For most people in the Brewers online community, Milwaukee Brewers general manager David Stearns walks on water. For good reason, he’s not made a bad move since taking over control of the team. Everything worked out in the way that Stearns wanted to do when he envisioned signing for a player like Junior Guerra or acquiring talent like they did with Domingo Santana, Josh Hader and countless others. For the first time, it seems like that affinity for Stearns will be put to the test as he did not sign Jake Arrieta for 25 million per year as the Philadelphia Phillies made that happened. Everyone hoped the Brewers would pull the trigger on Arrieta and they did not.

At first, I was disappointed the Brewers would not be bringing Arrieta into the mix. He could have contributed a great deal to this team for next season and beyond, but the more I stewed on it, the more I became okay with it. Stearns hasn’t made many bad moves so far as General Manager, and he deserves to get some trust when it comes to these major decisions. He knows what he’s doing, so, we can play armchair quarterback all day long with him, but typically, the Brewers brass comes out ahead on these sort of things.

To me, Stearns is the new Ted Thompson where I can trust almost everything he does at this point. He hasn’t steered the organization wrong yet, and what exactly about this deal makes us think as a whole that this will be the first bad move by him? Arrieta is 33 years old, decent clubhouse guy but not afraid to share an opinion or two, and he looked like a regression was happening before our very eyes last season. That last part could be the whole reason why Milwaukee never ponied up enough money to bring the former Chicago Cub north to Milwaukee.

In Stearns we trust,

Charlie.