There was a fantastic article on JSonline.com Thursday by Don Walker in which he solicited economist John Vrooman's  opinion on how the Brewers are being built and run.

Based on his analysis, the payroll bumps in the early part of this decade did not yield the desired effect on the field.

In other words, the Brewers spent more but didn't win much.

"This is especially true for the 2002 Brewers," he said in describing that horrendous 56-106 team. "The worst team in Brewers history. The pre-2002 clubs have left a footprint of maximum inefficiency and the 2002 club killed the buzz from new Miller Park after one season."

But it wasn't all bad.

Vrooman believes the hiring of Doug Melvin as general manager after 2002 was a good move, even as the team, led by the ownership group led by Bud Selig, began slashing the payroll.

"Two things were happening: Melvin was building the team internally and the Seligs were cutting costs because the club was being put on the market," Vrooman said. "Most MLB clubs are operated way past the point of maximum profit because the owners want to win. But when the team is up for sale the payroll is cut to the minimum to maximize team value."

"The Seligs were trying to win, but they did it the wrong way," Vrooman said.

The idea that the Seligs were trying to win runs counter to a common fan orthodoxy that says that they simply didn't care about winning. That last action of the Selig regime, to cut payroll to sell the team is widely remembered and vilified by the fan base as taking the money they got from the building of Miller Park and running. In reality, it cut a lot of the "dead wood" out and left Melvin with a clear path to build from within and start anew.

In Vrooman's view, the franchise began to turn around with Melvin working to beef up the farm system. That was followed by the purchase of the team in January 2005 by Mark Attanasio.

"The key to the internalization strategy is not only to grow talent from inside but also to keep players as they mature and work their way up the seniority ladder," Vrooman said.

The Brewers were very late to realize that with the huge disparity created by television and market dependent merchandising meant that they would not be able to compete by buying what they need on the open market. Franchises like Oakland and Minnesota caught on quicker and were able to have success by building from within earlier.

Eventually, though, the franchise started to commit to building from within and we find ourselves today with a team whose best players are largely a product of building from within. There was a lot of time lost, but not because the franchise didn't want to win, but because they didn't know how to go about it. They should have figured it out sooner, but it's better late than never.