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The Brewers have officially denied permission to allow the Mets to talk to Milwaukee president of baseball operations David Stearns to run the Mets baseball department, The Post has learned.
Brewers owner Mark Attanasio denied the Mets’ request over the weekend, officially removing one of the heavyweights that the Mets were seeking to be their president of baseball operations.
Earlier this month, Theo Epstein and Mets owner Steve Cohen had a discussion and agreed that Epstein would not pursue the job either.
A’s executive VP of baseball operations Billy Beane remains the most significant candidate who has not yet publicly declared if he is interested, or if Oakland would allow him to leave his contract to join the team that drafted him in 1980.
Stearns grew up a Mets fan in Manhattan and briefly worked for the organization earlier in his career. His Brewers have made the playoffs each of the last four years, raising his profile and making him among the most in-demand executives in the sport.
But he has one guaranteed year left on his contract and Attanasio is known within the game as a firebrand around small-market issues. He has felt it wrong to, among other items, allow big-market teams to poach executives with time left on their contracts. In Stearns’ case, it would be an executive that Attanasio hired untested running baseball operations and then gave a contract befitting a larger-market team.
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