About a month ago, the Milwaukee Brewers announced that long-time general manager Doug Melvin was stepping down from his role to move into an advisory capacity. Melvin recently turned 63.
“I know he’s been doing this a long time and the game’s only getting more and more complicated in terms of analytics,” said Brewers’ catcher Jonathan LuCroy. “I know that Doug’s an old-school guy. He goes on gut feeling and stuff like that a lot. I think he was (kind of) ready to start doing something different.”
The move appeared to signal a desire of Brewers ownership to change the culture in the front office. The club indicated they were looking for a younger, more analytically oriented GM.
They appear to have found their candidate.
Ken Rosenthal (Fox Sports) is reporting that the Brewers will hire 30-year-old Harvard graduate David Stearns as their next general manager.
For someone that young, Stearns has a long baseball resumé. After graduating from Harvard in 2007, he worked in the baseball operations departments of the NY Mets, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, the Arizona Fall League and MLB from 2008-11. Stearns assisted in the arbitration process and worked on the league’s most recent collective bargaining agreement. He spent the last three seasons as the Houston Astros’ assistant GM working for Jeff Luhnow. He’s regarded as one of the top young minds in baseball.
With this hire, the Brewers join other NL Central teams – the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs – in modernizing their front office. Heading into today, those teams had the three best records in baseball.
NL Central now four heavy analytics front offices. And the Reds.
— Will Carroll (@injuryexpert) September 21, 2015
The Reds are on the clock. Let’s hope it isn’t a sundial.