Brewers Owner Mark Attanasio on Saturday said that "he 'mentally rebooted' some time ago" in regard to acknowledging the team needed to be rebuilt, according to Tom Haudricourt of the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL. Attanasio added, "It makes a tough season easier. [Outgoing GM Doug Melvin] and I took stock of things, frankly, in late April when we had a pretty good idea, unfortunately, of where we were heading. I felt at the time I didn't want it to be just a lost season." He said of incoming GM David Stearns, "The benefit of bringing in a new GM is we're bringing in a fresh set of eyes and a fresh set of eyes looking from a different perspective. David is very early in the game and he's still getting to meet all the people in the organization, so he's not anywhere near determining how we're going to position for next year." Attanasio admitted that his competitive zeal "probably stopped him from doing a reboot until this year." He added, "In my thirst to compete, maybe we ended up in the middle just a little too often. Frankly, we won last year when it felt that way, right? For 150 days, it felt like the right way to go last year. But it's 162-game season, not a 150-game season." Attanasio: "What we always try to do for our fans is be transparent in what we're doing. When we have a direction, then I think we'll be communicating that. I don't know when that will come, probably around the winter meetings. I don't want to tip our hand here. But we're mindful of where we're at. We want to build a championship team here" (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 10/4). The JOURNAL SENTINEL's Haudricourt wrote yesterday was Melvin's last day on the job, "and it's not how he wanted to go out." Melvin: "The performance just wasn't there. There was no way to foresee that, from so many players" (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 10/4).
