Has anyone lost confidence in Stearns

[balsamlaker]

I would guess at least 25 MLB teams would trade the Brewers their GM straight up. No GM is perfect because they are human and so are the players they trade for or draft. Stearns and Counsell have made this team relevant.

[crossface21]

Everyone assumes that if a guy is offered a contract they will just come here. It takes 2 to tango. We'll never know a lot of the guys that Sterns offers contracts to and what those offers are for and if a guy just wasn't interested in coming here or not. And Sterns can't necessarily get in a bidding war with a lot of teams, they don't have the payroll resources.

 

In addition, I think with the way the Brewers run their pitching staff, you don't need absolute studs as starters. Would it be nice? Heck yeah it would. But those guys cost money-lots n' lots of money. If the Brewers can get 3-4 guys that are reliable for 5-6 innings and then spend money on good, quality bullpen arms-which are vastly more inexpensive-I'm fine with that. Put the money in the offense with that model.

 

With Woody, Burnes, and Peralta, all you needed was 1 guy to be good and the others to be average and this team is winning the division right now. Woody is good. Unfortunately, Burnes and Peralta weren't even average, they weren't even awful-they were god awful.

 

Jeffress, Burnes, Peralta, not doing well this year hurt. But as many would probably agree, the injury to Knebel crushed that bullpen. You can't blame Sterns for that. "He should have had more depth." There are few bullpen arms out there like Knebel when he's going good.

[adambr2]

Everyone assumes that if a guy is offered a contract they will just come here. It takes 2 to tango. We'll never know a lot of the guys that Sterns offers contracts to and what those offers are for and if a guy just wasn't interested in coming here or not. And Sterns can't necessarily get in a bidding war with a lot of teams, they don't have the payroll resources.

 

Agreed. We do this a lot. We see a guy sign somewhere for X amount of dollars and assume he would have also signed here for X amount of dollars. Doesn't always work like that, even if the guy is interested in coming here. There are a lot of factors for a free agent - money, years, taxes, location, coaching staff, winning, starting opportunities, and how well the team has developed players at that position. Typically money is near the top of the list but it's not always the only factor.

 

Just because someone signs somewhere for 5M does not always mean we could have had him for the same 5M or even at all.

[Pugger]

[sarcasm]Domingo Santana[/sarcasm]

 

Gamel is a HUGE upgrade over Santana and it isn't even funny.

[Bulldogboy]

Yes. The state of the system overall and the lack of depth throughout is a red flag. The Yelich deal buys him time as it is the best trade in franchise history. That being said he hasn't done a ton right since.

[umphrey]

I like Stearns overall.

 

I think he mismanaged the pitching staff this year because apparently he over estimated some of our young pitchers and relied on veterans to over achieve again.

 

Our MiLB depth is awful, but I don't really blame him for it. It's a necessary evil to make moves like the Yelich trade, and he's only been here 3 (?) years which I would argue is not enough time. If we drafted 18 year olds his first year they would be only 20-21 years now. We haven't had enough time to go through several rounds of young player acquisitions and grade them effectively.

[pacopete4]

So he doesn’t make the Yelich trade... is our system in better shape? Those guys we traded haven’t exactly done much and the prize of the trade (Brinson) is horrible.

 

And hasn’t done a ton since the Yelich trade? People can’t really believe that can they?

[Bulldogboy]

So he doesn’t make the Yelich trade... is our system in better shape? Those guys we traded haven’t exactly done much and the prize of the trade (Brinson) is horrible.

 

And hasn’t done a ton since the Yelich trade? People can’t really believe that can they?

Who is his best acquisition since Yelich?? Grandal on a 1 year deal ok. What else?

[markedman5]

Since Yelich trade

 

Traded for Moose.....trading for him and then getting him back for another year. If he wasnt on our team last season then we likely don't get him on the cheap this year when the market drops out from under him.

 

Signed Miley when almost everyone on Brewer fan thought he would suck.

 

Signed Grandal

 

Picked up key bullpen piece in Soria

 

Traded for Lyles which has helped keep us in it this season when injuries and underperformance hit our rotation

 

Traded for Gio.......then resigned him this year when we needed a competent starter

 

Picked up Kratz

 

Again not all tbese are block busters but they all helped us win the division last season or gave yes a chance this season.......and in some cases both.

 

If anyone expects blockbuster trades every off season I don't know what to tell you.......other then it ain't happening.

[clancyphile]

Signing Thames - A brilliant move - and hopefully a sign of things to come. The Brewers should look at KBO more for nuggets.

 

Thornburg for Shaw/Wilkerson - Worked out well in 2017 and 2018 for the Crew.

 

Signing Chacin - Worked in 2018, but 2019 was a hot mess.

 

Signing Miley - If Stearns had the chance to do it all over again, I think he would give Miley the two-year deal and Chacin the one-year deal.

 

Yelich trade and Cain signing - At the time, I questioned doing both, but it seemed to work out.

 

Deal for Moose - Overall, it's worked out well. Getting the extra year, plus last year's run, made the price of Maverick Phillips and Lopez worthwhile. With his hand/wrist issue late in the year... maybe he comes back on the mutual option.

 

Deal for Gio - Very good. Almost a mess when he went to the Yankees, but his return was good news for the Crew.

 

Santana for Gamel/Zavalos - At the time was skeptical about the return. The way Zavalos pitched this year, though, I think will make this a long-term win for the Crew.

 

Signing Grandal - Probably one move that really kept the team afloat after Shaw and Aguilar had the bottom drop out from under them. Now, signing him to an extension will probably be the hard part, but should happen.

 

Aguilar for Faria - It was good since the Crew got a potentially serviceable bullpen arm for 2020, much more than one would expect after Aguilar's struggles.

 

Dubon for Pomeranz/Black - This one will hurt for a bit. Dubon will be valuable depth as a contact-hitter/speed guy in the middle infield, and I think his offensive potential was underrated. If Pomeranz and Black become key parts of the 2020 bullpen, and take the Crew to the playoffs that year (and this year), then it's worth losing Dubon.

 

DFAing Wilkerson and Stokes - Wilkerson is one of those who probably could have been a throw-in a while back, maybe for a lottery ticket. Stokes - well, everyone knows I was pretty high on him. The former is not a big deal. Stokes very well could be a big "what if" for Brewers fans. Would have been better to DFA Saladino.

[Jopal78]

Anybody who has lost confidence in the GM most likely has unrealistic expectations to begin with.

 

Stearns knew the Brewers will never signed an elite SP when those players are getting $25+ million dollars a year. He also knew they can’t consistently compete with a rotation of mid-tier free agents and band aids. So he took a shot trying to break in 3 promising home grown starting pitchers. It was the correct move for the long run, but Burnes and Peralta didn’t get the job done.

 

After getting next to nothing offensively at second and catcher last year, he dumped 28+ million dollars into Moustakas and Grandal. Those two players have earned every cent of their contracts.

 

However, the decision to dump so much payroll into C and 2B, meant the GM didn’t have much room to maneuver with bringing in bullpen arms settling for low cost additions: Claudio and Wahl. Also useful players such as Lyles and Miley moves on because the money was spent elsewhere. Again at the time these moves looked good.

 

Then Knebel tore his UCL, Wahl tore his ACL and Jeffress suffered the first of a multiple injuries. Nobody could predict three players the team was counting on to pitch innings for them going down with significant injuries.

 

After Burnes and Peralta flamed out every member of the rotation also went to the DL at some point with injuries: Woodruff, Gonzalez, Anderson, Davies. With the exception of Houser the 8th, 9th 10th best starters in the organization simply weren’t good players . Then again no team in MLB is ten deep in starters.

 

The only thing you can criticize Stearns for in 2019 is being too patient with his players. I can understand the optioning of Hiura in an attempt to finally get Shaw going at the plate. But they gave Nelson a shot after mediocre post-op minor league numbers. They gave Aguilar a couple hundred at bats to try to find his form. It’s actually somewhat shrewd for a small market team with limited payroll to be extremely patient with the talent before pulling the plug on someone.

 

It’s a fair criticism that Stearns hasn’t gotten more out of his drafts especially with a top 5 pick under his belt. But that isn’t a new criticism or reason to lose confidence in September of 2019.

[AdvantageSchneider]

I've been a Brewers fan for 43 years and I've stuck with them through a few good years, but mainly lean times. If they fired Stearns I think I would quit them for good.

[sveumrules]

Stearns has only had four drafts, so still kind of early to tell one way or another how he has done.

 

Sure, Ray is looking like a bad pick at #5 in 2016, but we still got Burnes, Feliciano, Z Brown, Erceg & Henry for guys that still have varying degrees of chances at being possible future contributors.

 

Hiura has already paid dividends from 2017 & you've still got plenty of interesting guys in Lutz, Francis, Bettinger, Lazar, Ward & File.

 

For 2018 Turang had a solid first season all around then there's Ashby, Rasmussen & Andrews who have already had some success plus HS guys like Bello & Gray with plenty of promise.

 

Obviously way too early to pass judgement on 2019, but Small & Kelly definitely showed out in their small samples.

 

It also seems like we've made strides in the international market since Stearns took over, but of course that will take even longer to maybe bear any fruit.

[clancyphile]

Anybody who has lost confidence in the GM most likely has unrealistic expectations to begin with.

 

Stearns knew the Brewers will never signed an elite SP when those players are getting $25+ million dollars a year. He also knew they can’t consistently compete with a rotation of mid-tier free agents and band aids. So he took a shot trying to break in 3 promising home grown starting pitchers. It was the correct move for the long run, but Burnes and Peralta didn’t get the job done.

 

After getting next to nothing offensively at second and catcher last year, he dumped 28+ million dollars into Moustakas and Grandal. Those two players have earned every cent of their contracts.

 

However, the decision to dump so much payroll into C and 2B, meant the GM didn’t have much room to maneuver with bringing in bullpen arms settling for low cost additions: Claudio and Wahl. Also useful players such as Lyles and Miley moves on because the money was spent elsewhere. Again at the time these moves looked good.

 

Then Knebel tore his UCL, Wahl tore his ACL and Jeffress suffered the first of a multiple injuries. Nobody could predict three players the team was counting on to pitch innings for them going down with significant injuries.

 

After Burnes and Peralta flamed out every member of the rotation also went to the DL at some point with injuries: Woodruff, Gonzalez, Anderson, Davies. With the exception of Houser the 8th, 9th 10th best starters in the organization simply weren’t good players . Then again no team in MLB is ten deep in starters.

 

The only thing you can criticize Stearns for in 2019 is being too patient with his players. I can understand the optioning of Hiura in an attempt to finally get Shaw going at the plate. But they gave Nelson a shot after mediocre post-op minor league numbers. They gave Aguilar a couple hundred at bats to try to find his form. It’s actually somewhat shrewd for a small market team with limited payroll to be extremely patient with the talent before pulling the plug on someone.

 

It’s a fair criticism that Stearns hasn’t gotten more out of his drafts especially with a top 5 pick under his belt. But that isn’t a new criticism or reason to lose confidence in September of 2019.

 

I'll go with a +1 here.

 

Honestly, though, I would have optioned Nelson for the whole season. He needed much more time than he was given in the minors. He may never be the TOR guy the Crew thought they had finally developed in 2017 - but I think he could be a closer.

 

Similarly, they needed to just roll with Hiura, and eat the option on Shaw. Can't fault them on Aguilar, but that, too, cost the Crew.

 

I don't see the logic in getting Feritas, and still don't. Same goes for Tyler Austin. Keeping Saladino did not make sense. One or more of those moves pushed out Troy Stokes, who arguably had more upside, and could have enabled the Crew to flip Ben Gamel for something this offseason.

 

Really, what caught the Crew in 2019 was injuries to key relievers (Knebel, Jeffress), and the depth got knocked out in the rotation (Burnes in particular). Nobody could have predicted that. Perhaps the only thing you can blame Stearns for is maybe not bringing back Gio in the offseason. I imagine that probably would have been worth a game or two in the scheme of things.

[baybeachbum1]

In my life as a Brewer Fan, only Harry Dalton (in his early years before the Bud Selig miasma of financial

suckitude drained Harry's blood of honest competitiveness) gave me the hope of a Brewers World Series win. Jim Baumer, Sal Bando, Dean Taylor, and Doug Melvin never instilled honest hope for a World Series win. Stearns is smarter and more competitive than all of the others put together, and Attanasio seems more than willing to put money in for legitimate WS runs. I think most of the people carping about Stearns are younglings who don't realize just how far from a World Series win the Brewers have been in their entire existence. If Rollie Fingers had been healthy for the 82 Series, the Brewers would have won IMHO. https://www.mlb.com/news/cecil-cooper-says-healthy-rollie-fingers-would-have-given-brewers-1982-world-series/c-108083690

[HiAndTight]

Everyone assumes that if a guy is offered a contract they will just come here. It takes 2 to tango. We'll never know a lot of the guys that Sterns offers contracts to and what those offers are for and if a guy just wasn't interested in coming here or not. And Sterns can't necessarily get in a bidding war with a lot of teams, they don't have the payroll resources.

 

In addition, I think with the way the Brewers run their pitching staff, you don't need absolute studs as starters. Would it be nice? Heck yeah it would. But those guys cost money-lots n' lots of money. If the Brewers can get 3-4 guys that are reliable for 5-6 innings and then spend money on good, quality bullpen arms-which are vastly more inexpensive-I'm fine with that. Put the money in the offense with that model.

 

With Woody, Burnes, and Peralta, all you needed was 1 guy to be good and the others to be average and this team is winning the division right now. Woody is good. Unfortunately, Burnes and Peralta weren't even average, they weren't even awful-they were god awful.

 

Jeffress, Burnes, Peralta, not doing well this year hurt. But as many would probably agree, the injury to Knebel crushed that bullpen. You can't blame Sterns for that. "He should have had more depth." There are few bullpen arms out there like Knebel when he's going good.

 

 

I keep seeing this, I don't think they do that by design as much as as a result of having Wade Miley and Gio Gonzalez as your top 2 pitchers. If Woodruff and Burnes would have been as good as you could have reasonably hoped...which Woody was, but Burnes was not, then they wouldn't have to operate in that fashion. The Brewers did an amazing job with what they had last year, but that's not how you build a team. They need to put all resources into developing and acquiring good starting pitching. I think they have plenty of power arms and they've got all the arms they need to have a dominant pen in their system right now for the most part.

 

You are correct, they obviously don't have the financial resources to compete for player(s). But if they believe one is good enough, they can at least try to sign him. I believe there is one pitcher in this FA pitching class worthy of a big contract from the Brewers and the risk. We'll have to see how aggressive they are in this loaded FA pitching class.

[HiAndTight]

Anybody who has lost confidence in the GM most likely has unrealistic expectations to begin with.

 

Stearns knew the Brewers will never signed an elite SP when those players are getting $25+ million dollars a year. He also knew they can’t consistently compete with a rotation of mid-tier free agents and band aids. So he took a shot trying to break in 3 promising home grown starting pitchers. It was the correct move for the long run, but Burnes and Peralta didn’t get the job done.

 

After getting next to nothing offensively at second and catcher last year, he dumped 28+ million dollars into Moustakas and Grandal. Those two players have earned every cent of their contracts.

 

However, the decision to dump so much payroll into C and 2B, meant the GM didn’t have much room to maneuver with bringing in bullpen arms settling for low cost additions: Claudio and Wahl. Also useful players such as Lyles and Miley moves on because the money was spent elsewhere. Again at the time these moves looked good.

 

Then Knebel tore his UCL, Wahl tore his ACL and Jeffress suffered the first of a multiple injuries. Nobody could predict three players the team was counting on to pitch innings for them going down with significant injuries.

 

After Burnes and Peralta flamed out every member of the rotation also went to the DL at some point with injuries: Woodruff, Gonzalez, Anderson, Davies. With the exception of Houser the 8th, 9th 10th best starters in the organization simply weren’t good players . Then again no team in MLB is ten deep in starters.

 

The only thing you can criticize Stearns for in 2019 is being too patient with his players. I can understand the optioning of Hiura in an attempt to finally get Shaw going at the plate. But they gave Nelson a shot after mediocre post-op minor league numbers. They gave Aguilar a couple hundred at bats to try to find his form. It’s actually somewhat shrewd for a small market team with limited payroll to be extremely patient with the talent before pulling the plug on someone.

 

It’s a fair criticism that Stearns hasn’t gotten more out of his drafts especially with a top 5 pick under his belt. But that isn’t a new criticism or reason to lose confidence in September of 2019.

 

I would also argue that he hasn't had good drafts. He's selected some very promising players, Drew Rassmusen, Corbin Burnes, Hiura, Ashby, Turang, Grisham and there are a LOT more young players. We basically had a monopoly on Venezuelan players this year.

 

 

The biggest "problem" Stearns had was he turned the team around too quickly and didn't have the benefit of multiple early picks. He didn't get to pick a Bergman, Springer, Correa in the top 5 of the draft.

 

Just about everything that could go wrong this year did...and the Brewers find themselves 2 games out on Sept. 8th.

[clancyphile]

The biggest "problem" Stearns had was he turned the team around too quickly and didn't have the benefit of multiple early picks. He didn't get to pick a Bergman, Springer, Correa in the top 5 of the draft.

 

Just about everything that could go wrong this year did...and the Brewers find themselves 2 games out on Sept. 8th.

 

This is something we missed in all the excitement of 2017. It will have an effect going forward.

 

That said, I look at later picks like Weston Wilson, Cam Roegner, Gabriel Garcia, Dylan File, Bowden Francis, Max Lazar, Clayton Andrews, Scott Sunitsch, and David Fry, and I feel they could be very good players.

 

The real key will be whether Stearns can make a number of "Adam Lind" type trades that bring in good talent down the road.

[markedman5]

Stearns doesn't run the drafts anymore then Melvin did.........

[JimH5]

Stearns doesn't run the drafts anymore then Melvin did.........

 

He may not run them, but that's by his choice. He still bears the responsibility for them. He's the President of Baseball Operations, so he's accountable for the roster, the draft, the farm system, contracts, coaches...everything.

[Brew crew 92]

In my life as a Brewer Fan, only Harry Dalton (in his early years before the Bud Selig miasma of financial

suckitude drained Harry's blood of honest competitiveness) gave me the hope of a Brewers World Series win. Jim Baumer, Sal Bando, Dean Taylor, and Doug Melvin never instilled honest hope for a World Series win. Stearns is smarter and more competitive than all of the others put together, and Attanasio seems more than willing to put money in for legitimate WS runs. I think most of the people carping about Stearns are younglings who don't realize just how far from a World Series win the Brewers have been in their entire existence. If Rollie Fingers had been healthy for the 82 Series, the Brewers would have won IMHO. https://www.mlb.com/news/cecil-cooper-says-healthy-rollie-fingers-would-have-given-brewers-1982-world-series/c-108083690

 

Agree and disagree.

I’ve also been a fan of the crew since inception, and agree with the 82 team winning the series with a healthy fingers, zero doubt that would have happened. And agree Dalton was a constrammoth GM. But disagree with your “miasma of financial sucktitude”description for the years after 82 with Selig. For being one of the LEAST Wealthy owners, he consistently spent money on payroll up until the late 80’s, early 90’s, when the revenue streams really started to separate teams into large markets vs Small markets. He loved the brewers, like a father loves his son, but gave up his baby in 92, to save the brewers and other small markets from the greedy large market teams, who didn’t want the MKE’s, Twins Royals Reds etc. to even be around as teams anymore. Steinbrenner Didn’t want revenue sharing, none of the large markets did. But somehow he sold them on revenue sharing and saved baseball in the small market cities. Point being, Selig should be above reproach in MKE, not dished by anyone, least of all a brewer fan. I know most know this already, but for those that didn’t, there you have it, in a nutshell.

[Boomer5]

Stevens is just a guy. The Yelich trade was brilliant and obviously picking Hiura was excellent.

 

Other than that, he has built an old, clumsy roster that has little flexibility, pitching, and farm system.

 

CC and DJ made him look better than he is.

[FVBrewerFan]

Stevens is just a guy. The Yelich trade was brilliant and obviously picking Hiura was excellent.

 

Other than that, he has built an old, clumsy roster that has little flexibility

 

I agree, he really ruined the Celtics.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Stevens is just a guy. The Yelich trade was brilliant and obviously picking Hiura was excellent.

 

Other than that, he has built an old, clumsy roster that has little flexibility, pitching, and farm system.

 

CC and DJ made him look better than he is.

 

Sounds like the exact same roster he inherited a few seasons ago. He turned that into an NLCS home game 7 in three years' tenure compared to one destined to win between 70-80 games for the next 3-5 seasons, and has fielded a roster competing for the postseason in September for the past 3 consecutive seasons - something no GM has done here in Milwaukee. Many of his trades have brought in MLB veteran talent at the expense of trading away little in terms of overvalued prospects who may actually become decent everyday MLB players.

 

But sure, he's just a guy.

 

Derek Johnson was hired by Stearns, so if he truly is a pitching savant that makes any pitching staff a full earned run/9 innings better it was Stearns who recognized that.

[brewers4eric]

I've been a Brewers fan since 1978 and I haven't lost any confidence in Stearns. After 2011, I had serious doubts that I would ever see the Brewers in a World Series again in my lifetime. I've admired the quick turnaround to the parent franchise during his tenure and his ability to pick up the pieces that we needed at the deadline in 2018. We had the deepest forty man roster in my memory and it showed during the stretch run that carried the team to within a game of the world series.

 

His job was tougher in 2019. Based on the injuries and poor performance prior to the deadline, the guys that didn't make our playoff roster in 2018 were pitching the bulk of our innings. Stearns was faced with making deadline moves that allowed Counsell to patch together a four man pitching rotation and added some fringe talent to the bullpen. I'm amazed that we're still in contention for the second wild card spot as we're penciling utility guys into our infield each night as we wait for the regulars to get healthy. I think Counsell does his best work with a forty man roster.