Category archive: Milwaukee Brewers
Sometime on Thursday, baseball owners are expected to formally ratify the new playoff format, locking in the system of six division winners and four wild-card teams for this season and beyond.
A general manager noted on Tuesday that nobody really knows the practical impact this will have on the summer trade market.
Will the new format make teams wait longer to declare themselves sellers? If so, will the worst teams wait until the end of July, or will they wait until August?
Will the fresh memory of how the St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays scrambled into the postseason last year -- while the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves collapsed -- be a talking point between notoriously optimistic owners (meaning: unrealistic) and their GMs? Will there be owners who convince themselves that they're destined to be the 2012 version of Bill DeWitt, holding up a championship trophy at the end?
Will the additional playoff teams also impact the number of buyers, because with more teams making the playoffs, GMs won't feel quite so much pressure to add to stay in contention for a berth? The Giants' Carlos Beltran deal was the latest example of how surrendering a top prospect for a midsummer dream doesn't guarantee anything.
But no matter how the rest of the market plays out, there are three teams that executives believe will be the most aggressive:
To read which teams should be actively pursuing upgrades at the trade deadline this summer, sign up and become an ESPN Insider.
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Buster Olney
Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of two books. "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," is a Times best-seller, and "How Lucky You Can Be", about basketball coaching legend Don Meyer, was released in 2011.
He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).
Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."
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