Arnold, Murphy recognized for roles in Brewers' resurgent 2024

MILWAUKEE -- Brewers GM Matt Arnold and manager Pat Murphy were tops in their respective jobs in 2024, according to their peers.

The Sporting News has polled MLB executives, managers and players annually since 1936 to determine Major League Baseball’s top Executive and Player of the Year, plus the top managers, rookies and comeback players in each league. This year’s results saw Arnold get the nod as MLB Executive of the Year and Murphy as NL Manager of the Year in what the Brewers hope are harbingers for the rest of awards season to come.

What makes The Sporting News Awards special is that they are decided not by a panel of experts or by sportswriters, but by the men and women inside the game. The publication sent ballots to all 30 teams in mid-September, with players voting for the player awards, managers for the Manager of the Year honors and executives for Executive of the Year as well as The Sporting News’ end of season All-Star teams, which included Brewers catcher William Contreras as the NL’s catcher

For Arnold and Murphy, the honors come after a year in which the Brewers exceeded expectations to go 93-69, blowing past their PECOTA projection by 14 victories to win a second straight NL Central title with a 10-game cushion over the runner-up Cubs and Cardinals. It happened with Murphy as a first-year manager after serving as Brewers bench coach for the previous eight seasons, and with Arnold in his second year atop a baseball operations department he first joined in 2015.

It was a year of change, with Murphy taking the reins from former manager Craig Counsell and Arnold trading ace Corbin Burnes and then finding value from all corners of the organization. In all, 58 players were active for at least one game for the Brewers in 2024.

“Change is something that's present in all sports. Maybe it was our turn to have a lot of changes thrown at us at once, and opportunities, right?” Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said earlier this month, as the team headed into a sixth postseason appearance in the past seven seasons. “I think we, as an organization, surmounted those [challenges].”

More MLB awards are coming, a guide to which appeared this week on MLB.com. The MLB Executive of the Year Award will be announced on Nov. 5 during the General Managers Meetings in San Antonio, and the Baseball Writers Association of America’s NL Manager of the Year Award will be announced on Nov. 19.