The Search Goes On

The latest news in the Mets' search to find someone to lead their baseball operations is Mike Puma reporting in the New York Post that they have spoken with Matt Arnold, the Milwaukee Brewers GM under David Stearns. There are reports that the Mets have already talked with Arnold. Some reports say the Mets have even already offered the man a contract. Meanwhile, SNY's Andy Martino repeatedly insists on Twitter that the Mets need permission to speak with Arnold and have not yet received it. So it goes with the constant swirl of rumors about the search for a PBO.

Delving into Matt Arnold a bit makes it clear that the man is an extremely qualified candidate for the job. SNY.com has a piece up on Arnold if you're interested in finding out a bit more about him.

I have no industry sources to tout here but, whether the Mets end up hiring Matt Arnold or not, it reinforces my belief that there are excellent candidates to run the Mets' baseball ops beyond the big names that were being tossed about by the media a couple of weeks ago. It's the point I was making in my post from the weekend. The idea that not hitting on their initial targets somehow signaled the effort was doomed to failure was ludicrous. And the same holds true if Arnold doesn't wind up getting the job. There are genuinely excellent candidates out there, even if they're not household names.

Back in 2018, the San Francisco Giants were looking for a new executive to run their organization. Farhan Zaidi wound up with the job, of course, but Enos Sarris listed some potential candidates in a piece in The Athletic at the beginning of the process. Matt Arnold was one of the candidates. Sarris wrote of the man who was at the time the Brewers' Assistant GM in charge of scouting and development:

Arnold's skill set may come across as similar to [then Astros Assistant GM Mark] Elias', but there are a few key differences. While Arnold was also a former director of pro scouting who came up through the scouting ranks on forward-thinking teams, he did so for more teams. In order, he worked for the Dodgers, Rangers, Reds, Rays, and Astros before joining the Brewers — and in doing so, made many of the connections that will help him when it comes to striking up trade conversations.

He also learned different organizational structures, and that's a fluency that might be undervalued. How to give employees autonomy so that they can do their jobs the best and feed information upward is an important part of the job. Arnold may have unique insight into what works and what doesn’t in that regard.

Lastly, he worked on "biomechanics and human movement analyses" with the Rays, and that sounds like something that speaks to his ability to work with analysts on the best practices for player development.

Sarris' link was to an article on MLB.com from 2015, when Matt Arnold was David Stearns' first hire for the Milwaukee front office to run their scouting and development. The more I read about the man, the more I believe he would be a terrific choice for the job.

Again, I have no idea if Matt Arnold wants the Mets job at all, or if Milwaukee owner Mark Attanasio can block him from interviewing for the job. Rest assured that, now that Arnold's name has been linked with the Mets, anything short of a news conference announcing his hiring will be treated in the press as another failure.

As I noted Sunday, the through-line taken by most of the media will continue to be that everyone is swiping left on the Mets until someone gets the job. However,  I believe there will be a reason to be excited once a new PBO is named, whether it turns out to be Matt Arnold or some other supremely qualified baseball lifer.

 Follow me on Twitter @MikeSteffanos.