Brewers: Grading GM Matt Arnold's First Year On The Job

Offseason Trades: A

The bulk of Matt Arnold's offseason work was done on the trade market and he did an outstanding job on that front.

The Hunter Renfroe trade has panned out pretty well. Renfroe struggled with the Angels while Elvis Peguero has evolved into a trusted setup man for Craig Counsell out of the bullpen. Janson Junk made one start in the big leagues this year and Adam Seminaris spent the year in Double-A. Renfroe has been worth -0.6 bWAR this year while Peguero has been worth 0.9 bWAR. That's a good win for Arnold.

The Kolten Wong trade was a wash. Wong was bad for Seattle while Jesse Winker was bad for the Brewers. The trade cleared room for Brice Turang and gave the Brewers what should've been really good odds of a bounce-back season from Winker. It made a lot of sense and everything pointed to a return to form from Winker. It just never materialized but the process from Arnold was correct. Abraham Toro's been the best piece of this trade but he's seen limited big league time.

The crown jewel of Matt Arnold's first year in charge is the William Contreras trade. The A's and Braves were working on a trade of another catcher, Sean Murphy. Atlanta wanted Murphy but wanted to clear William Contreras at the same time. The A's didn't want Contreras because they wanted to clear Murphy to make room for Shea Langeliers. So Matt Arnold jumped in and said "I'll take Contreras" and helped complete the deal. Arnold somehow finagled only sending out Esteury Ruiz, his 5th best outfielder prospect for Contreras, plus Joel Payamps, who's been the Brewers' 8th inning setup man, plus a minor league piece in Justin Yeager.

Arnold made a couple more minor trades, adding Owen Miller from Cleveland and then sending out Justin Topa for minor league pitcher Joseph Hernandez. Earlier in the offseason was the trade for Javy Guerra, who didn't pan out, but it wasn't a bad idea to try.