs counter to criticism from pundits and fans that the Brewers still need rotation help.  “We’re flying against what the common perception is of our team.  We understand that.  We’ve also done that a lot since I’ve been here,” Stearns said.  “Look, we’re wrong plenty. But we’re as wrong on the conventional moves as we are on the unconventional moves.  We have to do what we think is right and not necessarily do what convention says….We might not necessarily agree with conventional wisdom on some players.  If someone is willing to pay more than you, then you’re not going to get the player.  When we’re willing to be the high bidder, as we were with Lorenzo Cain, you get the player.”