Brewers: The Worst Offseason Move In The Last 10 Years

The Milwaukee Brewers have had a lot of success in recent years. They've made the postseason four times but they also went through a rebuilding cycle within the last decade.

The front office has made a lot of transactions over the last decade. With transactions comes praise and/or criticism. Was it a good move or was it a bad move? More often than not they've turned out to be good moves, but in this article we're going to focus on the bad moves. Specifically, we're going to determine which was the worst move of the last decade.

Which Brewers move was the worst decision the organization has made in the last 10 years?

(Dis)Honorable Mentions

Not every bad move can be declared the worst move, which leads us to the moves worth mentioning but not quite taking the title.

The Khris Davis trade

David Stearns didn't make a lot of bad trades when he was in charge of the Brewers. In his first offseason at the helm, Stearns traded outfielder Khris Davis to the Oakland A's for Jacob Nottingham and Bubba Derby. Nottingham was supposed to be the catcher of the future and Derby a valuable depth arm. Instead Nottingham failed to hit and couldn't cement himself in a big league role and Derby wasn't able to sniff the 40 man roster. Meanwhile Davis went on to have a number of successful seasons as a DH in Oakland.

At the time, the Brewers didn't have a DH role to offer Davis, who was atrocious defensively in the outfield but always had power. The trade made sense at the time, and it was seen as a solid return for a player without a defensive home, but with Davis thriving for a number of years in Oakland and the Brewers return busting, it goes down as a bad move, but the circumstances make it not quite the worst one.

The Neftali Feliz signing

Remember him? Back in 2017, the Milwaukee Brewers signed former Rangers closer Neftali Feliz to be their closer. They signed him to a one year, $5.35MM deal with incentives worth another $1.5MM. Let's just say Feliz didn't reach those incentive bonuses.

The plan was for Feliz to be the new Brewers closer. They had just traded away Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith at the previous trade deadline and Tyler Thornburg was dealt earlier in the offseason. They needed a closer and Feliz had experience.

The Feliz contract was $5.35 million well wasted. He gathered just eight saves, posting a 6.00 ERA in 29 games and was released in mid-June. It could not have gone more wrong, but at least it was only a one year deal.