Understanding the risk of sounding too harsh, but perhaps the New York Mets came away with the wrong executive from the Milwaukee Brewers.
While David Stearns built an absolute mess in 2026, taking the Mets from an NLCS contender in 2024 to two straight postseason-less seasons, his old team, the Brewers, were the best in baseball this season and are now two wins away from their first pennant since 1982 after taking the first two games from the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series.
Much of the credit in Milwaukee belongs to president of baseball operations and general manager Matt Arnold, who continues to pull all the right strings to build a juggernaut on a $146 million payroll that is less than half of Stearns’ mess in Queens.
With a premier analytics staff and the wherewithal to properly use it, he has built a team with a formula that seems archaic in today’s game: Hit the ball hard, put it in play, run the bases well, and have steady pitching.
It’s not controversial, yet so many teams have tried to reinvent the wheel through launch angles and long balls that the art of natural hitting has become this novelty that we are now celebrating in October.
For Arnold and Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, it’s the acceptance that this is the way for a team handcuffed financially to compete, and the understanding that there is the risk of high turnover amongst the roster every winter.
Yet Arnold is ready for it all. He has the organizational depth in his farm system to provide sustainability, and he hits on his moves more than most. He sold Freddy Peralta, the club’s ace and a franchise cornerstone, last winter to the Mets for two prospects. Peralta bombed in Queens, while 2022 draft pick Jacob Misiorowski is a lock to win the NL Cy Young Award after posting a 1.80 ERA and 252 strikeouts.
Logan Henderson, a 2021 draft pick, went 11-3 with a 2.47 ERA in his first full season in the bigs.
First baseman Jake Bauers, a cast-off of the Guardians, Mariners, Rays, and Yankees, hit a career-high 26 home runs this season. Second baseman Brice Turang, a scrappy contact hitter who owned a career OPS of .693 entering this year, hit 21 home runs with 100 RBI and an .816 OPS.
The trade that sent Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio, and Anthony Seigler to the Boston Red Sox in February yielded third baseman David Hamilton, who stole 30 bases, and a pair of starters in Josh Drohan and Kyle Harrison, who combined to go 18-10 with a 4.19 ERA.
Those two arms helped bolster the bottom of Milwaukee’s rotation enough that Arnold was able to pivot from a blockbuster trade for Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline and pick up Dustin May, whose time with the Brewers has not been anything to write home about, but he did post a scoreless fifth inning in relief during a Game 2 win over the Dodgers on Monday night.
It doesn’t have to be flashy; it just has to work, and Arnold has run laps around Stearns in that regard.
It also comes with the nagging thought of “what if?” for the Mets.
Steve Cohen had Arnold, who was the No. 2 in Milwaukee under Stearns at the time, on his shortlist for potential president of baseball operations following the 2021 season. Arnold ultimately withdrew his name from consideration, and Stearns took the job following the 2023 season.
How much different would things have been around Citi Field if Arnold went for the Mets job?
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