Doug Melvin steps down as Brewers GM, signaling culture shift in Milwaukee
There have been a lot of changes within the Milwaukee Brewers this season and that continued Tuesday as the club announced Doug Melvin is leaving his post as general manager and moving into an “advisory role.”
The change is happening immediately, with the Brewers starting a search for a new GM. In that search, the club has indicated it will prioritize younger candidates who are more in touch with modern baseball analytics.
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Milwaukee is 48-65 this season, the second worst record in MLB. They already replaced manager Ron Roenicke early in the season (not too long after exercising his 2016 option, oops) and traded star outfielder Carlos Gomez.
Now, Melvin is gone after 13 seasons of shaping the Brewers franchise. He was among the longest tenured GMs in baseball, behind Brian Sabean of the San Francisco Giants (19 years), Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics (18 years) and Brian Cashman of the New York Yankees (17 years). During his time with the Brewers, Melvin had a 1,004-1,052 record and two trips to the playoffs.
It’s unclear how long Melvin will serve in his “advisory role,” but Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the team already has an initial list of the candidates in mind to replace Melvin, so the hiring could happen relatively quickly. Owner Mark Attanasio told Haudricourt that he’s committed to Craig Counsell as the team’s manager. Counsell was a member of Melvin’s staff before replacing Roenicke and is under contract as manager through the 2017 season.
Adam McCalvy of MLB.com reports that the Brewers are looking for someone with a “knowledge of analytics” to fill Melvin’s role, which makes it sound like a culture change is afoot in Milwaukee.
That’s a stark contrast to Melvin, who was very much an old-school GM. This season, in fact, he unleashed a rant about stat guys to the New York Daily News:
“Why can’t these (stat) guys ever admit they’re wrong? A lot of them don’t even watch the games. But then everything has changed so much in baseball. Everything now has to be immediate. We live in a world of Instagrams when, more than any other sport, the most important thing in baseball is that you’ve got to be patient.”
As Brewers fans will tell you, they were patient with Melvin and his regime. But two playoff runs in 13 years isn’t much to Instagram, now is it?
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Among the veteran MLB GMs looking for work are Dave Dombrowski, who was released from his contract with the Detroit Tigers last week and Jerry Dipoto, who was ousted in a power struggle in the Los Angeles Angels front office earlier this season.
Dombrowski is rumored to be in line for the soon-to-be-open Toronto Blue Jays president job, but Dipoto could be a fit in Milwaukee. He’s 47 and is analytics-minded, though, the Brewers could be wanting to go ever younger and snatch up a hot-shot from another team with zero GM experience. Time will tell.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
