Brewers Can Boost Their Payroll With Mickey Mouse Money, Yes Really

With a little help from Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, the Milwaukee Brewers might be able to afford to sign some free agents or sign their own players to contract extensions. Sounds like an odd connection, doesn't it? But it's true.

The Milwaukee Brewers are set to receive $30 million courtesy of Disney, which ownership should immediately put to use on this roster and build a World Series caliber roster.

How and why are the Milwaukee Brewers receiving money from Disney, you ask? Here's how:

Disney has bought the rest of MLB Advanced Media, also known as BAMTech, for the cost of $900MM. Split among the 30 teams, that means each team receives $30 million. That's a good sized chunk of change.

An extra $30MM at the disposal of Mark Attanasio should be immediately put into this roster. He doesn't even have to raise ticket prices or beer prices or food prices to get this extra $30MM either. It just shows up. It's essentially free money given to Attanasio and the Brewers, except for the 15% remaining equity in BAMTech they gave up, but we're not going to dive into the weeds on that.

The point is, the Brewers have a new $30MM to play with heading into 2023, courtesy of Disney.

Now, what should the Brewers spend that money on? Hmmm, here are a couple of ideas: Contract extensions for Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and/or Willy Adames, external upgrades at third base and catcher, sign Aaron Judge.

Okay that last one was a stretch. They only got 30 million dollars, not 300 million.

But still, $30 million is no small number. You can afford three Kolten Wong's with that money. Or two additional ones and keeping the one you already have instead of trading him away. Wong is an above-average player and was the Crew's second-best hitter in 2022. Adding a couple more guys like that to this team for 2023 can only help them achieve their goals.

As of this writing, the Brewers projected 2023 payroll is sitting at $115MM. If we assume this was the level of payroll the organization was wanting to get to, Disney's money would allow them to run a payroll up to around $145MM now. That would be a record-setting payroll for Milwaukee. Perhaps there was more room in the budget before this anyways, which would only allow that payroll flexibility to push higher.

Frankly, the money needs to be spent on something with this roster. Whether it be external additions or signing current players to extensions, the Brewers cannot sit this low with their payroll. They have stated they aren't rebuilding and plan to compete and build around this core of players. They say their goal remains a World Series for 2023. They won't be able to do it by cutting payroll like this.

It's still early in the offseason, but they'll have to start spending money at some point this offseason. With this extra cash from Disney, the Brewers certainly have no excuse to not spend.