It’s not exactly that important to note because the Los Angeles Dodgers are obviously not playing in the World Series, but LA caught a lot of flak when they traded for Tarik Skubal in August.
On a side note to that, it’s been well documented that teams like the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays were thought to be in on Skubal, but didn’t want to offload from their top prospects to acquire Skubal for potentially just half of a season (plus postseason).
Well, the Dodgers were the ones who ended up landing Skubal, and ahead of World Series Game One between the Rays and Brewers, Milwaukee’s owner Mark Attanasio took a subtle shot at the Dodgers in recent comments to the media.
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Brewers’ Owner Attanasio’s ‘Built, Not Bought’ Comments
Per a post by @DodgersNation, here are some of Mark Attanasio’s comments about this current Brewers team being built from the ‘ground up’.
The post reads:
Brewers owner Mark Attanasio reflects on not trading for Tarik Skubal earlier this season after Milwaukee beat the Dodgers in the NLCS:
“This team was built, not bought. It’s critical to look at how we got here and because I want to have sustained success, we had to do that by being careful about how many prospects we gave up.”
“I thought a lot about it. If we had not won that Game 4, we would’ve seen Skubal and [Yoshinobu Yamamoto] again and we could’ve been looking at Game 7.”
“This team was built, not bought. It’s critical to look at how we got here and because I want to have sustained success, we had to do that by
Attanasio makes a good point with the fact the Brewers do have to be more conscious of their prospects due to maybe not being able to land top free agents all the time, but like any MLB team, this Milwaukee club has plenty of players who came along via trade from other organizations.
Either way, you have to give a ton of credit to the Brewers, their coaching staff, front office, and player personnel staff for reaching this World Series as one of the smallest market MLB clubs.
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Would Brewers Be in World Series if They Traded for Skubal?
It’s a very tricky question given the complexity of how trading for Tarik Skubal may have affected the Brewers in the playoffs, but there’s no doubt that Milwaukee has had a very dominant postseason (and regular season) run this year, and adding Skubal at the MLB trade deadline could have only helped their chances.
However, with that being said, and as noted, Milwaukee may have had to part with much more top prospect talent than Los Angeles did to secure the Skubal trade.
Anyway, despite the Dodgers not being in the World Series, it should be a very exciting matchup between two clubs that have never secured a Fall Classic victory in the Rays and Brewers.
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Milwaukee Brewers Owner Takes Shot at Los Angeles Dodgers After Tarik Skubal Whiff