When does Arnold start to receive some criticism

[narwhalattack]

My only gripe with the FO is their tendency to burn draft picks/prospects to trade for mediocre pitchers, and our past tendency of drafting slap hitters and hoping that they develop some power (Turang, Frelick, etc.) biting us in the ass. But otherwise I think the bigger issue is that we’re a small market team in a league where big markets can simply run roughshod in the free agent market. Teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Mets seemingly have an unlimited budget to buy the best talent available, and if their acquisitions don’t work out, they’ll just sign some other big name talent. Meanwhile for us, and other small market teams, there’s just fewer bites of the apple available when it comes to obtaining talent. Sure the draft and international FA signings may be somewhat of an equalizer, but because we have fewer bites of the apple, each failed prospect hurts more. And even if the prospects succeed, what’s the point in getting excited about up and coming young talent from your farm system when they’re just going to be signed by big market teams when they reach free agency?

Overall, I think Arnold is doing the best he can given the resources available to him, but he’s running a team in a league where small market teams are effectively glorified AAAA teams for bigger market teams.

[Underachiever]

2 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Contenders with bad 1B production so far this year...SFG (54 wRC+), SEA (58 wRC+), KCR (60 wRC+), HOU (86 wRC+), TEX (89 wRC+), 

Contenders with bad DH production so far this year...TEX (45 wRC+), KCR (78 wRC+), HOU (87 wRC+), SFG (94 wRC+).

TEX, SFG, KCR and HOU could all probably use some 1B/DH help if things don't pick up for them by the deadline.

Texas seems like they forgot how to hit. 

[brewers888]

4 hours ago, narwhalattack said:

My only gripe with the FO is their tendency to burn draft picks/prospects to trade for mediocre pitchers, and our past tendency of drafting slap hitters and hoping that they develop some power (Turang, Frelick, etc.) biting us in the ass. But otherwise I think the bigger issue is that we’re a small market team in a league where big markets can simply run roughshod in the free agent market. Teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Mets seemingly have an unlimited budget to buy the best talent available, and if their acquisitions don’t work out, they’ll just sign some other big name talent. Meanwhile for us, and other small market teams, there’s just fewer bites of the apple available when it comes to obtaining talent. Sure the draft and international FA signings may be somewhat of an equalizer, but because we have fewer bites of the apple, each failed prospect hurts more. And even if the prospects succeed, what’s the point in getting excited about up and coming young talent from your farm system when they’re just going to be signed by big market teams when they reach free agency?

Overall, I think Arnold is doing the best he can given the resources available to him, but he’s running a team in a league where small market teams are effectively glorified AAAA teams for bigger market teams.

Good post but can you not use the phrase bite of the apple. 

[Austin Tatious]

I’m not going to defend Arnold because it would be laughable to do so.  But at the same time, I’m glad they have largely not panicked and stayed the course.  There’s a bit of a gap between the complement of talent at the MLB level and the readiness of the reinforcements coming.  

The injury to Boeve hurt but Wilken has reemerged.  The problem is that they can’t help up here yet.  Pratt at short is super young and is in AA even though he’s not that far removed from high school.  There’s no world where we could have expected them in 2025.   

Losing Adames and not replacing his production and the overall imbalance in lack of power have been pathetic.  While the FO looks hopelessly naive in these respects, there weren’t that many obvious options.  But I think the Brewers got caught up in the concept of perfection being the enemy of good.  They could critique whatever choices they could have made but unfortunately that paralyzed them from having even basic MLB play on the left side of the infield.  

The Priester trade may pan out.  But they gave up a lot to get him and those assets would have been much more logically moved for 3B.   It was a strange trade when they have an absolute emergency at third and short that are causing an entire year to be squandered.  

Stearns did a great job establishing a vision and infrastructure in the organization.  Mark  has done a good job keeping it alive by keeping the Tod Johnson and Flanagan types.  Arnold is now the steward of that structure.  They’ve done an outstanding job with the draft and getting Latin American players.  The numbers of potential quality prospects is so high that you’d expect a good number of them to bubble up and become good major leaguers even if many of them don’t.  That’s all a credit to the front office.  

[brewers888]

Stearns absolutely deserves a lot of the blame for consistently drafting up the middle athletes with no pop in their bats. I like both Turang and Frelick but you can't have a lineup full of guys like this that have no power. Arnold is at fault for trading for Ortiz yet another middle infielder with little power and what he saw in Durbin to get him as a main piece for Devin is something I seriously question though Murphy seems to have a lot to do with that as his over the top praise for him following the trade was not great.

Luckily the draft strategy seems to have changed under Arnold as we now seem to have some good power prospects in the system but the over reliance on middle of the diamond athletes at the expense of  hitting and especially power starting under the former GM has this major league roster relying on way too many AAAA level bats. Hopefully this will change soon as guys like Wilken and Pratt get closer to taking over the left side of the infield but in the meanwhile we are stuck with the worst 3rd/shortstop combination imaginable.

[Ro Mueller]

I’m not that upset with Arnold, given how well we’ve done for years and the pipeline of talent we still having coming up.

The core 2025 mistake seems to have been made in early 2024 actually: essentially swapping Adames for Woodruff, instead of spending that money on someone else. We only had one major salary move in us and it hasn’t worked out.

He was right to grab Quintana with our last little bullet, similar to grabbing Gary Sanchez in early 2024.

The Priester move actually added MLB talent for 2025 without sacrificing MLB talent this year, so I won’t complain.

Hoskins and Bauers are doing much better than I expected this year. Even Megill is doing better than I expected.

The rule 5 gaffe burns, but we also didn’t expect SS to contribute at the MLB level in 2025.

Now the big decisions are the Misiorowski promotion and finding that infield hitter we’ve still not added.

[umphrey]

I don’t think it’s right to look at the 3Bs from the offseason and say “well the couple guys who signed for less than $5m mostly aren’t doing well so Arnold did a good job there”. He has been GM for many years and team building doesn’t happen 1 offseason at a time. Several of the top 20 3Bs would have been available in previous years through draft, trade, develop, etc. 

[igor67]

Except that if you start running the tape backwards Ortiz looked like a solid option until late last year and until the injuries to Wilken he was on pace to be filling that role by this year. So a reasonable looking plan unraveled only in the last season or so.

[igor67]

I'm not getting the sense that there is a trade on the horizon that is that spark to turn things around. I still think it's worth fighting for this season for awhile. Options are limited, but you need to bring up Miz. He has the potential to bring that buzz that suddenly brings back that fighting quality to the team. You probably need to worry about some load management moves later in the season, but I think that is pretty solvable if you get guys playing good the next couple of months. That gives you a little bit of time then you maybe have 2 other moves I can see that might get you something. Bringing up Wilken later in the season, and I think you also have the option to think about trading Hoskins and bringing up EMJ. At the moment I wouldn't but Hoskins does have the possibility of bringing back something useful and EMJ could fill the offense potentially while being a defensive upgrade. Without major changes I would not invest any significant prospect capital though.

[Brian]

8 hours ago, Austin Tatious said:

I’m not going to defend Arnold because it would be laughable to do so.  But at the same time, I’m glad they have largely not panicked and stayed the course.  There’s a bit of a gap between the complement of talent at the MLB level and the readiness of the reinforcements coming.  

The injury to Boeve hurt but Wilken has reemerged.  The problem is that they can’t help up here yet.  Pratt at short is super young and is in AA even though he’s not that far removed from high school.  There’s no world where we could have expected them in 2025.   

Losing Adames and not replacing his production and the overall imbalance in lack of power have been pathetic.  While the FO looks hopelessly naive in these respects, there weren’t that many obvious options.  But I think the Brewers got caught up in the concept of perfection being the enemy of good.  They could critique whatever choices they could have made but unfortunately that paralyzed them from having even basic MLB play on the left side of the infield.  

The Priester trade may pan out.  But they gave up a lot to get him and those assets would have been much more logically moved for 3B.   It was a strange trade when they have an absolute emergency at third and short that are causing an entire year to be squandered.  

Stearns did a great job establishing a vision and infrastructure in the organization.  Mark  has done a good job keeping it alive by keeping the Tod Johnson and Flanagan types.  Arnold is now the steward of that structure.  They’ve done an outstanding job with the draft and getting Latin American players.  The numbers of potential quality prospects is so high that you’d expect a good number of them to bubble up and become good major leaguers even if many of them don’t.  That’s all a credit to the front office.  

I actually blame Mark Attanasio not Matt Arnold becauce Arnold has no real $$$ capital to even work with.

[umphrey]

Ortiz was never a serious option for 2025 3B and depending on Wilken the 2025 3B would be something worth criticism. 

[Pugger]

On 5/11/2025 at 12:55 PM, shanedog19 said:

That's where I am at too. I would add selling Yelich as well. He was a great player in his prime, but his best days are behind him and he probably deserves to play for a contender at this point.

With the way he is playing right now and his salary what contender would bother?

[Brian]

There are 30 teams in the MLB Brewers are ranked 24th offensively. 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/team 

[Jopal78]

2 hours ago, Brian said:

I actually blame Mark Attanasio not Matt Arnold becauce Arnold has no real $$$ capital to even work with.

I think you have unrealistic expectations, especially if you look at Milwaukee Brewers history. They’ve never had more than two guarantees in excess of $50 million. For many years it was just Ryan Braun. That it was Braun and Yelich, now it is Yelich and Chourio. 
 

Anyone who expected them to go hand out another 50+ million dollar guarantee to a third player was filling themselves.

And Yelich not living up to his guarantee is common with long term extensions and really shouldn’t come as any surprise. 

[Brian]

1 hour ago, Jopal78 said:

I think you have unrealistic expectations, especially if you look at Milwaukee Brewers history. They’ve never had more than two guarantees in excess of $50 million. For many years it was just Ryan Braun. That it was Braun and Yelich, now it is Yelich and Chourio. 
 

Anyone who expected them to go hand out another 50+ million dollar guarantee to a third player was filling themselves.

And Yelich not living up to his guarantee is common with long term extensions and really shouldn’t come as any surprise. 

Braun's big contract year was 2011 there has been a lot of inflation since then and as a team I don't think were keeping up anymore. Yelich had surgery on a damaged discs in the spine that obviously still is not right. Injuries to me don't count as not living up to expectations.

So what do the better teams do???  Not sit on there hands and wish it just all works out or pick up a released player from another team. 

[Jopal78]

1 hour ago, Brian said:

Braun's big contract year was 2011 there has been a lot of inflation since then and as a team I don't think were keeping up anymore. Yelich had surgery on a damaged discs in the spine that obviously still is not right. Injuries to me don't count as not living up to expectations.

So what do the better teams do???  Not sit on there hands and wish it just all works out or pick up a released player from another team. 

It has nothing to do with inflation. Since the days of Moliter and Yount, the Brewers carry one maybe two big contracts then it’s a handful of players with smaller guarantees, then the rest of the roster is filled with pre-free agency players or veterans on minimum type deals. It’s been that way for 30 years. Things didn’t suddenly change. 

If there’s something to be upset about, it is the fact the  Brewers are in an awful market. No real presence outside the borders of the state of Wisconsin (maybe a little UP), the Milwaukee Metro area is stagnant, and the majority of the state is disbursed in rural areas hours away from the stadium. And fans are petty. Attendance is dropping on a year to year basis, despite consistent amount of wins on the field.

[Pugger]

On 5/13/2025 at 1:42 PM, dlk9s said:

This thread reminded me that I expected the GM to bat 1.000 on every move. How disappointing.

I don't know if the GM has to bat 1.000 in a market like Milwaukee but he has to be much better than average to compete with those teams with very deep pockets.

[Pugger]

On 5/13/2025 at 10:06 PM, wntrtxn21 said:

Even if they could get Yelich to agree (extremely doubtful) to go to Colorado, the Brewers would have to throw in a boat load of cash to get the Rockies to make the deal. Probably nearly enough to pay Yelich's whole contract. This year McMahon playing in Coors:  .212/6 HRs/11 RBIs/30% K rate --- Yelich:  .211/7 HRs/26 RBIs/27% K rate. What would Milwaukee gain from the trade? 

Colorado???  Yeli is struggling but that would be pretty cruel to the guy...

[Brian]

36 minutes ago, Pugger said:

Colorado???  Yeli is struggling but that would be pretty cruel to the guy...

But the ball flyes out of Colorado. 

[Jopal78]

7 minutes ago, Brian said:

But the ball flyes out of Colorado. 

I’m sure Colorado would do a Yelich for Bryant swap straight up

[Brian]

4 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

I’m sure Colorado would do a Yelich for Bryant swap straight up

They have the same issues Kris Bryant's ongoing struggles are due to a chronic, degenerative back injury diagnosed as lumbar degenerative disc disease. 

[brewers888]

Yeah I think its more than fair to question the last few big decisions that Arnold has made some of which have been disastrous.

[BrewerFan]

20 hours ago, brewers888 said:

Stearns absolutely deserves a lot of the blame for consistently drafting up the middle athletes with no pop in their bats. I like both Turang and Frelick but you can't have a lineup full of guys like this that have no power. Arnold is at fault for trading for Ortiz yet another middle infielder with little power and what he saw in Durbin to get him as a main piece for Devin is something I seriously question though Murphy seems to have a lot to do with that as his over the top praise for him following the trade was not great.

Luckily the draft strategy seems to have changed under Arnold as we now seem to have some good power prospects in the system but the over reliance on middle of the diamond athletes at the expense of  hitting and especially power starting under the former GM has this major league roster relying on way too many AAAA level bats. Hopefully this will change soon as guys like Wilken and Pratt get closer to taking over the left side of the infield but in the meanwhile we are stuck with the worst 3rd/shortstop combination imaginable.

1-If you're an elite defender up the middle with a good hit tool AND you hit for power, you're not available when the Brewers are drafting. In any event, Frelick and Turang are hardly the problem on this team.

 

2-How do you view Durbin as the "main piece?" They traded two players in their final years under team control. 

Two pitchers. Williams best WAR in his career had been 2.6. 
Nestor Cortes, also in the last year of his deal was coming off a 2.8 WAR as a good starting pitcher....a #3 starter and then had put up a 4.4 WAR and a 2.8 WAR in 3 of the last 4 seasons. 

Seems like it was Cortes for Williams with Durbin thrown in...the Brewers have a ton of BP arms and several minor league starters who could be thrown into the pen. 

 

They're not lacking in power. Hoskins, Chourio, Yelich, Conreras...and I don't know what we want from Turang. He's pretty much been everything I'd hoped for this year. I've said for years I thought he was a Trea Turner-lite type player. Wouldn't hit for the power Turner has, but he's hit for a solid average, walk, steal a lot of bases and be versatile. He's hitting nearly .300 with an OBP in the .375 range, his exit velo has taken a big jump.

3B was always going to be a problem. SS has become one and then just...players are struggling. Yelich, he's healthy, in the lineup everyday, just not hitting. Chourio, similar to last year, starting slow...Contreras, I doubt at this point of his career he just can't hit and Hoskins has been a good hitter. 

 

And then they lost most of a rotation. 

You want to assign blame? Ok...life's not fair. We can't bring in Arrenado(who would likely reject the trade anyway) and couldn't sign players who weren't available in a weak 3B market. I DID like the idea of signing Iglesias and playing him at 2B with Turang shifting to SS and Ortiz staying at 3B. The whole "Ortiz has a strong arm," was a bad argument from the start as was the "Turang's been so good at 2nd, better to leave him there. The main argument was Ortiz arm(at least on here). It had the same grade on it. 

Pointing to Baseball Savant velocity from the IF is totally useless. You get more on the ball at 3B and SS than 2B where you're either falling away from the bag or it's a shorter throw, but Turang has more than enough arm to play SS. But I don't think anyone anticipated Ortiz replacing Adames production, I think Chourio+Yelich being healthy+Hoskins bouncing back would make up for it. I also don't think anyone anticipated Ortiz bottoming out at a 450 OPS or whatever it may be...

 

You want to put the blame somewhere?
How about a 21 year old kid who is struggling to hit the ball and swinging at everything. A kid who'll almost certainly pick it up. 
An older LF back from...well...back surgery who struggling and a Catcher who is about  170 points under his SLG from the previous 3 seasons. 

 

15 hours ago, Brian said:

Yelich had surgery on a damaged discs in the spine that obviously still is not right. Injuries to me don't count as not living up to expectations.

He had about as minor a back surgery as you could have. He said he'd "never felt better" toward the end of last year and even talked about being back in the cage. His exit velo and hard hit rate is within a normal range. His chase and whiff is off. 

He'll hit better or he won't, but it doesn't seem as though his back has anything to do with his struggling. 

 

It's a team playing without a catalyst(other than Turang at times). You'll see Chourio start to heat up and I would GUESS that would lead to Yelich and Contreras reverting back closer to expectations and the offense will pick up. The left side of the IF will very likely continue to be a black hole offensively, but even with Ortiz, it's nearly certain to improve. 

 

 

People are seemingly giving up on this season like...21-25 on May 17th is the end of the season. I'm not. Once we get closer to the midpoint would be a better time to evaluate and I suspect they'll be squarely in the playoff race.

 

Beyond THAT as far as "blaming Arnold," I'll blame him when our IF has Pratt, Made, Turang and Wilken, Quero/Contreras at Catcher Chourio, Payne in the OF with...a dozen different possible combinations for DH(Adams, Burke, Bitonti, Boeve, Pena, Lara...Frelick, Mitchell or one of the 5 guys we draft this year in the lineup.)
Oh, and a staff that...without any big surprises looks like it'll pretty safely include Misiorowsk, Henderson, Gasser, Letson, Meccage...and that's assuming Myers, Ashby, Hall, Patrick, Rodriguez, none of them pan out. As for the Pen, let me quote Fangraphs;

Quote

 The rate and speed at which the Brewers improve the pitchers they draft is among the best in the industry. There are so many generic college relievers on this list who have not only improved, but who have a shot to be big league starters. For a while, the Brewers hammered junior colleges, but the transfer portal has made those less dense with talent. Now they’re unearthing guys who had 8.00 ERAs at big schools and making them good during their first offseason. It’s not like other teams don’t scout Mississippi State; the Brewers aren’t turning over rocks in the Dakotas to find players, though they do scout the Midwest very well. Guys like Tyson Hardin and K.C. Hunt had all the resources of an SEC program, but their time in Starkville still didn’t make them especially good.

I'll "blame" him for building one of the best young farm systems while remaining competitive save for the first 46 games of this year. 

I MIGHT blame him for trading Yophery and the 33rd pick, but...pretty much every time they target a young arm, they seem to make it work, so I'll hold off on the judgement there. I'll put even money we end up winning that trade as we end up losing it. 

 

So sure, I'll "blame" Arnold. There's a strong overreaction on here about a mediocre start to the year that's become more pronounced this past 10 days. But the future looks incredible and even this season is HARDLY over. 

[BrewerFan]

14 hours ago, Brian said:

They have the same issues Kris Bryant's ongoing struggles are due to a chronic, degenerative back injury diagnosed as lumbar degenerative disc disease. 

No, they absolutely do not. They both had something wrong with their lower back. 

Bryant has a degenerative disc issue in his lower back. That's NOT what Yelich had. Yelich had a microdiscectomy. There isn't a procedure to fix Bryant's. The outlook for Yelich is a full recovery and regaining full mobility and strength. 

Bryant's is Ongoing chronic pain, mobility issues that continue to worsen. 

[BrewerFan]

20 hours ago, Brian said:

I actually blame Mark Attanasio not Matt Arnold becauce Arnold has no real $$$ capital to even work with.

The guy who owns roughly 1/3rd of the team in the smallest market in baseball and who's net worth is less than at least two MLB players now?

Why not blame Giannis? He's pulling in ~100M a year. The  Uihlein Family or the Hawks owner Tony Ressler who are each worth ~11B dollars. 

Or the uncertainty of the Brewers baseball situation or revenue sharing or a million other things beyond the face of the owner not spending money for...what player? Who was the player that we should have signed?

I'll assume it wasn't the SS who is currently putting up 0.0 WAR and signed a 7/182M deal(though I think we could have overpaid by less and gotten him for 7/170) for a guy who'll turn 30 later this season. 

 

17 hours ago, Jopal78 said:

I think you have unrealistic expectations, especially if you look at Milwaukee Brewers history. They’ve never had more than two guarantees in excess of $50 million.

They didn't have Braun, Cain and Yelich?

15 hours ago, Jopal78 said:

It has nothing to do with inflation

 Since the days of Moliter and Yount, the Brewers carry one maybe two big contracts then it’s a handful of players with smaller guarantees

It's got a little to do with inflation. 

The Brewers gave Yount the largest contract in MLB History at 3/9.3M, they had Stubbs as the largest FA signing for what seemed like a paltry 2/6M IIRC, Bill Wegmen was getting 2.4M, Teddy Higura had a deal in the 4/14M range, just shy of 5M a year, Molitor was being paid ~3.5M. 

This was the period where the salaries really started to explode and eventually led to the lockout in 1994. The Brewers in 1990 had the 5th largest payroll at ~20M and by 1992 despite continuing to spend, they were at about 31M, about average(Toronto was the leader at ~45M). 

 

And if you're just going back to higher end deals... they have outpaced ANY other manner of inflation, CPI or the Average Salary, the Minimum salary. You went from ~1M to start the 80s(Nolan Ryan 4/4.5M) to Young ~3/9.3M to 2000 Albert Bele 12M to 15M  for Kevin Brown by 2010 Johan Santana was making 20M a year, Arod 33M, 2020-both leagues are about the same at ~37M, 2025 now we're got Soto making up to 805B over 15 years and Ohtani earning 70M  a year and you can calculate that however you'd like as he's not going to have to pay Social Security, medicare, disability or the 13.3% state income tax as those are only collectible at the time paid. So he'll save 100M or more by deferring the money...obviously less than one could expect to earn on it, but as pretty significant jump. 

 

So yeah, a lot of it, especially for the top tier players is related to inflation in their salaries. To deny that is...to deny the sun is hot or water is wet.