Milwaukee Brewers GM Matt Arnold: Baseball America's 2024 MLB Executive Of The Year (original) (raw)

Image credit: Brewers GM Matt Arnold (Photo by Aaron Gash/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

The Brewers had every excuse to take a significant step back in 2024.

They lost their manager. They traded their ace. They suffered through myriad injuries to key players. Their payroll once again matched their status as baseball’s smallest-market team.

In the end, none of that mattered.

Thanks in large part to the deft decision-making of general manager Matt Arnold, the Brewers went on to win the National League Central division and make their sixth postseason appearance in the last seven years.

“Matt has been the glue in our baseball ops group,” Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio said.

Now, Arnold is the Baseball America Major League Executive of the Year.

Arnold, 45, has been with the Brewers since October 2015, when he joined as right-hand man to then-GM David Stearns. Arnold ascended to the top spot on the baseball operations side in October 2022 after Stearns announced he was stepping back into an advisory role for what would be his final year with the Brewers before taking over as president of baseball operations for the Mets in 2024.

Milwaukee won the NL Central in Arnold’s first year at the helm in 2023. But only weeks after the season ended, major moves began taking place that would ultimately build the framework for 2024 success.

No move was bigger than hiring bench coach Pat Murphy to take over for departed manager Craig Counsell, whose defection to the rival Cubs was a gut punch as well as a slap in the face to the organization.

“We always look to promote from within,” Attanasio said. “There’s roster turnover as part of the business in baseball, but we look to promote our own players first. We know them the best. And I think it’s one of the reasons we’ve had the success we’ve had.”

Murphy, as it turned out, was more than up to the task.

Clearly relishing his first true shot at managing in the majors—he was interim Padres manager for the final 96 games of 2015—the 65-year-old pushed every right button both in the dugout as well as the clubhouse as the Brewers finished tied for the fourth-best record in baseball at 93-69.

And he was set up for success by the series of moves and decisions made by Arnold.

Among Arnold’s most important decisions:

• He signed top prospect Jackson Chourio to a record-setting eight-year, $82 million extension last December before he had ever played in a major league game. He also chose to let the 20-year-old outfielder work through his inevitable struggles in the first couple months of the 2024 season.

Chourio rewarded that patience by becoming one of Milwaukee’s top players from June through September and then into the postseason.

• He traded righthander Corbin Burnes to the Orioles two weeks prior to the start of spring training.

The move, viewed as the Brewers waving the white flag on the season, brought back a prospect in Joey Ortiz who ended up as a solid starting third baseman; lefthander DL Hall, who missed most of the season with a knee injury but still factors solidly in the plans moving forward; and a 2024 competitive-balance draft pick—Tennessee’s Blake Burke—who Milwaukee hopes will turn out to be its first baseman of the future.

• Arnold elected to keep pending free agent shortstop Willy Adames, whose career year—he hit 32 home runs with 112 RBIs—and leadership were pivotal in the Brewers’ success. He’ll move on via free agency but was worth keeping. Milwaukee will receive a 2025 draft pick as compensation.

• He identified previously unknown righthander Tobias Myers as a legitimate starting pitcher and allowed him to establish a spot in the rotation. The 26-year-old was Milwaukee’s best starter in its Wild Card Series versus the Mets and looks to be a keeper.

• He acquired a pair of experienced righthanders—Aaron Civale from the Rays and Frankie Montas from the Reds—at the trade deadline. Both pitchers, particularly Civale, once he got settled and cut down on his home runs allowed, provided crucial stability to a rotation desperately in need of some.

• Arnold made a series of deft, under-the-radar moves before and during the season that supplemented Milwaukee’s bullpen, which received the devastating news in spring training that closer Devin Williams would miss the first four months of the season with stress fractures in his back.

Trevor Megill quickly supplanted rookie Abner Uribe in high-leverage spots. By the end of the season, Megill led the Brewers with 21 saves.

The additions of talented but unsung lefthanders Jared Koenig—a minor league free agent—and Bryan Hudson—acquired in a trade with the Dodgers—proved huge as well.

The 6-foot-8 Hudson dominated in the first half, while Koenig served as Swiss Army Knife by both opening and closing games.

• The organization’s outfield depth also allowed it to weather the loss of expected center fielder Garrett Mitchell to a broken finger for three months at the end of spring training, as well as the continued back problems suffered by Christian Yelich, who had season-ending surgery in August.

Chourio, Blake Perkins and Gold Glove right fielder Sal Frelick all did their parts in helping the Brewers through the breach.

“It’s the business of business, and our front office does a great job of understanding how to operate that to be able to put a competitive team on the field,” Murphy said of the job done by Arnold and his front office.

“They’re competitive every year.”