It all happened so fast. Shortly after the Brewers snapped their eight-game losing streak yesterday, Twitter buzzed with news that Milwaukee was about to announce the general manager search was over. Today it was official: the Brewers hired David Stearns, most recently the assistant GM for the Houston Astros. The 30-year-old Stearns will be the youngest current GM in the majors…and so those of us who long ago got used to the idea of pro athletes being much younger than us experienced the sudden, sickening realization that now sports executives are going to be much younger than us. Christ. Get off my lawn.
At the tail end of the lost season, the news is exciting in that it symbolizes what fans can hope is a bold, new direction for a team that has looked flat out pathetic for one calendar year now. It’s so fresh and thrilling that I’m not sure what to think yet. Brewers beat writer Tom Haudricourt has posted an excellent and detailed story about the Stearns announcement. I’m going to peruse it and write out my gut reactions to various excerpts, similar to how I posted real-time reactions to Ryan Braun’s PED apology in 2013. Join me, won’t you?
It is possible to be young and experienced, not to mention qualified, at the same time.
That was the theme Monday afternoon as the Milwaukee Brewers introduced their new general manager, 30-year-old David Stearns.
I’m sure the first thing we were all thinking was “He’s just a baby.” How can a baby lead this team out of the last place wilderness? The second thing we were thinking was a hacky joke about the former NBA commissioner.
“We focused on his experience,” team principal owner Mark Attanasio said in explaining the process that led to the hiring of Stearns, who was assistant general manager of the Houston Astros.
“His experience is quite impressive. The fact that he was able to achieve all of that at a comparatively young age is only a benefit and testament to his work ethic and his drive.”
You must admit, that is exactly way to frame this hiring when you know how easy it is to pre-judge Stearns as an inexperienced kid. He’s a prodigy. Plus, younger folks tend to be less jaded and willing to approach things from an innovative perspective, until the harsh realities of the world inevitably crush their ambitions. There’s still plenty of time in Stearns’ career and life before he becomes a weary, cynical husk of a man, and the Brewers can capitalize.
Stearns indeed get an early start in the world of baseball, an idea cultivated as a young Mets fan growing up in New York. Before he graduated from Harvard with a political science degree in 2007, he already had worked an internship with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Speaking of being cynical, is it wrong to be instantly contemptuous of anyone who went to Harvard? They’re probably not all well-connected, hyper-privileged aristocrats, but that’s what the Harvard brand represents to a feeble-minded Midwesterner like myself. Damn my socio-cultural envy.
After college, he worked briefly for the Arizona Fall League, then his hometown Mets. From there, Stearns took a job in the Major League Baseball central office, where he learned the ins and outs of the business of the game while also cultivating contacts with several teams.
I’d love to ask anyone who worked at MLB the same question: “Do you think there was anything MLB did during its drug war against PEDs generally and Biogenesis specifically that went too far?”
[…] “I’m excited to be here because of the organization,” said Stearns, who doesn’t actually succeed Doug Melvin as general manager until Oct. 5. “When you do this for a living and you work in baseball operations and you think about becoming a general manager, you do so with the hope you’ll be able to do it in a place with an extraordinarily passionate fan base, a knowledgeable fan base, and with an owner and ownership group that cares about winning consistently and sustainably.”
Obviously, Stearns has to say stuff like that, but it’s fun to imagine an alternate universe in which a GM said something like, “The fan base here isn’t what I’d call ‘passionate’ but I admire the fact that they’ll turn out for some pretty weak bobblehead giveaways. I don’t know how knowledgeable they are about baseball, but I appreciate a number of them are willing to shell out $8-9 for a beer. The ownership group cares about winning consistently, but they know I’m not a miracle worker. Anyway, does anyone know where that dog is? I’d like to get a selfie.”
The search process that led to the hiring of Stearns took less than six weeks but that doesn’t mean it was less than comprehensive. With the help of search firm Korn Ferry, Attanasio and his staff began with an original list of 44 candidates. […]
“It was a very detailed and comprehensive process,” said Attanasio, who did not reveal the length of Stearns’ contract. “Korn Ferry gave us 40 data points and said to try to rank them. We came up with a profile of 11 points or skill sets we felt were important in what we looked for.”
I understand recruiting for any position is part art and part science, so it’s interesting to get an idea of how far into the “science” half of the equation they tried to go. I’m assuming their methods are proprietary, but I wonder what Korn Ferry’s original 40 data points were.
[…] “He just felt right,” said Attanasio, who admitted that non-qualitative assessment often makes the difference in important decisions. “This is where it gets a little off the scorecard.“We had a lot of internal conversation about what we needed. By definition, any of the candidates we interviewed only had the highest level of professional accomplishment and respect from our organization.”
Ultimately, the “art” part of the equation is decision-maker. I’ve had some experience recruiting, and there are all sorts of objective measures one can analyze when trying to find the right candidate…but in the end, there’s really no replacement for the classic gut feeling.
The question all fans want to know is how long it will take Stearns to return the Brewers to a competitive mode. They stumbled out of the gate with a 5-17 record in April and never recovered, going on to one of the worst seasons in franchise history. […]
“I’m a big believer in not setting limits for any team, for any year,” said Stearns, who was accompanied at the Miller Park news conference by fiancée Whitney. “This is a game with a tremendous amount of variability and we’re going to take each decision as it comes and make each decision in the best interests of the overall health of the organization.
If we’re being fair (and a certain vocal percentage of sports fans have no interest in being far), there’s no way Stearns could have a solution to the Brewers’ collapse that began one year ago. If Stearns had addressed this question with anything than bland platitudes, it would have been patently disingenuous.
[…] In other words, Stearns has no way of knowing at this time how long it will take for the Brewers to be winners again. Before the Astros broke through this as contenders year, there were six painful years of losing including three consecutive 100-loss seasons.
Holy crap, why did you have to remind me about the Astros’ 100-loss years? I was feeling hopeful there for a few moments. Goddammit.
[…] “There’s often a lot more going on than you can observe from the outside. I’m going to withhold judgment on that until I get a chance to talk to the guys here. The vision of leading this team is no different than any other team. We want to be industry leaders and employ best practices across every function of baseball operations.”
Eh, “best practices” is a pretty squishy term. If anyone had a strong handle on best practices, everyone would be using them – they sure as hell wouldn’t be a secret. Moneyball proved that. I’m sure Stearns will make some changes to office workflows and whatnot, and those changes will probably be positive, but I doubt there’s any one-size-fits-all best practice out there.
[…] “You can’t build a team through free agency. Even the biggest-market team in baseball can’t do that. The trick is to develop a process and a system that allows you to constantly regenerate that pipeline even as you’re competitive at the major-league level.
That all makes sense. Again, in the alternate universe, Stearns would say something like, “We can’t build this team through free agency because we don’t have the money. And besides, how often does building a team through free agency lead to a World Series championship? The 2009 Yankees come to mind, but other than that – c’mon, how often does that happen, really?”
I haven’t done exhaustive research on World Series champions, but that would actually be a pretty sweet alternate universe answer.
[…] “Craig [Counsell] is a really impressive guy,” said Stearns. “He has a tremendous reputation in the industry. Mark mentioned the importance of the manager-general manager relationship. It needs to be a true partnership where there is trust on both ends.”
Alternate universe answer: “Counsell’s the guy who had the goofy batting stance in the late 00’s, right? Well, he does have two World Series rings, so that can’t be a fluke.”
As I write this during the broadcast of the Brewers-Cubs game, everyone is optimistic about Stearns as GM. We might as well enjoy that feeling since the earliest it can be squashed is April 2016.
(Image: Foxsports.com)
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