By: Tim Marchman
MLB’s Top GMs
Here is a great article by a Sports Illustrated writer characterizing the top GMs and why. He goes into some detail about how it’s tough to rate GMs adequately due to the different funds each get, expectations (Yankees have to win the World Series vs. the Orioles just don’t want to finish dead last), and longevity. But I’ll add my 2 cents (because you all care so much) when I agree of disagree.
-I agree with his top 3, however, Brian Cashman doesn’t deserve as much credit. Yes he has all those World Series rings, but come on! Any mistake he makes (not grabbing Johan for a combo of Kennedy, Joba, and/or Hughes) can be quickly wiped clean with all his cash. He misses on a prospect, oh well, lets sign Texeira. And like any other team, when their core players are about to leave via free agency, ie. Tampa Bay Crawford/Pena, he has the cash to keep them together (Rivera, Jeter, Posada). Yes he’s done a good job, but he’s not an innovator like Friedman, or a trend setter like Epstein. He follows suit, steals clubs’ ideas, and has the cash to make it happened quicker or cover any mistake.
1. Andrew Friedman, Tampa Bay Rays
For as much praise as the Rays have received over the last few years, they’ve probably deserved even more. Over the last three years they’ve spent just a million dollars per marginal win, the sort of thing that gets baseball wonks to draw hearts around pictures of Friedman. Maybe the best example of their method is the preposterous contract to which they signed Evan Longoria during his first days as a major leaguer — if the Rays exercise all the options in the contract, they could end up paying him less than $50 million through his age 30 season, which makes him the single most valuable commodity in baseball. Friedman has also won a pennant and maintains one of the game’s best farm systems. It may seem absurd to say of a 32-year-old whom few people had heard of a year and a half ago, but he and his braintrust are the best in baseball.
2. Theo Epstein, Boston Red Sox
Among baseball’s really big spenders, the Red Sox are the most efficient, or, if you prefer, the least wasteful. It’s difficult to avoid roster bloat while playing even-up with the Yankees, but they’ve managed it. Before signing starter John Lackey this winter, they didn’t have a player making more than $14 million per year, and the team is built around cheap, homegrown talent. Like the Rays, the impressive thing about the Red Sox is that they may deserve even more hype than they get.
3. Brian Cashman, New York Yankees
Cashman’s weakness isn’t a small one — the Yankees, the only team in baseball to routinely run $200 million payrolls, have recently been spending about four times as much per win as the Rays. Why, then, does he rank so high? His four world championships don’t hurt, but the really impressive thing is that since he secured full control over baseball operations after the 2005 season, the Yankees have spent their money wisely, signing studs like CC Sabathia rather than sure bets for decline, and traded smartly, dealing the fruits of a much-improved farm system for players still in their prime, such as Curtis Granderson.
4. Larry Beinfest, Florida Marlins
Duly noted that Michael Hill is nominally the Marlins’ general manager. That said, Beinfest, technically the team’s president of baseball operations, consistently gets more wins for his dollar than anyone else in baseball. Since he took over following the 2002 season, the Marlins have won a World Series and posted winning records in five of seven seasons, despite consistently ranking at or near the bottom of the majors in payroll. Beinfest has picked up players every way you can — trading for Hanley Ramirez, acquiring Dan Uggla in the Rule 5 draft, and bringing up players from the farm — and on the few occasions he’s had money to spend, he has spent it shrewdly.
-I would have put Beinfest in front of Cashman. This guy has done an amazing job. Like Billy Beane, can you imagine how dangerous he’d be with some $$?!
5. Jack Zduriencik, Seattle Mariners
This may seem a preposterous ranking for someone who’s only been in the job for a bit more than a year, but the key thing to note about Zduriencik is that he was already one of baseball’s most highly regarded minds before coming to Seattle. His run of drafts for the Milwaukee Brewers in the 2000s was so good that he became the first scouting director to win Baseball America’s Executive of the Year award. Since taking over the reins in Seattle, he has turned the Mariners into a contender, engineering their abrupt transformation from one of baseball’s dullest organizations to one of its most progressive, such as by focusing on defensive studs such as Jack Wilson, Franklin Gutierrez and Casey Kotchman.
-Sorry, but not sold on the whole “most progressive” organizations yet. Give him a few years with all this defensive minded stuff and see how it works out. Sorry, but I’d take a SS that gives up a few errors and plunks 15+ HRs over Jack Wilson. Give me the long ball and clutch hitting, you can keep your quick glove and fancy double plays.
6. Doug Melvin, Milwaukee Brewers
There’s a lingering air of unfulfilled potential about the Brewers, a sense that they took their shot two years ago when they traded for CC Sabathia and just missed (they lost in the NLDS). But Melvin made what had been perhaps baseball’s blandest team relevant for the first time in decades, and he probably isn’t done quite yet. Don’t be surprised if he turns Prince Fielder into enough young talent to drive another serious run at a pennant.
- I like this guy. He’s ballsy. Any guy that can give up some top prospects for a sure fire starter like CC, knowingly he’s only going to stick around for one year, has some stones. Today’s age is all about developing from within, but isn’t it also about your fans? Putting a team out there that can compete? Excitement? I guarantee Brewer fans are still talking about the run their team made in 2008.
7. Dan O’Dowd, Colorado Rockies
O’Dowd has built some thrilling teams recently, and done so on the cheap. It’s been a long time since the Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle debacles, and granting that he’s Baseball America’s reigning Executive of the Year, O’Dowd still deserves more credit than he sometimes gets. He built his team up the right way and finally solved the problem of Coors Field by overseeing the introduction of the famed humidor.
8. Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers
General managers are always going on about the virtues of building a strong farm system, and what they generally mean is that they want to win major league games so they can keep their jobs. Daniels has actually built a preposterously good system (Justin Smoak, Neftali Feliz, Derek Holland) over the last few years, bringing in talent every way you can, and now has his team positioned to contend for the next several years. That he has kept the major league team perfectly respectable on modest payrolls while overseeing this rebuilding project is really very impressive, and with a good run over the next couple of years he could well move up on this list.
9. Ken Williams, Chicago White Sox
For someone regarded even by many of his own team’s fans as somewhere between daft and clueless, Williams certainly has a habit of making killer trades, identifying undervalued players and putting together winning ballclubs. His basic philosophy of running out an 85-win team every year in the expectation that in its better years it will be a serious pennant contender is a bit strange for a big city team in a small-town division, but he has a World Series ring and several division flags that say it works.
10. Billy Beane, Oakland A’s
Beane really seems to have been at least matched at his own game by a generation of younger general managers who learned, to some extent, from his example. He’s still a fine and creative executive, and you have to wonder what he would do in a town like New York or Chicago, but he’ll have to invent some new tricks to reclaim the title of the man who does most with the least. He could justifiably be ranked higher, but considering that his team has lost at least 86 games in each of the last three years, he could also be justifiably ranked lower.
11. Josh Byrnes, Arizona Diamondbacks
I’m not quite sure if the Diamondbacks are a team whose young players haven’t developed as well as they should or an extremely young team that just hasn’t come all the way together yet, not that these are mutually exclusive possibilities. Either way, Byrnes has done an admirable job collecting young talent and patiently letting it develop. The odd questionable move like trading away Carlos Quentin has been more than balanced out by savvy moves such as trading for Dan Haren. There’s a championship team somewhere in this collection of talent.
12. Andy MacPhail, Baltimore Orioles
He’s baseball royalty and a possible future commissioner who has built first-rate clubs in Minnesota and Chicago, so the surprise of MacPhail’s work in Baltimore is that he’s there at all, given the Orioles’ notoriously headache-inducing ownership. It’s not a surprise that he’s doing the job the right way. This is a lousy team, but that’s because under MacPhail’s stewardship they’re actually rebuilding properly rather than burning money in a futile bid for 80 wins. In any other division they’d be a comer.
-I’ve read for awhile about their owner, and this guy Macphail seems to be doing a great job. The team he has now, in another other division (I’m sick of saying that. Stupid Yanks/Red Sox) would be a nice sleeper pick.
13. Dave Dombrowski, Detroit Tigers
Dombrowski hasn’t had the best run lately between a string of dubious trades involving players like Jair Jurrjens and Curtis Granderson and the equally dubious contracts given players like Gary Sheffield and Dontrelle Willis. That said, you have to respect his incredible resume. He built the outstanding Montreal Expos clubs of the early 1990s, won a world championship in Miami and a pennant with a Tigers team that just three years before was arguably the worst team of all time, and he probably has still more success ahead of him.
-Again, this is a total “homer” response, and I’m going away from the mold a bit on this one, but I’ve loved most of his moves. The Renteria deal was horrible, so were the contracts handed out to Willis, Bonderman, Robertson, and Guillen, but look at where he was at that time! He just made it to the world series, was heavily favored, and should have won….why wouldn’t you resign those guys?! And the Jair Jurrgens deal? Good for him. Because if you tell him not to do that deal, he doesn’t make the Miguel Cabrera deal either! And bringing in a sure fire 1st ballot hall of famer (if he continues at his current pace) for a couple of kids you have no idea how they are going to pan out is a great deal! Gms are going to make mistakes, and they’re also going ot hit on some moves, but sitting there doing absolutely nothing is the worst thing.
14. Walt Jocketty, Cincinnati Reds
You could certainly make an argument that Jocketty should rate higher given his great success with the St. Louis Cardinals, the best team in the National League last decade. Given how much of that success came down to Albert Pujols’ reign of terror, the presence of all-time great manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan’s ability to nurse terrific performances out of incredibly sketchy pitching talent, though, there’s only so much credit to go around.
15. Tony Reagins, Los Angeles Angels
It’s hard to get Reagins much higher than this given that he has a tenure of only two years and that he can be given only so much credit for not immediately ruining one of the most consistently successful teams in baseball. Still, he has done an awful lot right, such as signing Bobby Abreu for a pittance last year and trading for players like Mark Teixeira and Scott Kazmir. Perhaps as impressive is what he hasn’t done: This winter, for instance, he declined to overpay for homegrown ace John Lackey and beloved leadoff man Chone Figgins. As fits the Angels, he isn’t flashy, but he has impressed so far.
-Guest Blogger J. Manning
