Matt Arnold elevated to president of baseball operations, David Stearns moves into advisory role

[clancyphile]

Stearns really did an incredible job with the Brewers with the rebuild.

Do I think he wanted something else? At 37, why not make a move - there could be plenty of options. Or, maybe, he wants a break from things. Being the top guy is a LOT of hard work, and sometimes, people could just burn out. Perhaps the Hader trade was the wrong move, and it tipped things over. He built an incredible team in difficult circumstances, and he doesn't want to be the guy who tears it all down. It's like asking Picasso to tear up one of his paintings.

As for Arnold, I think he does have that expertise in the next step - but I also would hope that he doesn't feel compelled to fix what ain't broke. Maybe it is time to try the Rays approach - which seems to work.

[Brewcrew82]

17 minutes ago, brewers888 said:

This is all about Stearns wantin the Mets job since it opened up. The Mets made too many moves that were Stearns type of moves including bringing in guys like Escobar, Curtiss, and Vogelbach. I have suspected for some time that Stearns was in fact advising his good friend Eppler on what to do.

It just never stops does it? SMH

[SeaBass]

1 minute ago, brewers888 said:

The whole Stearns staying on as an advisior is so laughable and just Attanasio forcing the Mets to wait one more season before hiring him. 

You could be right about this. Or like I stated earlier it could be so the team in effect trades him to a team for some type of compensation.

I'm not convinced the Mets are the likely suitors though. They seem to be getting along just fine. The Mets would have the leading odds though if this was a betting subject in Vegas.

[Brewcrew82]

Gotta admit I'm fairly surprised as it seemed to me like things were trending for Stearns to move forward with the team. But if he was unwilling to make a commitment past this year, then this is the step that needed to be taken. Arnold was Stearns' right hand man throughout his tenure, so I doubt things will change too much. If anything, it's always nice to have that fresh blood as things can become stagnant after 8 years. 

But this still hurts as Stearns has led us to some of our greatest heights as a franchise. I always thought that, if anyone would propel us to our first World Series championship, it would be him. Oh well, good luck in the future and thanks for bringing us a consistent contender. 

[SeaBass]

5 minutes ago, brewers888 said:

No way he could possibly have been advising Eppler who is supposedly Stearns best friend?

But why? It's not his job. Friendship doesn't extend to betraying your own employer to help the friend's employer that is in direct competition with your employer. That stuff would be a career killing move.

[nate82]

I think Stearns is leaving for New York but not for the Mets.  It will be with the Yankees as Cashman's contract is up this year and that spot may become open.  

[Axman59]

This is great news. I don't know that Matt Arnold can get the Brewers to a World Series win but I had lost all confidence that Stearns could do it.

Although I really wish they would hire Jeff Luhnow to run baseball ops.

[Thurston Fluff]

For those who are speculating on why Stearns is staying on as an advisor I wouldn't read to much into it. Doug Mevlin and Sal Bando both stayed on as advisors too.

[Redd Vencher]

1 hour ago, DR28 said:

Maybe I read too much into the comments he made about the trade during end of season presser... But he didnt sound too pleased with himself for the move.

He said he would make the trade again, and do more to help the team through it.

[jay87shot]

You have to remember that in 2015 Stearns took over a team that had a terrible farm system and won 68 games. He quickly rebuilt the team through the Lucroy and Gomez trades, also finding value in cast off players and good small trades. Organizations like the Brewers with low payroll often take 5+ years to rebuild and Stearns did it in 2. Then he kept the team competitive for 5 or 6 years, add onto that that he is only 37. Stearns was probably the best GM this organization has had in my lifetime. People who say good riddance should look at teams like Pittsburg and realize how good and important Stearns has been for us.

[Eye Black]

I'll miss Stearns' influence, and I still believe on the whole that he was very good at making calculated and smart baseball personnel decisions.

What I would like to see from Matt Arnold is a bit more aggressiveness. I know the current front office doesn't prescribe to the "window theory", but I think it's okay to acknowledge that for a small market team creating some greater ebbs and flows from year-to-year with the talent on the roster might not be a terrible approach. I'm not saying I need him to become Dave Dombrowski overnight, but ultimately baseball is an entertainment business and their current product could stand to generate a little more excitement. Since the Brewers are rarely going to be in a position to build a ticket selling type roster through free agency, I think it's okay to pick times where you go a little more "all-in" towards one of two directions. Either (1) trade some assets from the farm to strengthen the lineup in the short-term, especially when you're lucky enough to have the type of home grown pitching talent that rarely comes into place all at once, OR (2) use some of your top current MLB assets (i.e. starting pitching) to take a slight step back in the short-term with the goal of having a stronger roster in the (not-so-distant) future.

Maybe it's partly due to how this year's team played from Memorial Day on, but I'll be really disappointed if they just sort of float along the same path as the past couple of off-seasons. 

[wibadgers23]

1 minute ago, Eye Black said:

I'll miss Stearns' influence, and I still believe on the whole that he was very good at making calculated and smart baseball personnel decisions.

What I would like to see from Matt Arnold is a bit more aggressiveness. I know the current front office doesn't prescribe to the "window theory", but I think it's okay to acknowledge that for a small market team creating some greater ebbs and flows from year-to-year with the talent on the roster might not be a terrible approach. I'm not saying I need him to become Dave Dombrowski overnight, but ultimately baseball is an entertainment business and their current product could stand to generate a little more excitement. Since the Brewers are rarely going to be in a position to build a ticket selling type roster through free agency, I think it's okay to pick times where you go a little more "all-in" towards one of two directions. Either (1) trade some assets from the farm to strengthen the lineup in the short-term, especially when you're lucky enough to have they type of home grown pitching talent that rarely comes into place all at once, OR (2) use some of your top current MLB assets (i.e. starting pitching) to take a slight step back in the short-term with the goal of having a stronger roster in the (not-so-distant) future.

Maybe part of it is how this year's team played from Memorial Day on, but I'll be really disappointed if they just sort of float along the same path has the past couple of offseasons. 

I couldn't agree more with this assessment.  Things have seemed a little stagnant since 2020 (post 2019 season).  Not a whole lot of flashy or exciting moves.  Despite mostly success, the roster just seems stale and hopefully Arnold can bring some excitement back.

[Thurston Fluff]

2 minutes ago, jay87shot said:

You have to remember that in 2015 Stearns took over a team that had a terrible farm system and won 68 games. He quickly rebuilt the team through the Lucroy and Gomez trades, also finding value in cast off players and good small trades. Organizations like the Brewers with low payroll often take 5+ years to rebuild and Stearns did it in 2. Then he kept the team competitive for 5 or 6 years, add onto that that he is only 37. Stearns was probably the best GM this organization has had in my lifetime. People who say good riddance should look at teams like Pittsburg and realize how good and important Stearns has been for us.

 

A lot of the pieces were in place before he got here though. Mevlin already flipped Gomez and Fiers for Hader, Santana, Hauser, and Phillips. He also got Zach Davies and added to the farm at the trade deadline. He also left Stearns with a very good trade piece in Lucroy to work with.  To a lesser extent Lind turned out to have enough value to build the farm up a bit. That doesn't discount what Stearns did but he did not start with a Cubs or Astros system that had no farm and a major league roster with aging over paid veterans with little to no trade value.

[Joseph Zarr]

Well, tho this certainly seemed a distinct inevitability, I find myself a bit melancholy. This has been the best period of sustained Brewers success in the history of the franchise by a good margin. I’m naturally excited to see what Matt Arnold can do in his new position, but I’m wary that the grass isn’t always greener. Time will tell .

I thank David Stearns for his hard work and dedication in building a team and an Ops Dept. capable of year-in and year-out plus 0.500 baseball. I will await what this off-season brings. And, I will look back fondly on the David Stearns era - If you’re a Brewers fan, how could you not?

[Jopal78]

33 minutes ago, jay87shot said:

You have to remember that in 2015 Stearns took over a team that had a terrible farm system and won 68 games. He quickly rebuilt the team through the Lucroy and Gomez trades, also finding value in cast off players and good small trades. Organizations like the Brewers with low payroll often take 5+ years to rebuild and Stearns did it in 2. Then he kept the team competitive for 5 or 6 years, add onto that that he is only 37. Stearns was probably the best GM this organization has had in my lifetime. People who say good riddance should look at teams like Pittsburg and realize how good and important Stearns has been for us.

Doug Melvin traded Carlos Gomez. For what it's worth the Lucroy trade was kind of a bust, he was fortunate in swapping off all the players he got for Lucroy because ultimately none of them amounted to anything in the majors. 

I think the bar is set kind of low in Milwaukee given the futility from the mid 80s through the mid 00's. Stearns was a competent GM but not amongst the best in the game.

His best moves were getting Thames from Korea, picking up Jesus Aguilar,  drafting Corbin Burnes in the 4th round, Drew Rasmussen in the 6th and trading for Yelich and Peralta.

He also made several poor moves: drafting Corey Ray 5th overall, trading away Hader,  trading away Ji-Man Choi for a player who they release a month later, trading away Will Smith for nothing, signing Josh Lindblom, signing McCutchen. Trading Jean Segura for Chase Anderson, Aaron Hill and Isan Diaz is a tweener.

Hopefully, Matt Arnold is at least as good if not better. 

[UpandIn]

2 hours ago, titletownking said:

But not because he was coveted for the POBO job. GM sure, he just got promoted to POBO in a year in which the team underperformed and failed miserably at the trade deadline. I don’t see how he comes so highly regarded. All comes down to Mark in the end, needs to spend

Ok...this is wildly moving the goalposts. Your last comment was;

Quote

Industry execs know the value of these guys, clear reason why Stearns has been coveted and no whisper of anything regarding Arnold.

 I didn't see you make the distinction between President and GM. You said he hadn't been coveted as there'd been "no whisper of anything regarding Arnold."

Interviewing for a GM job and then being denied an interview request is not a whisper of anything it's a foghorn. 

I don't even remember when the Brewers went from their baseball being run by the POBO vs the GM...but I THOUGHT it was with Stearns...a move made to protect against him getting poached. 

[Redd Vencher]

5 minutes ago, UpandIn said:

Ok...this is wildly moving the goalposts. Your last comment was;

 I didn't see you make the distinction between President and GM. You said he hadn't been coveted as there'd been "no whisper of anything regarding Arnold."

Interviewing for a GM job and then being denied an interview request is not a whisper of anything it's a foghorn. 

I don't even remember when the Brewers went from their baseball being run by the POBO vs the GM...but I THOUGHT it was with Stearns...a move made to protect against him getting poached. 

Stearns was made POBO to keep a team from poaching him. It wasn't a position before him.

[UpandIn]

1 hour ago, brewers888 said:

This is all about Stearns wantin the Mets job since it opened up. The Mets made too many moves that were Stearns type of moves including bringing in guys like Escobar, Curtiss, and Vogelbach. I have suspected for some time that Stearns was in fact advising his good friend Eppler on what to do.

You know this is real life, right? Not Major League? You've now accused of inferred Stearns has worked against the Brewers interests OR would do so in the future in a multitude of ways, the latest, advising a rival what moves to make...

Stearns "type of moves" also doesn't make sense. Curtiss is a 29 year old reliever who didn't pitch this year who's on his 8th team. I don't think acquiring cheap BP arms for the minimum is a Stearns move. 

Vogelbach is on his 6th team in 3 years showing he's ALSO a journeyman and he cost next to nothing to keep. 

And Escobar was an All-Star switch hitter. None of those are moves that are in any way specific to Stearns of things an MLB GM needs to be "advised" on. 

They also made a TON of moves that were not Stearns type moves in any way. 

Quote

The whole Stearns staying on as an advisior is so laughable and just Attanasio forcing the Mets to wait one more season before hiring him. 

Lets say your theory IS right though...why in the hell would we just give Stearns AND the Mets what they want for no compensation despite these suspicions that he's been working on behalf of the Mets this past year?

C'mon...it'd be laughable and would show poor judgement to hold the line for several years and NOW go, "hey, you guys waited long enough! You want him? He's all yours."

You might as well at least get SOME compensation back or make them wait a year. Why make it easier for a team we'll be competing with to get the guy who built OUR team?

[Brewcrew82]

3 hours ago, titletownking said:

Industry execs know the value of these guys, clear reason why Stearns has been coveted and no whisper of anything regarding Arnold. 

This is patently false. You do realize the Mets requested an interview with Arnold and were denied just last year??? Before that, he was the runner-up to lead the Angels FO.

[Jopal78]

13 minutes ago, UpandIn said:

Lets say your theory IS right though...why in the hell would we just give Stearns AND the Mets what they want for no compensation despite these suspicions that he's been working on behalf of the Mets this past year?

C'mon...it'd be laughable and would show poor judgement to hold the line for several years and NOW go, "hey, you guys waited long enough! You want him? He's all yours."

You might as well at least get SOME compensation back or make them wait a year. Why make it easier for a team we'll be competing with to get the guy who built OUR team?

The theory of getting some compensation is dumb. A hall of fame GM in Theo Epstein technically required some compensation to come to Chicago: - Chris Carpenter a 26 year old minor league reliever who pitched a total of 15 awful innings in the majors.

On a site where prospects are king, I get it. But the reality is the "compensation" is more of a contractual formality/courtesy for allowing someone to leave early. 

[UpandIn]

22 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

Doug Melvin traded Carlos Gomez. For what it's worth the Lucroy trade was kind of a bust, he was fortunate in swapping off all the players he got for Lucroy because ultimately none of them amounted to anything in the majors. 

I think the bar is set kind of low in Milwaukee given the futility from the mid 80s through the mid 00's. Stearns was a competent GM but not amongst the best in the game.

His best moves were getting Thames from Korea, picking up Jesus Aguilar,  drafting Corbin Burnes in the 4th round, Drew Rasmussen in the 6th and trading for Yelich and Peralta.

He also made several poor moves: drafting Corey Ray 5th overall, trading away Hader,  trading away Ji-Man Choi for a player who they release a month later, trading away Will Smith for nothing, signing Josh Lindblom, signing McCutchen. Trading Jean Segura for Chase Anderson, Aaron Hill and Isan Diaz is a tweener.

Hopefully, Matt Arnold is at least as good if not better. 

Kinda hard to list a trade as a flop when you take the return from that trade and use it to get a guy who puts up a ~1100 OPS the following two years and leads you to within a game of the World Series...

The Brewers overhaul of the way they develop pitching, their LA signings...these things don't go into the positive side of the ledger? What the Brewers DO with the prospects isn't considered a success if they don't have success at the big league level regardless of what it brings to the Brewers?

If the Matt Arnold trades Corbin Burnes, gets back 4 prospects and then turns those prospects into a Cy Young winning pitcher, I won't really care what those prospects do for another team. 

You also have arguably the most talented farm system in the last 15 years in Milwaukee under his leadership. 

 

The bottom line, Stearns took over a rebuilding team...one that appeared as though it was headed toward a LONG Baltimore like rebuild and they were competitive in year 3 and have been playoff contenders the last 6 years, making the playoffs 4 times and missing out on the post-season in the final week the last two. 

That and the fact that teams have repeatedly tried(to no avail) to poach Stearns from the Brewers would seem to indicate this is not just Brewers fans having low expectations...

[UpandIn]

17 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

The theory of getting some compensation is dumb. A hall of fame GM in Theo Epstein technically required some compensation to come to Chicago: - Chris Carpenter a 26 year old minor league reliever who pitched a total of 15 awful innings in the majors.

On a site where prospects are king, I get it. But the reality is the "compensation" is more of a contractual formality/courtesy for allowing someone to leave early. 

The Red Sox also got a 20 year old pitching prospect who started in AA for Boston and a 19 year old prospect.

That they and Carpenter(who had TJ surgery shortly after being acquired by Boston) didn't ultimately have success doesn't mean the theory is "dumb." 

It's also not a theory given...it actually happened. 

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/09/latest-on-david-stearns-contract-status.html

 

Quote

As one rival executive suggested to Olney, the Brewers could potentially even work out a trade to receive compensation from another team that wants to hire Stearns before his contract is up, similar to how the Cubs worked out a deal with the Red Sox when Theo Epstein was hired away with a year remaining on his Boston deal.

Yes...what a dumb..."theory."

 

Edit-
The "on a site where prospects are king," line also has me scratching my head. Were you NOT the one who wants Burnes, Woodruff and Adames traded and for the Brewers to model themselves off the Rays and the A's?

[Sixtolezcano]

I don’t believe that the Brewers will receive any compensation from the next team that hires Stearns. From the presser it sounded that Stearns wants to step away from the game for a short while and then return when he receives a new offer/team more to his liking. I think that the most likely scenario is the Lombardi/Packer situation. I just hope the Brewers future doesn’t mirror that team after that move (29 years of sheer hell). He’ll take a year off and then return to another team. I also don’t see a whole lot of promise with Matt Arnold, he has a long way to go before he will ever match Stearn’s competence. There will definitely be a step back with this franchise in the coming years. I hope that everyone will have patience during the bumpy ride.

[sveumrules]

2 minutes ago, Sixtolezcano said:

There will definitely be a step back with this franchise in the coming years. I hope that everyone will have patience during the bumpy rid

Things will either be better, worse, or about the same.

I'm not saying that each of the three options have a 33.3% chance of happening, but none of them have a zero or one hundred percent chance either.

[Jopal78]

40 minutes ago, UpandIn said:

Kinda hard to list a trade as a flop when you take the return from that trade and use it to get a guy who puts up a ~1100 OPS the following two years and leads you to within a game of the World Series...

The Brewers overhaul of the way they develop pitching, their LA signings...these things don't go into the positive side of the ledger? What the Brewers DO with the prospects isn't considered a success if they don't have success at the big league level regardless of what it brings to the Brewers?

If the Matt Arnold trades Corbin Burnes, gets back 4 prospects and then turns those prospects into a Cy Young winning pitcher, I won't really care what those prospects do for another team. 

You also have arguably the most talented farm system in the last 15 years in Milwaukee under his leadership. 

 

The bottom line, Stearns took over a rebuilding team...one that appeared as though it was headed toward a LONG Baltimore like rebuild and they were competitive in year 3 and have been playoff contenders the last 6 years, making the playoffs 4 times and missing out on the post-season in the final week the last two. 

That and the fact that teams have repeatedly tried(to no avail) to poach Stearns from the Brewers would seem to indicate this is not just Brewers fans having low expectations...

So what is it that you're saying? I said he was a competent, he made some nice moves, but also made his share of mistakes, and wasn't among the very best executives in the game (Friedmann, Cashman, Beane, Antonetti, Mozeliak)

If you want to give them credit for overhauling the way they develop pitching, then they also have to own the fact Stearns was incapable of  developing an everyday regular position player during his tenure.

The farm system ratings don't mean much to me, they're a sportswriters opinion of a snap shot in time. I'd also beg to differ as the Brewers system was plenty loaded in 2007: Gallardo, Braun, Cain, Michael Brantley and Jeffress I've got $50 that says the Brewers don't have five future  all-stars in their system right now two of whom will play 14 years in the majors and two more who will have 10+ year careers.