Reports: Brewers reject Mets request to interview David Stearns

There is no front office job in baseball more attractive than the New York Mets now that they’re under new ownership.

Brewers President of Baseball Operations and GM David Stearns grew up a Mets fan in New York.

It seems like a natural fit, which has led to a fair amount of rumors early in the baseball offseason, but those rumors can be put to bed. According to multiple sources, including MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi, the Mets’ request to talk to Stearns about the same job in Queens was rejected.

In short, Stearns isn’t going anywhere, and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

As Morosi notes, Stearns just signed a contract extension prior to 2019 that included the promotion to President of Baseball Ops.

This report comes the same morning Ken Rosenthal looked at possible front office candidates for the Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, with sources also telling him the Brewers will not allow Stearns to leave (not just for the Mets, but the implication is ‘period’). As Rosenthal reminds us, this is not the first time Mark Attanasio has blocked an interview for Stearns — he did the same thing with the San Francisco Giants in 2018.

It appears Attanasio’s philosophy is pretty simple — you signed a contract. You were (presumably) well-compensated for that big promotion. You’ll be here for awhile.

(To be fair, we don’t know whether Stearns would even be interested in the Mets job, just that they wanted to talk to him about the possibility.)

Stearns’ Assistant GM, Matt Arnold, could be a popular front office candidate — he was one of many to interview for the Angels job — but Rosenthal notes that new Mets owner Steve Cohen is quoted as saying he’s not fond of someone learning on the job on his dime, and Philadelphia may be holding out hope for Theo Epstein or another proven name.