Brewers: 5 David Stearns Trades That Completely Fleeced The Other Team

Brewers President of Baseball Operations David Stearns is in his seventh year in charge of the Milwaukee Brewers front office. In that time, he has proven himself as one of the top executives in the game and other teams (cough New York Mets cough) have been trying to steal him away.

He’s gotten himself to this level of respect within the industry partially because of his excellent ability to build a roster and that he’s built the Brewers up to a major contender very quickly. But also partially because of his ability to make trades and that he wins a very high percentage of these trades.

Stearns and other execs will tell you that they don’t aim to “win” trades when they’re in negotiations, but as time goes by, it becomes quite clear who got the better end of the deal. In fact, in our article determining Stearns’ batting average on trades last year, he was winning more than 75% of his trades.

Some wins were smaller, some were bigger, and some were an absolute fleecing of the Crew’s trade partner.

Here are the 5 biggest trade fleeces that David Stearns has made for the Brewers.

David Stearns Trade Fleece #5: Jason Rogers To The Pirates For Keon Broxton, Trey Supak

It was the first offseason David Stearns was in charge of the Brewers and he had a couple of fleeces to start off. One of them was this trade with the division rival Pirates.

Jason Rogers was a 32nd round draft pick of the Brewers back in 2010. He made his way through the farm system and made his big league debut in 2014. In 2015, Rogers got a bit of an extended look at first base with the Brewers at first base as the team tore down and began a rebuild. Rogers, to his credit, did well in that short stint.

In 86 games in 2015, Rogers hit .296 with four homers and a 121 OPS+. He looked good. But a new GM came to town in Stearns and he saw a player who’s value would never be higher. So he swung a deal with the Pirates.

In exchange for Rogers, Stearns brought in Keon Broxton, a great defensive centerfielder with a questionable bat but a lot of power when he made contact, and Trey Supak, a solid pitching prospect. A pretty strong return for a 32nd round first baseman with a half a season’s worth of big league games under his belt.

With the Pirates, Rogers played in just 23 games that next season, and went 2-for-25, hitting just .080 with an OPS+ of 30. He never made it back up to the big leagues.

Meanwhile, Keon Broxton played in 75 games in 2016 for Milwaukee and had a 107 OPS+ with 23 stolen bases and nine homers. The next year, Broxton was a regular in the lineup, hitting 20 homers and stealing 21 bases.

Broxton provided a lot of fun over his three years in Milwaukee and was overall a positive impact, accumulating 3.5 fWAR with the Crew. Rogers had -0.1 fWAR in his very short time with the Pirates. Supak never made an impact at the big league level for the Crew, although he was called up but never made it into a game.

But one of the reasons this trade becomes such a big fleece is the end of Broxton’s tenure with the Brewers, but more on that in just a bit.

David Stearns Trade Fleece #3: An Ace for Adam Lind

At first glance of this trade, it didn’t look much like a fleece. As time has gone on, however, it has definitely moved into ‘fleece’ category.

Honestly, the Brewers coming out so far on top in this trade is partially due to extremely good luck, but also partially due to the Brewers front office’s skills in spotting talent and developing it.

Late in 2014, the Brewers acquired first baseman Adam Lind from the Blue Jays for homer-prone starter Marco Estrada. Lind spent the entire 2015 season as the Brewers first baseman and did pretty well, hitting .277 with 20 homers, but the Brewers immediately went into rebuild mode and the veteran slugger was a movable asset.

The new GM, David Stearns, saw this and traded Lind to Seattle in exchange for three teenage pitchers; Daniel Missaki, Carlos Herrera, and Freddy Peralta. All were lottery tickets, most teenage pitchers are.

It didn’t take long after joining the Brewers organization for Freddy Peralta to establish himself as the best of that trio of prospects. He posted a 2.85 ERA in Low-A Wisconsin after coming over and continued to climb up the organizational ladder. After a rough initial stint in then-High A affiliate Brevard County, Peralta never posted an ERA above 3.10 with any Brewers minor league team outside of rehab stints.

Peralta made his major league debut on Mother’s Day in 2018, striking out 13 Rockies and he’s been a staple on this big league pitching staff ever since. He’s continued to get better each year and permanently entrenched himself in the starting rotation in 2021 and established himself as one of the co-aces of this group.

The other two young pitchers in the trade flamed out, either due to injury or ineffectiveness. Missaki never threw a pitch for the Brewers organization, and didn’t throw one professionally for six years. His last affiliated game was in 2015 before the trade, and just this past season appeared in three games for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan. Good to see him finally healthy.

Lind spent one season in Seattle and his batting average dropped 38 points from his season with the Brewers, his OPS dropped 103 points, and his number of doubles were cut nearly in half. The rewards for Seattle in this deal were minimal.

Meanwhile the Brewers have been reaping the rewards and get to reap the rewards of this trade for years to come. The Mariners gave Milwaukee three lottery tickets. One of them just so happened to have the lucky numbers for the jackpot.

Because of the major luck aspect to developing a teenage pitcher into an ace, this trade only comes in at No. 3. It’s hard to fault the Mariners for giving up Peralta since he was so far from a sure thing, and perhaps their pitching development program would’ve never gotten Peralta to point he’s at now.

David Stearns Trade Fleece #2: The Travis Shaw/Tyler Thornburg Trade

For years the Brewers had been lacking a power hitting, left handed bat in the lineup, especially at the corner infield spots. Third base had been a long-term problem for Milwaukee, and GM David Stearns, one year into his tenure at the time, made a trade with the Boston Red Sox at the 2016 Winter Meetings.

Just a few months earlier, Stearns dismantled his dynamic bullpen duo of Will Smith and Jeremy Jeffress in trades at the July Deadline as the Brewers rebuild continued. That left then-7th inning man Tyler Thornburg to handle closing duties. He handled them extremely well and his trade value was incredibly high.

So Stearns traded one single reliever in Thornburg, who had been a closer for just two months, in exchange for a starting third baseman in Travis Shaw, plus three prospects in IF Mauricio Dubon, RHP Josh Pennington, and IF Yeison Coca. Dubon was the best prospect of the group and was a top 5 Brewers prospect for a while.

In parts of five seasons with the Brewers, Thornburg had a 2.87 ERA while occasionally dealing with injuries. Then, before the 2017 season could even get started, Thornburg suffered an injury that cost him the whole season. He returned in 2018 and 2019, but in those two seasons with Boston, he posted a 6.54 ERA and was never the same.

Meanwhile, Travis Shaw immediately became a fan favorite in Milwaukee and played well in his first two seasons. He hit .273 with 31 homers and a 121 OPS+ in 2017, coming up with some clutch hits down the stretch. In 2018, on the NL Central winning club, Shaw hit .241 with 32 homers and a 119 OPS+.

Although Shaw slumped hard in 2019 and hasn’t been able to find that 2017-18 form again, this trade was a massive fleece for Stearns and the Brewers with what Shaw gave the franchise in those two years. Plus, Mauricio Dubon was a strong prospect and was traded for Drew Pomeranz at the 2019 trade deadline, who was a major boost for this club down that stretch.

As for the rest of the package, Josh Pennington retired in 2018 after suffering a string of injuries. Yeison Coca was the player to be named later and is still in the Brewers organization. The 22 year old hit .216/.283/.291 across High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A in 2021.

As great as this trade was, there’s one more that takes the cake.

David Stearns Trade Fleece #1: The Christian Yelich Heist

In one of David Stearns’ most remarkable feats, he acquired Christian Yelich from the Miami Marlins fire-sale and the results could not have gone better for the Brewers.

The full trade was a four-for-one, with the Brewers getting Yelich in exchange for top prospect Lewis Brinson, along with Isan Diaz, Monte Harrison, and Jordan Yamamoto.

Let’s start with Yelich and what he did. Right away in 2018, Yelich became a key piece of the Crew’s lineup, hitting in the 2-hole most of the year behind fellow January 25th, 2018 acquisition Lorenzo Cain. Yelich really took off starting at the All Star Break and slugged his way to the 2018 NL MVP award, showing more power than he ever had before.

2019 was more of the same, with Yelich continuing to slug and slug and win a second straight batting title. His season ended early due to a foul ball off his kneecap, which ruined his chances for a second straight MVP as well, but proved even more so that 2018 was not a fluke and he established himself as a superstar in this league.

Now let’s look at the Marlins return. Lewis Brinson was thought to be big league ready right away and the crown jewel of this trade package, but he has struggled to hit at the MLB level. His first two seasons he hit under .200, and in 2020 and 2021, he hit just .226. He hasn’t shown that power-speed combination he was projected to have and has just not panned out. The Marlins released him this offseason.

Isan Diaz has had opportunities to earn the starting second base job in the big leagues, but he’s lost those battles each time, also hitting under .200 in every season he’s played in. Monte Harrison was also strikeout prone and he’s hit just .175 in limited appearances at the big league level for Miami.

The best player in this return for the Marlins was Jordan Yamamoto, who had a 4.46 ERA in 15 starts for Miami in 2019. Although he struggled the next season and Miami then traded him to the Mets before the 2021 season.

So, really, the Marlins got nothing positive out of this trade. Each of the hitters can’t hit above .200, two of the four are no longer in their organization, the other two aren’t good enough to crack the big league roster, and the player they gave up for them has won two batting titles, an MVP, and has been to the playoffs every season with his new team.

This is why we call this deal the Christian Yelich Heist. This was a steal of major proportions. Stearns fleeced the Marlins, hands down. It was somewhat apparent at the time, considering the Brewers didn’t have to give up any of their big time pitching prospects, but has only grown bigger as time has gone on.

This was seen as a fairly even trade when it happened, but the scales have tipped so much in the Brewers direction as each day has passed since then. Not a single prospect panned out for the Marlins, while Yelich has panned out even better than expected for the Brewers.

This is the kind of trade that makes a legendary career for a baseball executive. It’s one that vaulted Stearns even further into superstardom among his peers. Stearns will likely never have a fleece as big as this one in any trade he makes for the rest of his career.

There are numerous other trades that worked out in the Brewers favor that Stearns made. But these five deals qualify as the biggest fleeces of them all.