The Brewers announced on Tuesday that they extended the contracts of General Manager Doug Melvin and manager Ron Roenicke.
Roenicke's contract now extends through 2014, with a club option for 2015. Melvin's contact runs through 2015.
Melvin's new contract came with an upgrade in job title. He used to bee xecutive vice president-general manager but is now president of baseball operations-general manager.
Melvin was on WSSP in Milwaukee this morning and said that talks about his extension started in the offseason, but that the club got distracted making moves and so they got tabled. They began again in Spring Training. He also said that he's known about his new contract for awhile, meaning the team either sat on announcing Melvin's contract til they could finalize Roenicke's or they held the news until which time they thought the announcement would improve a news cycle.
There are many fans who aren't happy with Roenicke as manager, but I'm not one of those (yet). I think I might be an apologist because I really hated Ned Yost and the players clearly hated Macha. In comparison, I'm quite happy to have Roenicke. That's probably not the most ringing endorsement, but in my young Brewers fandom, Roenicke is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I've known.
Melvin, on the other hand, can stay here til the day he dies as far as I'm concerned. This wasn't his best off-season - he really put all his eggs in the Alex Gonzalez basket and we are now feeling the effects of that single-minded decision - but he's done so many wonderful things for the club. He's savvy and the other GMs in the league have awarded him Executive of the Year because they agree. He clearly loves the team and loves Milwaukee.
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The year before Doug Melvin became GM, the Brewers won just 62 games.
