Ranking the 3 Mets trades with the Brewers made by David Stearns from Milwaukee

Among the 29 teams in MLB, the Milwaukee Brewers have a distinction as one of maybe two (the other being the Seattle Mariners) where they New York Mets don’t have a clear winning trade with. The Edwin Diaz-Robinson Cano deal may now look like a Mets victory and we should be hopeful that the addition of Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor becomes a satisfying transaction for the Amazins.

The Mets and Brewers haven’t been especially good trade partners over the years. Many of the moves were smaller or involved the Mets sending a guy on an expiring contract to Milwaukee. We have Francisco Rodriguez going to Milwaukee in 2011 as one example. More recently, Mark Canha was traded there in 2023.

David Stearns would manage to make only three trades with the Mets while working for Milwaukee. Excluding the Canha trade because he was no longer in the general manager role at the time, these are those three trades ranked from worst to best.

3) The Mets trade three prospects for Keon Broxton

This is one of those trades which belongs alongside the Darin Ruf deal. On January 5, 2019, Brodie Van Wagenen undertook what feels like an annual tradition of the Mets adding a fourth outfielder to the roster. He chose Brewers outfielder Keon Broxton. It cost the Mets prospects Adam Hill, Felix Valerio, and Bobby Wahl.

The 2019 Mets turned out to be a fun team that would narrowly miss the postseason. If not for such a rocky start to the year, they would’ve been in the postseason. This trade hardly factored into the team’s performance. Broxton was their fifth outfielder, but voiced how he thought he would’ve been playing more.

Only a few days later, Broxton and his .143/.208/.163 slash line were traded to the Baltimore Orioles after being designated for assignment in May. The poor performance wasn’t much of a surprise to the fans. Broxton had just hit .179/.281/.410 the year prior with Milwaukee. What did BVW see in him?

Although none of the prospects have gone on to have illustrious careers (at least not yet), it was a waste of time to have Broxton on the roster. Those pieces could’ve been used for a different addition. Hill, alone, was able to land the Brewers catcher Omar Narvaez in a deal with the Seattle Mariners. Mets fans may not think highly of Narvaez, but he did make an All-Star team during his stint with Milwaukee.