Daniel R Levitt

Mark Armour and I have a guest post at John Thorn's MLB blog this morning. This is a short essay on the history of Baseball Operations, riffing off Moneyball, which serves sort of as an introduction to our new book. http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2015/03/09/baseball-ops-welcome-to-the-evolution/

Given the disparity among the resources and opportunities available to the various front offices, is there a way to objectively evaluate some of the more important facets of their performance beyond wins and losses? In fact, there are some aspects of the general manager’s role that can be quantified. Using the Retrosheet transactions database I evaluated all the moves made by the Twins after Ryan's hiring in September 1994 through the end of the 2007 season. Obviously, using this type of analysis to assess Ryan assigns the ultimate responsibility for all transactions--rightly or wrongly--to the general managerI originally wrote the following analysis of Terry Ryan as GM of the Minnesota Twins for The National Pastime, 2012: Short but Wondrous Summers: Baseball in the North Star State. I was the editor of the publication—one I heartily recommend by the way for those interested in the history of baseball in Minnesota--and pulled the essay just prior to publication when the publisher informed me that we had gone over our allotted page count. It is great to have this outlet to finally run the article. Due to its length and a natural break point about half way through, I am breaking it into two halves. In this short investigation I examine the value of players lost via free agency, outright release, the expansion draft, waivers and trades, and players acquired via amateur free agency (i.e. players not eligible for the draft), free agency, waivers and trades. Unfortunately this is not quite as straightforward as it might seem: for example, players who become free agents and are subsequently re-signed; in the database these players are shown as both lost via free agency and gained through free agency. The net effect is zero, but it increases the total volume of talent coming and going. Another example is players who come and go before they become established major leaguers. As an illustration of this issue, Casey Blake was claimed on waivers, lost on waivers, reclaimed on waivers, and subsequently released before he achieved any significant major league playing time. While it makes sense to account for them this way--each transaction needs to be evaluated on its own merits and the Twins free agents were certainly available to any team--these multiple moves can make the talent velocity appear greater than it might otherwise be. For each player involved in a transaction, I calculated the WAR he would earn over the balance of his career. For players still active, WAR is calculated through the 2008 season, the last season for which I have been able to generate the data set (obviously many of these players will significantly increase their career totals). [i would like to update this in the future] So, what does Ryan's scorecard look like? The table below summarizes the cumulative WAR surrendered and gained in all the Twins transactions from the fall of 1994 through his retirement in 2007. WAR From Twins Transactions Under Ryan’s Tenure Transaction Type From Min To Min Players Becoming Free Agents 42 Players Released 54 Players Lost in Expansion Draft 9 Amateur Free Agent Signing 10 Free Agent Signing 80 Waivers 36 Trades 102 164 Total 218 290 Despite working under relatively tight financial constraints for most of his tenure, Ryan lost surprisingly little talent to free agency. Only Kenny Rogers, already 38 years old when he left after one season with the Twins, produced more than five wins above replacement after leaving the Twins as a free agent. Surprisingly, Ryan's two most significant personnel blunders came from releasing two players with significant major league ability, and both came after the 2002 season. In October he released Casey Blake, who would go on to become a valuable contributor with the Indians. More significantly, in December Ryan compounded his error by releasing David Ortiz, who became a perennial MVP contender. Both could have played important roles on the competitive Twins teams from 2003 through 2006. In addition, the loss of Damian Miller to the Diamondbacks in the expansion draft proved surprisingly costly. Miller went on to several seasons as a quality major league catcher. Given his financial constraints, it is not surprising that Ryan never signed any high-priced free agents. But he often tried to augment his team with bargain priced players with some upside. As mentioned above, Ryan had some success in the mid-1990s. Later he received a quality season from Kenny Rogers before losing him. Ryan also landed several useful role players, such as Mike Redmond, at a reasonable price. Some of his most notable free agent moves involved re-signing his own veterans, such as Radke and Shannon Stewart, on a short-term basis. For most of Ryan’s tenure, the Twins did not develop many players from Latin America. In the mid-1990s the Twins landed two players who would become useful major leaguers--Luis Rivas and Juan Rincon--but added none of consequence over the next decade. Ryan's staff did smartly pluck Bobby Kielty from the U.S. amateur ranks when he was available outside of the draft. Ryan may have distinguished himself most clearly in his ability to make quality trades. His worst trade, in terms of value differential, was the swap of Todd Walker to Colorado for little in return. As an extenuating circumstance with this trade, however, the Twins also received cash. Ryan’s regime can be credited with several outstanding deals. Most have been mentioned above: the trades of A.J. Pierzynski and Chuck Knoblauch each added two valuable players. Trading Dave Hollins for David Ortiz was also a great move, unfortunately later vitiated by the latter's release. To get a better sense of the Twins drafting success under Ryan, I calculated the total career WAR from all players picked in each year’s draft from 1987, when Ryan first joined the Twins as scouting director, through 2001, when the Twins selected Joe Mauer with the first overall pick. Draft classes more recent than 2001 have not had a chance to mature sufficiently through 2008 for a valid evaluation. One needs to be cautious, however, when evaluating drafts. How many early picks a team has, how high in the first round they pick and how much money the team is willing to spend on signing bonuses all affect a team’s draft success without reflecting on the acumen of the team’s front office. Twins WAR from the Draft (1987 - 1994) 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Twins 8.1 -2.3 94.6 37.5 62.9 -0.1 18.4 45.0 Lg Avg 29.5 27.0 30.8 22.8 23.8 16.5 17.7 12.5 Diff -21.4 -29.3 63.8 14.7 39.1 -16.6 0.7 32.5 Twins WAR from the Draft (1995-2001) 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Twins 15.3 8.2 12.7 2.5 12.2 -1.3 26.8 Lg Avg 17.7 14.9 11.8 15.0 14.5 9.6 8.2 Diff -2.4 -6.7 0.9 -12.5 -2.3 -10.9 18.6 Caveats aside, Ryan’s record with the draft was mixed. On the positive side, while scouting director Ryan oversaw two stellar draft classes: in 1989 he landed Chuck Knoblauch, Scott Erickson, and Denny Neagle; two years later Ryan brought in Brad Radke and Matt Lawton. During his time as general manager the Twins selected several players that went on to become stars. Mauer, Morneau, and Cuddyer, all drafted in the first three rounds between 1997 and 2001, anchored the Twin’s teams of the mid-2000s. Ryan and his staff also generally recognized their better players and studiously avoided including those who would have a solid major league future in trades. On the other hand, the Twins had a top-6 or higher overall pick in 1998, 1999 and 2000 and came away with little to show for it. But if Terry Ryan and his staff had at least a couple of years of professional baseball with which to evaluate a player, they were formidable. In trades, particularly after his first year on the job, the prospects Ryan acquired developed into capable major leaguers more often than could be reasonably expected. His veteran free agent signings also generally turned out well, and he rarely lost key players to free agency. Two of his more significant misses had extenuating circumstances: the trade of Todd Walker netted the team cash, and David Ortiz was arbitration eligible, 27 years old and had yet to play a full major league season, mainly due to injuries. A general manager's job, of course, entails more than talent acquisition, and sometimes a team is in a position where the key decisions involve sorting out the talent (including possibly surrendering more talent than one receives) to alleviate an abundance at one position and solve a dearth at another. But the luxury of rearranging one's talent first requires building a solid talent base. Ryan consistently surrendered less talent than he received as he built a well-balanced team that captured four division championships between 2002 and 2006. After four seasons of retirement, Ryan returned as general manager, hired to once again retool the Twins after a 99-loss season in 2011. “I don’t know if it will be for one year or 10 years,” Ryan said. “I’m going to see how it goes and see exactly the direction of success and workload and all the things that about 4 1/2 years ago we talked about over at the Dome.” Ryan also identified some of the issues the organization needed to address, including a large number of missed games due to injuries, placing the onus to fix the problems squarely on his shoulders. “Players can only take advice. Players take the advice you give them,” Ryan said. “I would never put it on the players. It’s our responsibility to take control of that and we will.” To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store. Click here to view the article

I originally wrote the following analysis of Terry Ryan as GM of the Minnesota Twins for The National Pastime, 2012: Short but Wondrous Summers: Baseball in the North Star State. I was the editor of the publication—one I heartily recommend by the way for those interested in the history of baseball in Minnesota--and pulled the essay just prior to publication when the publisher informed me that we had gone over our allotted page count. It is great to have this outlet to finally run the article. Due to its length and a natural break point about half way through, I am breaking it into two halves. Given this disparity among the resources and opportunities available to the various front offices, is there a way to objectively evaluate some of the more important facets of their performance beyond wins and losses? In fact, there are some aspects of the general manager’s role that can be quantified. Using the Retrosheet transactions database I evaluated all the moves made by the Twins after Ryan's hiring in September 1994 through the end of the 2007 season. Obviously, using this type of analysis to assess Ryan assigns the ultimate responsibility for all transactions--rightly or wrongly--to the general manager. In this short investigation I examine the value of players lost via free agency, outright release, the expansion draft, waivers and trades, and players acquired via amateur free agency (i.e. players not eligible for the draft), free agency, waivers and trades. Unfortunately this is not quite as straightforward as it might seem: for example, players who become free agents and are subsequently re-signed; in the database these players are shown as both lost via free agency and gained through free agency. The net effect is zero, but it increases the total volume of talent coming and going. Another example is players who come and go before they become established major leaguers. As an illustration of this issue, Casey Blake was claimed on waivers, lost on waivers, reclaimed on waivers, and subsequently released before he achieved any significant major league playing time. While it makes sense to account for them this way--each transaction needs to be evaluated on its own merits and the Twins free agents were certainly available to any team--these multiple moves can make the talent velocity appear greater than it might otherwise be. For each player involved in a transaction, I calculated the WAR he would earn over the balance of his career. For players still active, WAR is calculated through the 2008 season, the last season for which I have been able to generate the data set (obviously many of these players will significantly increase their career totals). [i would like to update this in the future] So, what does Ryan's scorecard look like? The table below summarizes the cumulative WAR surrendered and gained in all the Twins transactions from the fall of 1994 through his retirement in 2007. WAR From Twins Transactions Under Ryan’s Tenure [table] Transaction Type From Min To Min Players Becoming Free Agents 42 Players Released 54 Players Lost in Expansion Draft 9 Amateur Free Agent Signing 10 Free Agent Signing 80 Waivers 36 Trades 102 164 Total 218 290 [/table] Despite working under relatively tight financial constraints for most of his tenure, Ryan lost surprisingly little talent to free agency. Only Kenny Rogers, already 38 years old when he left after one season with the Twins, produced more than five wins above replacement after leaving the Twins as a free agent. Surprisingly, Ryan's two most significant personnel blunders came from releasing two players with significant major league ability, and both came after the 2002 season. In October he released Casey Blake, who would go on to become a valuable contributor with the Indians. More significantly, in December Ryan compounded his error by releasing David Ortiz, who became a perennial MVP contender. Both could have played important roles on the competitive Twins teams from 2003 through 2006. In addition, the loss of Damian Miller to the Diamondbacks in the expansion draft proved surprisingly costly. Miller went on to several seasons as a quality major league catcher. Given his financial constraints, it is not surprising that Ryan never signed any high-priced free agents. But he often tried to augment his team with bargain priced players with some upside. As mentioned above, Ryan had some success in the mid-1990s. Later he received a quality season from Kenny Rogers before losing him. Ryan also landed several useful role players, such as Mike Redmond, at a reasonable price. Some of his most notable free agent moves involved re-signing his own veterans, such as Radke and Shannon Stewart, on a short-term basis. For most of Ryan’s tenure, the Twins did not develop many players from Latin America. In the mid-1990s the Twins landed two players who would become useful major leaguers--Luis Rivas and Juan Rincon--but added none of consequence over the next decade. Ryan's staff did smartly pluck Bobby Kielty from the U.S. amateur ranks when he was available outside of the draft. Ryan may have distinguished himself most clearly in his ability to make quality trades. His worst trade, in terms of value differential, was the swap of Todd Walker to Colorado for little in return. As an extenuating circumstance with this trade, however, the Twins also received cash. Ryan’s regime can be credited with several outstanding deals. Most have been mentioned above: the trades of A.J. Pierzynski and Chuck Knoblauch each added two valuable players. Trading Dave Hollins for David Ortiz was also a great move, unfortunately later vitiated by the latter's release. To get a better sense of the Twins drafting success under Ryan, I calculated the total career WAR from all players picked in each year’s draft from 1987, when Ryan first joined the Twins as scouting director, through 2001, when the Twins selected Joe Mauer with the first overall pick. Draft classes more recent than 2001 have not had a chance to mature sufficiently through 2008 for a valid evaluation. One needs to be cautious, however, when evaluating drafts. How many early picks a team has, how high in the first round they pick and how much money the team is willing to spend on signing bonuses all affect a team’s draft success without reflecting on the acumen of the team’s front office. Twins WAR from the Draft (1987 - 1994) [table] 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Twins 8.1 -2.3 94.6 37.5 62.9 -0.1 18.4 45.0 Lg Avg 29.5 27.0 30.8 22.8 23.8 16.5 17.7 12.5 Diff -21.4 -29.3 63.8 14.7 39.1 -16.6 0.7 32.5 [/table] Twins WAR from the Draft (1995-2001) [table] 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Twins 15.3 8.2 12.7 2.5 12.2 -1.3 26.8 Lg Avg 17.7 14.9 11.8 15.0 14.5 9.6 8.2 Diff -2.4 -6.7 0.9 -12.5 -2.3 -10.9 18.6 [/table] Caveats aside, Ryan’s record with the draft was mixed. On the positive side, while scouting director Ryan oversaw two stellar draft classes: in 1989 he landed Chuck Knoblauch, Scott Erickson, and Denny Neagle; two years later Ryan brought in Brad Radke and Matt Lawton. During his time as general manager the Twins selected several players that went on to become stars. Mauer, Morneau, and Cuddyer, all drafted in the first three rounds between 1997 and 2001, anchored the Twin’s teams of the mid-2000s. Ryan and his staff also generally recognized their better players and studiously avoided including those who would have a solid major league future in trades. On the other hand, the Twins had a top-6 or higher overall pick in 1998, 1999 and 2000 and came away with little to show for it. But if Terry Ryan and his staff had at least a couple of years of professional baseball with which to evaluate a player, they were formidable. In trades, particularly after his first year on the job, the prospects Ryan acquired developed into capable major leaguers more often than could be reasonably expected. His veteran free agent signings also generally turned out well, and he rarely lost key players to free agency. Two of his more significant misses had extenuating circumstances: the trade of Todd Walker netted the team cash, and David Ortiz was arbitration eligible, 27 years old and had yet to play a full major league season, mainly due to injuries. A general manager's job, of course, entails more than talent acquisition, and sometimes a team is in a position where the key decisions involve sorting out the talent (including possibly surrendering more talent than one receives) to alleviate an abundance at one position and solve a dearth at another. But the luxury of rearranging one's talent first requires building a solid talent base. Ryan consistently surrendered less talent than he received as he built a well-balanced team that captured four division championships between 2002 and 2006. After four seasons of retirement, Ryan returned as general manager, hired to once again retool the Twins after a 99-loss season in 2011. “I don’t know if it will be for one year or 10 years,” Ryan said. “I’m going to see how it goes and see exactly the direction of success and workload and all the things that about 4 1/2 years ago we talked about over at the Dome.” Ryan also identified some of the issues the organization needed to address, including a large number of missed games due to injuries, placing the onus to fix the problems squarely on his shoulders. “Players can only take advice. Players take the advice you give them,” Ryan said. “I would never put it on the players. It’s our responsibility to take control of that and we will.” To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store.

In September 1994, Terry Ryan took the helm of one of baseball’s more celebrated front offices. The Minnesota Twins had recently won two World Series, in 1987 and 1991, and much of the credit for assembling those teams was assigned to the scouting and player development personnel. Ryan had joined the Twins in January, 1986 as scouting director and worked his way up to being general manager Andy MacPhail’s key assistant. After MacPhail left to assume the presidency of the Chicago Cubs, naming Ryan the Twins’ new general manager seemed the natural continuation move.Nevertheless, Ryan’s new position was far from ideal. On one side he had Tom Kelly, a successful manager who had a definitive idea of what he liked in a ballclub, coming off of the two World Series victories, and wielding a lot of influence within the organization. On the other he had owner Carl Pohlad, who, while committed to winning, was also very concerned with the bottom line and beginning to focus much of his energy on lobbying for a new stadium in Minneapolis. The team itself had finished the recent strike-shortened season 53-60, with the league’s highest ERA and the top two batting stars from the World Series--Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek--well past their prime. Moreover, the farm system, which had supplied most of the talent for the championship runs, was slipping; Baseball America ranked the Twins farm system 16th of the 28 organizations. I originally wrote the following analysis of Terry Ryan as GM of the Minnesota Twins for The National Pastime, 2012: Short but Wondrous Summers: Baseball in the North Star State. I was the editor of the publication—one I heartily recommend by the way for those interested in the history of baseball in Minnesota--and pulled the essay just prior to publication when the publisher informed me that we had gone over our allotted page count. It is great to have this outlet to finally run the article. Due to its length and a natural break point about half way through, I am breaking it into two halves. With the baseball world shut down because of the ongoing strike, Ryan could not make any major league player moves during his first offseason as general manager. Once the strike was settled, Ryan’s hand was soon forced by the team’s terrible start to the 1995 season; the club stood at 17-42 on June 30. In July, Ryan swapped four of his veteran pitchers--Scott Erickson, Kevin Tapani, Mark Guthrie, and Rick Aguilera--for eight prospects. Ryan’s first significant foray into the trade market did not bode well for the future, although in fairness, the pitchers Ryan traded were not stars (except for Aguilera, whose contract was expiring at the end of the season). Of the prospects, only one, Frank Rodriguez, was ranked in Baseball America’s annual listing of the top 100, and only one, Ron Coomer, already 28 years old, went on to become a major league regular. Ryan had better luck that offseason with a batch of free agent signings. In an effort to bolster his struggling club Ryan signed a number of veteran free agents of mixed quality: Paul Molitor, Dave Hollins, Roberto Kelly, Greg Myers, and Rick Aguilera, brought back after the midseason trade. Amazingly, all five of these moves worked out and the Twins improved their winning percentage by nearly 100 points over 1995. One way to quantitatively evaluate a general managers moves is by using the Wins Above Replacement metric (WAR), a sabermetric measure denominated in wins, which is now gaining more mainstream recognition. By combining batting, base running, fielding and pitching statistics, WAR estimates how many wins a player produced for his team above a “replacement player,” generally classified as the best player a team could land on short notice without surrendering any talent in return, such as a veteran triple-A player with some major league experience. As a benchmark, 8 WAR represents an MVP caliber season, while 5 WAR would typically qualify as an All-Star season. The five veteran free agents all turned in positive WAR seasons in 1996, led by Molitor at 3.4 and Hollins at 2.5. While the team may have been playing better in 1996, the front office suffered a humiliation in the annual player draft. Travis Lee, selected second overall, claimed he should be a free agent because the club had not followed a little-known rule and offered him a contract within 15 days of the draft. The Twins believed they were following Lee's request not to negotiate until after the Olympics. With a hearing scheduled for September 24 to determine Lee’s status, Lee and the Twins tried to negotiate an agreement. Lee was reportedly willing to accept a $2.1 million signing bonus ($100,000 more than first overall pick Kris Benson), but the Twins elected to take their chances on the hearing. In the event, Lee (along with three other players who used the same tactic) was declared a free agent and signed with Arizona for an astounding total package of $10 million. Not surprisingly, a team built around mediocre veteran free agents and a 39-year-old Molitor did not remain competitive. Over the next four years, from 1997 to 2000, the Twins could not win more than 70 games in a season. A large part of the team’s struggles can also be traced to an unforeseen collective disappointment from the club’s top prospects. Had some of them performed closer to expectations, Ryan’s strategy of filling in with veteran free agents may have led to a club on the fringes of contention. From 1992 to 1996 the Twins had 14 different players who were ranked among Baseball America’s top 100 prospects. From the five position players, two of whom were ranked in the top 20 at one point, the team received just five seasons of at least 400 plate appearances: two from Todd Walker and three from Rich Becker. The return from the pitchers was even more dismal. The nine pitchers combined to deliver only four seasons with more than 150 innings pitched. Even this overstates the case; only one of these four seasons was accompanied by an ERA below 5.00. It remains unknowable whether these players were simply overrated or a flaw existed in the Twins player development system but in any case a large group of highly touted prospects failed to live up to expectations. Ryan had some success with unheralded prospect Marty Cordova. Already 25 years old when he debuted as the regular left fielder in 1995, Cordova went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award. He followed up with a stellar 1996, but then struggled through two seasons with an OPS below .750. In 1996, Ryan also traded an aging Dave Hollins to the Mariners for a young David Ortiz, though he didn’t exceed 300 at-bats with the Twins until 2000. Despite the Twins’ struggles at the major league level and a change of focus by the top executives, Ryan remained committed to building his ballclub. After the 1997 season Ryan traded star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch to the Yankees for several players, most notably lefthander Eric Milton and shortstop Cristian Guzman, both of whom went on to become valuable major league regulars. The two youngsters added significantly more Wins Above Replacement than Ryan surrendered. Later in this article I will summarize the team's moves under Ryan using WAR. As the decade rolled on, Ryan continued to pick up useful ballplayers in trades--usually surrendering less than he received--and minor free agent deals. Although not stars, these role players included outfielders Dustan Mohr and Bobby Kielty, and pitchers Kyle Lohse and Joe Mays. Ryan also had a knack for knowing which of his prospects to hang on to. Of course, some of this was by necessity--by 2000 Ryan was operating with baseball’s lowest payroll, and the Twins were being mentioned as a contraction target. “Scouting and development have to provide us with a constant flow of talent, or we’re in big trouble,” Ryan acknowledged. “We know who we are. We try to be fair, try to be honest, try to be sincere. We have a passion from the front office down to the players. One thing we are is accountable. We don’t try to be something we’re not.” Although the Twins consistently ranked no higher than the middle of the pack in Baseball America’s minor league organization rankings during the mid to late 1990s, the Twins had some talent in the system and much of it had graduated to the majors by 2001. Along with veteran pitcher Brad Radke, key regulars included catcher A.J. Pierzynski, first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, second baseman Luis Rivas, third baseman Corey Koskie, and outfielders Matt Lawton, Torii Hunter, and Jacque Jones. Ryan’s trade acquisitions filled in nicely around these homegrown products, and the Twins finished the 2001 season in second place at 85-77. Nevertheless, with no new stadium on the horizon, major league baseball (with the compliance of the Twins ownership) targeted the Twins for contraction. Ryan, though, stayed on, hoping the team would survive, and knowing that he had put together a pretty good team. “That’s what makes this such a tough thing to accept,” Ryan lamented. “We think that with a little tinkering with our roster in 2002, we’d be right there. We’ve got a lot of things in place. If we get through this thing, we feel we have a chance to be pretty good.” He reportedly turned down an opportunity to take over the Toronto Blue Jays for a bump in salary. Following his lead, the rest of the key front office employees remained as well. Ryan’s determination was rewarded when the team escaped elimination, partially due to a local court ruling. In another significant decision that offseason, Ryan named coach Ron Gardenhire as the replacement for longtime manager Tom Kelly, who had retired. Otherwise Ryan did very little tinkering for 2002, although the pitching staff was now led by veteran Rick Reed. Trading from a relative surplus of outfielders, Ryan had acquired Reed during the previous season for 29-year-old outfielder Matt Lawton, a useful player but with little remaining upside. In 2002 the 37-year-old Reed turned his last good season with a WAR of 2.6. Gardenhire managed this team superbly, most notably in crafting a strong bullpen anchored by veteran Twins draftee Eddie Guardado, and led the squad to its first division championship in eleven years. The team beat Oakland in the ALDS before falling to Anaheim four games to one in the ALCS. The Twins could easily have fallen from their perch. In 2002 the Twins ranked 27th in payroll, offering little flexibility to fill in for injuries, and several players seemed to be plateauing or regressing. But Ryan was in the midst of a great run. The farm system had been rebuilt so that it now contained two future MVPs (Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer--the first overall pick in 2001) and a star outfielder in Michael Cuddyer. Moreover, Ryan had bolstered his pitching staff by bringing in future Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana in a one-sided swap of Rule 5 draft picks in 1999. After repeating as division champion in 2003 Ryan made one his best moves, swapping catcher A.J. Pierzynski to San Francisco for several players, most notably closer Joe Nathan and starter Francisco Liriano. Behind the influx of talent, Minnesota won a third consecutive division championship in 2004 and another in 2006. After slipping to third in 2007, though, Ryan surprised many observers by announcing it was time to move on. “This is a good thing for me,” Ryan said of his retirement. “My health’s intact. My marriage is intact. That’s a difficult thing to do in baseball.” He also left a pretty solid nucleus for successor Billy Smith, another well-respected, long time Twins front office employee, though relatively unknown and heralded more for his administrative acumen than his talent evaluation skills. The players certainly recognized Ryan’s accomplishments. “I’ve always been on his side,” commented outfielder Torii Hunter. “For what he has and the limitations he has with payroll, he’s done a great job. You give this guy a Yankee payroll, and I promise you he will do 10 times better than any other GM out there.” To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store. Click here to view the article

I originally wrote the following analysis of Terry Ryan as GM of the Minnesota Twins for The National Pastime, 2012: Short but Wondrous Summers: Baseball in the North Star State. I was the editor of the publication—one I heartily recommend by the way for those interested in the history of baseball in Minnesota--and pulled the essay just prior to publication when the publisher informed me that we had gone over our allotted page count. It is great to have this outlet to finally run the article. Due to its length and a natural break point about half way through, I am breaking it into two halves. In September 1994, Terry Ryan took the helm of one of baseball’s more celebrated front offices. The Minnesota Twins had recently won two World Series, in 1987 and 1991, and much of the credit for assembling those teams was assigned to the scouting and player development personnel. Ryan had joined the Twins in January 1986 as scouting director and worked his way up to being general manager Andy MacPhail’s key assistant. After MacPhail left to assume the presidency of the Chicago Cubs, naming Ryan the Twins’ new general manager seemed the natural continuation move. Nevertheless, Ryan’s new position was far from ideal. On one side he had Tom Kelly, a successful manager who had a definitive idea of what he liked in a ballclub, coming off of the two World Series victories, and wielding a lot of influence within the organization. On the other he had owner Carl Pohlad, who, while committed to winning, was also very concerned with the bottom line and beginning to focus much of his energy on lobbying for a new stadium in Minneapolis. The team itself had finished the recent strike-shortened season 53-60, with the league’s highest ERA and the top two batting stars from the World Series--Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek--well past their prime. Moreover, the farm system, which had supplied most of the talent for the championship runs, was slipping; Baseball America ranked the Twins farm system 16th of the 28 organizations. With the baseball world shut down because of the ongoing strike, Ryan could not make any major league player moves during his first offseason as general manager. Once the strike was settled, Ryan’s hand was soon forced by the team’s terrible start to the 1995 season; the club stood at 17-42 on June 30. In July, Ryan swapped four of his veteran pitchers--Scott Erickson, Kevin Tapani, Mark Guthrie, and Rick Aguilera--for eight prospects. Unfortunately, Ryan’s first significant foray into the trade market did not bode well for the future, although in fairness, the pitchers Ryan traded were not stars (except for Aguilera, whose contract was expiring at the end of the season). Of the prospects, only one, Frank Rodriguez, was ranked in Baseball America’s annual listing of the top 100, and only one, Ron Coomer, already 28 years old, went on to become a major league regular. Ryan had better luck that offseason with a batch of free agent signings. In an effort to bolster his struggling club Ryan signed a number of veteran free agents of mixed quality: Paul Molitor, Dave Hollins, Roberto Kelly, Greg Myers, and Rick Aguilera, brought back after the midseason trade. Amazingly, all five of these moves worked out and the Twins improved their winning percentage by nearly 100 points over 1995. One way to quantitatively evaluate a general managers moves is by using the Wins Above Replacement metric (WAR), a sabermetric measure denominated in wins now gaining more mainstream recognition. By combining batting, base running, fielding and pitching statistics, WAR estimates how many wins a player produced for his team above a “replacement player,” generally classified as the best player a team could land on short notice without surrendering any talent in return, such as a veteran triple-A player with some major league experience. As a benchmark, 8 WAR represents an MVP caliber season, while 5 WAR would typically qualify as an All-Star season. The five veteran free agents all turned in positive WAR seasons in 1996 led by Molitor at 3.4 and Hollins at 2.5. While the team may have been playing better in 1996, the front office suffered a humiliation in the annual player draft. Travis Lee, selected second overall, claimed he should be a free agent because the club had not followed a little-known rule and offered him a contract within 15 days of the draft. The Twins believed they were following Lee's request not to negotiate until after the Olympics. With a hearing scheduled for September 24 to determine Lee’s status, Lee and the Twins tried to negotiate an agreement. Lee was reportedly willing to accept a $2.1 million signing bonus ($100,000 more than first overall pick Kris Benson), but the Twins elected to take their chances on the hearing. In the event, Lee (along with three other players who used the same tactic) was declared a free agent and signed with Arizona for an astounding total package of $10 million. Not surprisingly, a team built around mediocre veteran free agents and a 39-year-old Molitor did not remain competitive. Over the next four years, from 1997 to 2000, the Twins could not win more than 70 games in a season. A large part of the team’s struggles can also be traced to an unforeseen collective disappointment from the club’s top prospects. Had some of them performed closer to expectations, Ryan’s strategy of filling in with veteran free agents may have led to a club on the fringes of contention. From 1992 to 1996 the Twins had 14 different players that were ranked among Baseball America’s top 100 prospects. From the five position players, two of whom were ranked in the top 20 at one point, the team received just five seasons of at least 400 plate appearances: two from Todd Walker and three from Rich Becker. The return from the pitchers was even more dismal. The nine pitchers combined to deliver only four seasons with more than 150 innings pitched. Even this overstates the case; only one of these four seasons was accompanied by an ERA below 5.00. It remains unknowable whether these players were simply overrated or a flaw existed in the Twins player development system, but in any case, a large group of highly touted prospects failed to live up to expectations. Ryan had some success with unheralded prospect Marty Cordova. Already 25 years old when he debuted as the regular left fielder in 1995, Cordova went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award. He followed up with a stellar 1996, but then struggled through two seasons with an OPS below .750. In 1996, Ryan also traded an aging Dave Hollins to the Mariners for a young David Ortiz, though he didn’t exceed 300 at-bats with the Twins until 2000. Despite the Twins’ struggles at the major league level and a change of focus by the top executives, Ryan remained committed to building his ballclub. After the 1997 season Ryan traded star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch to the Yankees for several players, most notably lefthander Eric Milton and shortstop Cristian Guzman, both of whom went on to become valuable major league regulars. The two youngsters added significantly more Wins Above Replacement than Ryan surrendered. Later in this article I will summarize the team's moves under Ryan using WAR. As the decade rolled on, Ryan continued to pick up useful ballplayers in trades--usually surrendering less than he received--and minor free agent deals. Although not stars, these role players included outfielders Dustan Mohr and Bobby Kielty, and pitchers Kyle Lohse and Joe Mays. Ryan also had a knack for knowing which of his prospects to hang onto. Of course, some of this was by necessity--by 2000 Ryan was operating with baseball’s lowest payroll, and the Twins were being mentioned as a contraction target. “Scouting and development have to provide us with a constant flow of talent, or we’re in big trouble,” Ryan acknowledged. “We know who we are. We try to be fair, try to be honest, try to be sincere. We have a passion from the front office down to the players. One thing we are is accountable. We don’t try to be something we’re not.” Although the Twins consistently ranked no higher than the middle of the pack in Baseball America’s minor league organization rankings during the mid to late 1990s, the Twins had some talent in the system and much of it had graduated to the majors by 2001. Along with veteran pitcher Brad Radke, key regulars included catcher A.J. Pierzynski, first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, second baseman Luis Rivas, third baseman Corey Koskie, and outfielders Matt Lawton, Torii Hunter, and Jacque Jones. Ryan’s trade acquisitions filled in nicely around these home grown products, and the Twins finished the 2001 season in second place at 85-77. Nevertheless, with no new stadium on the horizon, major league baseball (with the compliance of the Twins ownership) targeted the Twins for contraction. Ryan, though, stayed on, hoping the team would survive, and knowing that he had put together a pretty good team. “That’s what makes this such a tough thing to accept,” Ryan lamented. “We think that with a little tinkering with our roster in 2002, we’d be right there. We’ve got a lot of things in place. If we get through this thing, we feel we have a chance to be pretty good.” He reportedly turned down an opportunity to take over the Toronto Blue Jays for a bump in salary; following his lead, the rest of the key front office employees remained as well. Ryan’s determination was rewarded when the team escaped elimination, partially due to a local court ruling. In another significant decision that offseason, Ryan named coach Ron Gardenhire as the replacement for longtime manager Tom Kelly, who had retired. Otherwise Ryan did very little tinkering for 2002, although the pitching staff was now led by veteran Rick Reed. Trading from a relative surplus of outfielders, Ryan had acquired Reed during the previous season for 29-year-old outfielder Matt Lawton, a useful player but with little remaining upside. In 2002 the 37-year-old Reed turned his last good season with a WAR of 2.6. Gardenhire managed this team superbly, most notably in crafting a strong bullpen anchored by veteran Twins draftee Eddie Guardado, and led the squad to its first division championship in eleven years. The team beat Oakland in the ALDS before falling to Anaheim four games to one in the ALCS. The Twins could easily have fallen from their perch. In 2002 the Twins ranked 27th in payroll, offering little flexibility to fill in for injuries, and several players seemed to be plateauing or regressing. But Ryan was in the midst of a great run. The farm system had been rebuilt so that it now contained two future MVPs (Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer--the first overall pick in 2001) and a star outfielder in Michael Cuddyer. Moreover, Ryan had bolstered his pitching staff by bringing in future Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana in a one-sided swap of Rule 5 draft picks in 1999. After repeating as division champion in 2003 Ryan made one his best moves, swapping catcher A.J. Pierzynski to San Francisco for several players, most notably closer Joe Nathan and starter Francisco Liriano. Behind the new influx of talent, Minnesota won a third consecutive division championship in 2004 and another in 2006. After slipping to third in 2007, though, Ryan surprised many observers by announcing it was time to move on. “This is a good thing for me,” Ryan said of his retirement. “My health’s intact. My marriage is intact. That’s a difficult thing to do in baseball.” He also left a pretty solid nucleus for successor Billy Smith, another well-respected long time Twins front office employee, though relatively unknown and heralded more for his administrative acumen than his talent evaluation skills. The players certainly recognized Ryan’s accomplishments. “I’ve always been on his side,” commented outfielder Torii Hunter. “For what he has and the limitations he has with payroll, he’s done a great job. You give this guy a Yankee payroll, and I promise you he will do 10 times better than any other GM out there.” To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store.

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Had Branch Rickey retired from baseball in 1942, before he ran the Dodgers, before he signed Jackie Robinson, his record as a general manager would still be enough to warrant consideration as the greatest GM in the game’s history. By that time he had already built one of history’s best organizations, winning six pennants and four World Series while completely revising baseball player development and instruction and inventing the farm system model that is still in place nine decades later. When you add in his Brooklyn years, both the building of one of baseball’s best and most iconic teams and his historic and courageous act to integrate the game, it is a relatively easy call. Summarizing Branch Rickey as a general manager is like summarizing Isaac Newton as scientist. Where do you begin? By the age of thirty, Rickey had retired from his brief playing career and had received a law degree from the University of Michigan. The practice of law did not take, and by 1913 he was back in baseball, where he remained for the next five decades. He managed the Browns for two years, then was “kicked upstairs” when a new ownership group came on, becoming something like a general manager in 1916. A year later he moved cross-town, becoming president of the Cardinals and de facto GM, though the position did not yet formally exist. In 1919 he appointed himself the field manager and filled both jobs for six years. Most of history’s best GMs have been blessed with excellent ownership that has provided the necessary resources with limited interference. Sam Breadon took control of the Cardinals in 1920, and proved to be the best thing that ever happened to Rickey. After a few years of non-contention, in 1925 Breadon relieved Rickey of his uniform and told him to concentrate on the front office part of his job, player development and scouting. Rickey was not happy, but history proved it to be a brilliant decision. Branch Rickey first envisioned an organized “farm system” as a solution to the high cost of buying minor league players. A team could instead sign amateur players (for much less money) and then assume the cost of developing the players on teams under its control. At first Rickey’s efforts were (at least) bending the rules, which limited the number of players a major league team could control in the minors. Rickey instead had handshake agreements with many minor league teams that occasionally got the baseball commissioner to take notice. In the early 1930s, after continual lobbying from Breadon and Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert, baseball significantly relaxed their rules on teams’ owning or controlling farm teams, and the Cardinals and Yankees soon had huge farm systems. And, not coincidentally, the two best teams in baseball. Soon after Rickey created his system, he realized that he needed a cohesive philosophy of scouting, instruction, and coaching. The Cardinals were not signing ready-made players; they were signing boys who needed to be taught how to play. Every part of the game—bunting, sliding, run-down plays, and so on—Rickey wanted to be taught consistently throughout the organization. And Rickey wanted the scouting and player-development parts of the system to work hand in hand. As Kevin Kerrane wrote in his classic book on scouting, “Rickey applied scouting insights to teaching, and vice versa.” Rickey became a legendary talent evaluator, able to make decisions quickly on players. Among other things, he valued speed and youth. No sentimentalist, he tried to trade players before they started to decline rather than after. With his huge farm system, he believed he could fill the holes created when he traded his veterans away. From 1926 to 1946 the Cardinals won nine pennants and six World Series. Rickey did not have complete control of the club — Breadon hired and fired the managers, for example — and the relationship between the two men had become a bit strained by the early 1940s. When the Dodgers offered an ownership stake and more authority in October 1942, Rickey moved to Brooklyn. The Dodger team Rickey inherited had just won 104 games. But make no mistake, this was not Rickey’s sort of team. Previous executive Larry MacPhail ran his clubs like a man in a hurry, like he needed to win today because he might not be around tomorrow. As good as the 1942 Dodgers were, only a few good players—notably Pee Wee Reese and Pete Reiser—were in their twenties. But MacPhail had overseen such a dramatic improvement in the Dodgers’ financial position that Rickey had the resources to build the organization that he wanted. He wasted no time getting to work. Rickey could not do much with the war going on — all his players were in the service — but he worked on building his farm system to be ready. In 1943 alone the Dodgers signed Rex Barney, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and Ralph Branca. Over the next couple of years Brooklyn added Carl Erskine and Clem Labine, two other mainstays of Dodger teams to come. The most important event of Rickey’s career, of course, was the signing of Jackie Robinson in October 1945, the first step on the road to ending the Major Leagues’ decades-long prohibition on dark-skinned players. Rickey has been justifiably praised for this courageous and ethical act and his related decisions to sign other black players in the coming years. But more than that, Rickey dramatically improved his team, and in a short time had dramatically improved the quality of play in the major leagues. When Robinson was signed it effectively opened up a huge new source of talent, the biggest new pool in history. As baseball soon discovered, there were dozens of good players, some of them among the greatest players ever, ready to sign cheaply with the first team that asked them. By the end of the 1940s eleven black players had made their debuts in the Major Leagues, eight of whom ended up playing at least five full Major League seasons. Among them were three Dodgers—Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe—whose extraordinary play helped define an era and one of history’s most beloved teams. The integration of the Dodgers went relatively smoothly, thanks both to the tremendous care taken by Rickey and his staff, and the ability and character of these three players. Rickey traded away several southern players during and after the 1947 season, but most of these deals were classic Rickey moves that helped the ball club. In December he dealt Dixie Walker, one of the team’s best and most popular players, to the Pirates, a deal many have interpreted as an indication that Rickey wanted Walker off the team. In fact, it was a great baseball trade: Rickey acquired infielder Billy Cox and pitcher Preacher Roe, who played huge roles on the coming teams. Eddie Stanky was dealt the following March, allowing Robinson to move to second base and Gil Hodges to play first, another very solid baseball move. After losing a pennant playoff in 1946, the Dodgers won NL pennants in 1947 and 1949 and then lost in 1950 on the season’s final weekend. Unlike the prewar teams, by 1950 the Dodgers had several good players in their twenties and more on the way. In late 1950 Rickey began to sense that his position had weakened with his partners and decided to cash in his stake and take a job running the Pittsburgh Pirates. Walter O’Malley bought Rickey’s share and gained control of the club. The core of talent Rickey left behind won four more pennants and the 1955 World Series. The acolytes he left, including Buzzie Bavasi and Al Campanis, built on Rickey’s foundation to create and maintain baseball’s model organization for another four decades. Rickey was 69 years old and taking over a team that needed a slow, patient overhaul. The Pirates signed a few bonus babies that did not bear fruit, but he slowly began to improve the organization one player at a time. When owner John Galbreath finally let Rickey go, after five years, the team’s assets included youngsters Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski, Dick Groat, Bob Friend and Vernon Law. It would take another five years for the Pirates to win a pennant, but Rickey certainly did his part. Rickey never really stopped working. He played a leading role in trying to form the Continental League, a third major league that did not quite get off the ground. In 1962 the 81-year-old took a job as a senior adviser to Cardinal owner Gussie Busch, which proved awkward for GM Bing Devine and everyone else. Rickey left after the 1964 championship. He died a year later, leaving behind an unmatched resume in the game. As a general manager he dramatically changed how teams find and develop players, and what players are allowed to play the game. His place as the greatest GM in baseball history is secure. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store.

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Pat Gillick served as a general manager for four different teams. At his first stop, in Toronto, he built an expansion team into one of the best organizations in the game, winning 86 or more games for 11 straight seasons, culminating in five division titles and two world championships.In Baltimore, he worked for an impatient owner who wanted his team to compete right away — Gillick delivered two consecutive ALCS appearances, the Orioles only post-seasons between 1983 and 2012. In Seattle, he was tasked with trading one of the game’s best players, and then watching another superstar leave as a free agent a year later. Despite this, his Mariner teams won over 90 games all four of his years at the helm and an all-time record win total in 2001. At his final stop, in Philadelphia, he took over a good team that had not been able to get over the hump and into the playoffs. Gillick made the post-season in his second year and then won the World Series in 2008, the team’s first in 28 years. A few days later, he retired. By succeeding at four distinct challenges without fail and showing a unique ability and keenness for finding talent others might have overlooked, Gillick earned a place among the very best GMs in history. Gillick’s approach was to first make sure he had great scouts and then to widen his talent search to non-traditional avenues. As Gillick put it: “One needs to fish in many waters.” In Toronto Gillick and his longtime friend Epy Guerrero were at the forefront of creating an identifiable presence in the Dominican Republic. He also looked for underappreciated opportunities with multi-sport athletes. His success in the mostly ignored Rule 5 draft of veteran minor leaguers was legendary; no one else even came close to his success and he forced teams to be much smarter about protecting their assets in this draft. Moreover, Gillick used free agency to perfection in Baltimore and Seattle—in both places he quickly reloaded franchises with little talent left in their minor league systems. With the latter organization, he also signed the first hitter from Japan to star in the major leagues, Ichiro Suzuki, along with a first-rate reliever, Kaz Sasaki. Toronto’s head of baseball operations Peter Bavasi brought Gillick—who had been gaining a reputation as a front office savant with the Yankees –over to help build the expansion Blue Jays for their inaugural 1977 season. The next year Bavasi moved up to team president, and Gillick took over as GM. With the Blue Jays he immediately set about building a top-notch scouting staff. Two of his most important hires were Al LaMacchia, a longtime scout for the Phillies and Braves, and Bobby Mattick, who had already signed Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson, Curt Flood, and Gary Carter by the time he joined the Blue Jays. Both became important voices within the organization. He had the Blue Jays join a minority of teams that shunned the new, centralized Major League Scouting Bureau. Gillick was going to assemble his own organization. Along with slowly building up talent throughout the draft, Gillick looked for other avenues to find players. In the fall of 1977 Gillick began to exploit a little-used “river” when he selected first baseman Willie Upshaw, whom he and Guerrero knew from the Yankees organization, in the Rule 5 draft. This draft allows teams to claim veteran minor leaguers not protected on their club’s 40-man roster, but with the qualification that the selecting team had to keep the player on its major league roster for the entire upcoming season. Over the years Gillick mastered the Rule 5 draft to uncover a number of other valuable contributors, including George Bell, Manny Lee, Jim Gott, and Kelly Gruber. Gillick was also willing to take risks with multi-sport athletes, accommodating them in ways other teams might not have. In 1977 Gillick drafted multi-sport prep star Danny Ainge in the fifteenth round. Two years later he drafted prep quarterback and baseball catcher Jay Schroeder in the first round, paying a $100,000 bonus and allowing him to play college football at UCLA. In the end, neither panned out but both testified to Gillick’s never-ending quest for an edge in talent acquisition. Gillick had known Epy Guerrero, destined to become the Dominican Republic’s greatest scout, at least since 1967 when Gillick was a scout for the Astros and the two signed Cesar Cedeno. In 1977 Guerrero created a rudimentary baseball school for youngsters. Several years later the Blue Jays began to fund the operation, expand it, and run it year round, establishing a prominent presence in the country, one that provided the team an advantage for a decade or more. In 1983 the Blue Jays finally passed .500, winning 89 games. Two years later they won 99, but lost a heartbreaking ALCS to the Royals. The team continued to win as Gillick integrated a number of young stars–Bell, Tony Fernandez, Tom Henke, Fred McGriff, Duane Ward, John Olerud, David Wells, and Pat Borders—and dealt for Robbie Alomar and Devon White, but could not quite capture the pennant. But Gillick still had one more river to fish in. With the opening of Skydome and the associated increase in revenues, he could focus on high-level free agents to augment the club. It took him one more year, but Pat Gillick would prove a master of this strategy. Gillick also self-imposed a three-year contract limit to prevent getting stuck with aging stars in a long decline phase. In the 1991-92 offseason Gillick signed 37-year-old Twins pitcher Jack Morris and aging Angels’ slugger Dave Winfield, and the Blue Jays won the World Series. After the 1992 season, Gillick was faced with seven key Blue Jays becoming free agents: Henke, Winfield, Jimmy Key, David Cone, Joe Carter, Manny Lee, and Candy Maldonado. Of the seven, Gillick re-signed only Carter, but added veterans Dave Stewart to bolster the pitching staff and Paul Molitor to replace Winfield at DH. Once again, Toronto won the World Series. After the strike-shortened 1994 season Gillick stepped aside due to some health concerns and simply tiring out after so many years in one place. A year later he jumped back in as Baltimore’s GM. The team had dropped below .500 in 1995, and owner Peter Angelos wanted to reach the postseason. Gillick went to work. He diagnosed the Orioles biggest deficiencies as being at second and third base and the bullpen, and the farm system did not offer much immediate help. Gillick filled these holes quickly and effectively, while still holding to the three-year contract limit he had used in Toronto. He signed free agents Robbie Alomar, his old Toronto standout, to play second, and B.J. Surhoff to play third. To shore up the bullpen, he signed Randy Myers and Roger McDowell. Finally, to make up for the loss of departing free agent hurler Kevin Brown, Gillick traded young outfielder Curtis Goodwin for David Wells, another ex-Blue Jay. The team won the wild card and made it to the ALCS. In 1997 Baltimore won the East with the AL’s best record and again made it to the ALCS before falling to the Indians in a heartbreaking series. Gillick left Baltimore after the 1998 season (his friend and manager Davey Johnson had left a year earlier). Once again Gillick returned to the game after a year off, this time with the Seattle Mariners. With the opening of their new stadium a year earlier, Seattle’s ownership wanted a championship-quality ball club. Coming off of two sub-.500 seasons, however, a drained farm system and with two of baseball’s biggest stars—Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr—scheduled to become free agents one year later, Gillick had his work cut out for him. That they could keep neither (though Gillick did get Mike Cameron included with a package of players in trade for Griffey) meant Gillick needed to find players outside the system. Gillick succeeded spectacularly and quickly, transforming the 79-win 1999 team into one that went to the ALCS in 2000 and won an AL record 116 games in 2001. He turned over nearly the entire squad, masterfully using free agency. Among the key players, John Olerud, Bret Boone, Mark McLemore, Stan Javier, Aaron Sele, Jeff Nelson, Arthur Rhodes, Kazuhiro Sasaki, and Ichiro Suzuki were all signed as free agents in just two off-seasons. Moreover, the final two players in the list came from Japan, a new river for Gillick to fish in, and Ichiro became the first Japanese non-pitcher to excel in the U.S. major leagues. Though Gillick had wanted to restock the farm system during his years in Seattle, that goal was secondary to delivering a title. He was hampered by the loss of draft choices from all his free agent signings, another pitfall of relying heavily on a free agency. In fact, the Mariners had only one first-round draft choice during his four years at the helm and failed to sign him (John Mayberry Jr.). Gillick’s scouts, however, remained active internationally, and the team signed four impact players for the minor league system during Gillick’s tenure: Shin-Soo Choo, Jose Lopez, Felix Hernandez and Asdrubal Cabrera. After a couple of years out of baseball, Gillick, then 68, took over as the GM in Philadelphia. In contrast to his three previous stops, the Phillies team he took over was filled with young talent, including Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Brett Myers and Cole Hamels. Over the next couple of years Gillick bolstered his young nucleus with a couple of veteran hurlers, including former Mariner Jamie Moyer, an excellent bullpen and Jayson Werth. Moreover, he managed to do this without surrendering any of his key player. The core he inherited in 2005 was all on hand to celebrate the World Series victory in 2008. With his three-year contract up and his third world championship earned, Gillick decided it was time to retire. He was 71 years old and had succeeded with a fourth organization, a remarkable feat unmatched by any other GM, fully validating his credentials as a master team builder. Gillick’s obsessive search for the best players, wherever they may have been, allowed him to thrive in the face of diverse challenges. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store. Click here to view the article

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Pat Gillick served as a general manager for four different teams. At his first stop, in Toronto, he built an expansion team into one of the best organizations in the game (winning 86 or more games for 11 straight seasons), culminating in five division titles and two world championships. In Baltimore, he worked for an impatient owner who wanted his team to compete right away — Gillick delivered two consecutive ALCS appearances, the Orioles only post-seasons between 1983 and 2012. In Seattle, he was tasked with trading one of the game’s best players, and then watching another superstar leave as a free agent a year later. Despite this, his Mariner teams won over 90 games all four of his years at the helm and an all-time record win total 2001. At his final stop, in Philadelphia, he took over a good team that had not been able to get over the hump and into the playoffs. Gillick made the post-season in his second year and then won the World Series in 2008, the team’s first in 28 years. A few days later, he retired. By succeeding at four distinct challenges without fail and showing a unique ability and keenness for finding talent others might have overlooked, Gillick earned a place among the very best GMs in history. Gillick’s approach was to first make sure he had great scouts and then to widen his talent search to non-traditional avenues. As Gillick put it: “One needs to fish in many waters.” In Toronto Gillick and his longtime friend Epy Guerrero were at the forefront of creating an identifiable presence in the Dominican Republic. He also looked for underappreciated opportunities with multi-sport athletes. His success in the mostly ignored Rule 5 draft of veteran minor leaguers was legendary; no one else even came close to his success and he forced teams to be much smarter about protecting their assets from this draft. Moreover, Gillick used free agency to perfection in Baltimore and Seattle—in both places he quickly reloaded franchises with little talent left in their minor league systems. With the latter organization, he also signed the first hitter from Japan to star in the major leagues, Ichiro Suzuki, along with a first-rate reliever, Kaz Sasaki. Toronto’s head of baseball operations Peter Bavasi brought Gillick—who had been gaining a reputation as a front office savant with the Yankees –over to help build the expansion Blue Jays for their inaugural 1977 season. The next year Bavasi moved up to team president, and Gillick took over as GM. With the Blue Jays he immediately set about building a top-notch scouting staff. Two of his most important hires were Al LaMacchia, a longtime scout for the Phillies and Braves, and Bobby Mattick, who had already signed Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson, Curt Flood, and Gary Carter by the time he joined the Blue Jays. Both became important voices within the organization. He joined a minority of teams that shunned the new centralized Major League Scouting Bureau. Gillick was going to assemble his own organization. Along with slowly building up talent throughout the draft, Gillick looked for other avenues to find players. In the fall of 1977 Gillick began to exploit a little-used “river” when he selected first baseman Willie Upshaw, whom he and Guerrero knew from the Yankees organization, in the Rule 5 draft. This draft allows teams to claim veteran minor leaguers not protected on their club’s 40-man roster, but with the qualification that the selecting team had to keep the player on its major league roster for the entire upcoming season. Over the years Gillick mastered the Rule 5 draft to uncover a number of other valuable contributors, including George Bell, Manny Lee, Jim Gott, and Kelly Gruber. Gillick was also willing to take risks with multi-sport athletes, accommodating them in ways other teams might not have. In 1977 Gillick drafted multi-sport prep star Danny Ainge in the fifteenth round. Two years later he drafted prep quarterback and baseball catcher Jay Schroeder in the first round, paying a $100,000 bonus and allowing him to play college football at UCLA. In the end, neither panned out but testified to Gillick’s never ending quest for an edge in talent acquisition. Gillick had known Epy Guerrero, destined to become the Dominican Republic’s greatest scout, at least since 1967 when Gillick was a scout for the Astros and the two signed Cesar Cedeno. In 1977 Guerrero created a rudimentary baseball school for youngsters. Several years later the Blue Jays began to fund the operation, expand it, and run it year round, establishing a prominent presence in the country, one that provided the team an advantage for a decade or more. In 1983 the Blue Jays finally passed .500, winning 89 games. Two years later they won 99, but lost a heartbreaking ALCS to the Royals. The team continued to win as Gillick integrated a number of young stars–Bell, Tony Fernandez, Tom Henke, Fred McGriff, Duane Ward, John Olerud, David Wells, and Pat Borders—and dealt for Robbie Alomar and Devon White but could not quite capture the pennant. But Gillick still had one more river to fish in. With the opening of Skydome and the associated increase in revenues, he could focus on high-level free agents to augment the club. It would take him one more year, but Pat Gillick would prove a master of this strategy. Gillick also self-imposed a three-year contract limit to prevent getting stuck with aging stars in a long decline phase. In the 1991-92 offseason Gillick signed 37-year-old Twins pitcher Jack Morris and aging Angels’ slugger Dave Winfield, and the Blue Jays won the World Series. After the 1992 season, Gillick was faced with seven key Blue Jays becoming free agents: Henke, Winfield, Jimmy Key, David Cone, Joe Carter, Manny Lee, and Candy Maldonado. Of the seven, Gillick re-signed only Carter, but added veterans Dave Stewart to bolster the pitching staff and Paul Molitor to replace Winfield at DH. Once again, Toronto won the World Series. After the strike-shortened 1994 season Gillick stepped aside due to some health concerns and simply tiring out after so many years in one place. A year later he jumped back in as Baltimore’s GM. The team had dropped below .500 in 1995, and owner Peter Angelos wanted to reach the postseason. Gillick went to work. He diagnosed the Orioles biggest deficiencies at second and third base and the bullpen, and the farm system did not offer much immediate help. Gillick filled these holes quickly and effectively, while still holding to the three-year contract limit he had used in Toronto. He signed free agents Robbie Alomar, his old Toronto standout, to play second, and B.J. Surhoff to play third. To shore up the bullpen, he signed Randy Myers and Roger McDowell. Finally, to make up for the loss of departing free agent hurler Kevin Brown, Gillick traded young outfielder Curtis Goodwin for David Wells, another ex-Blue Jay. The team won the wild card and made it to the ALCS. In 1997 Baltimore won the East with the AL’s best record and again made it to the ALCS before falling to the Indians in a heartbreaking series. Gillick left Baltimore after the 1998 season (his friend and manager Davey Johnson had left a year earlier). Once again Gillick returned to the game after a year off, this time with the Seattle Mariners. With the opening of their new stadium a year earlier, Seattle’s ownership wanted a championship-quality ball club. Coming off of two sub-.500 seasons, however, a drained farm system and with two of baseball’s biggest stars—Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr—scheduled to become free agents one year later, Gillick had his work cut out for him. That they could keep neither (though Gillick did get Mike Cameron included with a package of players in trade for Griffey) meant Gillick needed find players outside the system. Gillick succeeded spectacularly and quickly, transforming the 79-win 1999 team into one that went to the ALCS in 2000 and won an AL record 116 games in 2001. He turned over nearly the entire squad, masterfully using free agency. Among the key players, John Olerud, Bret Boone, Mark McLemore, Stan Javier, Aaron Sele, Jeff Nelson, Arthur Rhodes, Kazuhiro Sasaki, and Ichiro Suzuki were all signed as free agents in just two off-seasons. Moreover, the final two players in the list came from Japan, a new river for Gillick to fish in, and Ichiro became the first Japanese non-pitcher to excel in the U.S. major leagues. Though Gillick had wanted to restock the farm system during his years in Seattle, that goal was secondary to delivering a title. He was hampered by the loss of draft choices from all his free agent signings, another pitfall of relying heavily on a free agency. In fact, the Mariners had only one first round draft choice during his four years at the helm and failed to sign him (John Mayberry Jr.). Gillick’s scouts, however, remained active internationally, and the team signed four impact players for the minor league system during Gillick’s tenure: Shin-Soo Choo, Jose Lopez, Felix Hernandez and Asdrubal Cabrera. After a couple of years out of baseball, Gillick, now 68, took over as the GM in Philadelphia. In contrast to his three previous stops, the Phillies team he took over was filled with young talent, including Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Brett Myers, and Cole Hamels. Over the next couple of years Gillick bolstered his young nucleus with a couple of veteran hurlers, including former Mariner Jamie Moyer, an excellent bullpen, and Jayson Werth. Moreover, he managed to do this without surrendering any of his key players–the core he inherited in 2005 was all on hand to celebrate the World Series victory in 2008. With his three-year contract up and his third world championship earned, Gillick decided it was time to retire. He was 71 years old and had succeeded with a fourth organization, a remarkable feat unmatched by any other GM, fully validating his credentials as a master team builder. Gillick’s obsessive search for the best players, wherever they may have been, allowed him to thrive in the face of diverse challenges. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store.

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Before feuding owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston turned to Ed Barrow in 1920, the Yankees had never won a pennant. They won their first in 1921 and during Barrow’s tenure went on to win thirteen more as well as ten World Series. Technically hired as business manager—the GM position hadn’t yet been formalized—Barrow concocted on the fly the modern concept of the general manager.He had spent his entire adult life mastering just about every executive position in baseball, and now it would carry over to one more. For the next 24 years in New York he would apply that expertise to building one of the great American sports dynasties. Before joining the Yankees, Barrow had managed Babe Ruth and the Red Sox to their last World Series championship prior to the “curse.” As president of the International League in the 1910s he had led the battle against the upstart Federal League, a self-declared major league backed by some of the biggest industrialists of the era. Barrow also spent time as a minor league owner, a minor league manager, and manager of the Detroit Tigers. He prided himself on having signed Honus Wagner while a minor league owner, the immortal’s last stop before the majors. As a youth Barrow had boxed and was not afraid to mix it up with players or umpires. He knew just about everyone in baseball and at 52 was ready for a new challenge. Up to Barrow’s time with the Yankees most teams were run by a team president and the manager. Barrow grasped the potential of his new role perfectly and became the ideal for this position. He defined the job early in his tenure, telling manager Miller Huggins, “You’re the manager, and you’re going to get no interference or second guessing from me. Your job is to win, and part of my job is to see that you have the players to win with. You tell me what you need, and I’ll make the deals—and I’ll take full responsibility for every deal I make.” The team Barrow inherited had purchased Ruth the year before, and the Babe helped the team to 95 wins and a third-place finish. Over the next few years Barrow went back to his old boss and Huston’s close friend, Boston owner Harry Frazee, and using Ruppert’s money bought the rest of the Red Sox's best players. Spending over $400,000 Barrow and the Yankee owners purchased Wally Schang, Everett Scott, Joe Dugan, Sam Jones, Joe Bush, Herb Pennock, and Waite Hoyt–the core of the team that would carry the Yankees to their first three pennants and first-ever World Series victory in 1923. One of the keys to the Yankees long-term success was Barrow’s amassing possibly the greatest assemblage of scouts in baseball history. After the disastrous 1925 season in which the team fell to 69 – 85, Barrow expanded and reorganized his scouts, creating arguably the first modern scouting department. He hired “Vinegar” Bill Essick to scout the west and Eddie Herr, a former Detroit Tiger scout, whom he assigned to the Midwest. Holdovers Bob Gilks and Ed Holly focused on the South and East respectively. Superscout Paul Krichell remained principally responsible for the colleges, and acted as Barrow’s right hand. Bob Connery purchased a controlling interest in the St. Paul franchise in the American Association and left the Yankees organization to run the Saints. Over the next few years Barrow continued to fine-tune his scouting staff. He brought in Gene McCann to help in the East and Johnny Nee to take over the South. Several years later the Yankees added the last of their legendary scouts, hiring Joe Devine to help out in the West. Like Barrow’s existing scouts, all three had spent time as minor league managers, a well-mined source for scouts. Once Frazee’s stable of stars ran out and the other major league teams were under little pressure to sell off their talent during the roaring twenties, Barrow needed another talent source to restock his team. At the time, prior to the inception of the farm system, the minor leagues were run independently and major league clubs purchased or drafted (hopefully) major league-ready players. Barrow’s scouts out-hustled and out-scouted the competition, identifying the top minor league players and cajoling their owners into selling. Over the next decade the Yankees purchased several future Hall of Famers along with many valuable contributors. The signing of Hall of Fame second baseman Tony Lazzeri typifies Barrow’s process. Barrow often dispatched his scouts to review prospects on short notice, and Krichell joked that every telegram from Barrow started with “immediately” or “at once.” Lazzeri was tearing up the Pacific Coast League, and Krichell traveled to Salt Lake City to scout him, liking what he saw. Although several teams showed some reservation because Lazzeri was epileptic, Krichell recommended Lazzeri to Barrow despite his price tag of $50,000 and five players–a huge outlay for the time. Given the cost, Barrow dispatched Holly to confirm Krichell’s judgment and practically ordered ex-scout Connery, now in St. Paul and no longer a Yankees employee, to also validate Krichell assessment. When the team next won the World Series in 1927, many of the key players—catcher Pat Collins, second baseman Lazzeri, shortstop Mark Koenig, outfielders Bob Meusel and Earl Combs, and pitcher Wilcy Moore—were purchases from the minor leagues. Barrow’s crack team of scouts continued identifying and purchasing the best players over the next couple of years, including Bill Dickey, Frank Crosetti and Lefty Gomez. With the onset of the Depression in the early 1930s, the minors looked for financial assistance from the majors. In response the majors changed the roster rules to make investing in and controlling minor league franchises worthwhile. Ruppert quickly grasped the impact of this rule change, ordered Barrow to establish a farm system, and hired George Weiss to run it. To stock what would quickly become the best minor league system in the league, Barrow redirected his scouts to spend more time chasing top amateurs. Of course, the scouts did not completely forgo the high, independent minors, and in 1934 the Yankees purchased Joe DiMaggio for $25,000 and five players, a discount price because of his reportedly bum knee. Landing the best amateurs required wits, money, salesmanship and hustle. The Yankee scouts became renowned for selling the benefits of the Yankee organization to prospective signees and, directed by Barrow, quickly proved their mettle in unearthing amateur talent. In 1937, for example, when the Yankees easily won the pennant and World Series, their top farm team in Newark won more than 70% of its games. This minor league team, often considered one of the greatest ever, was led by many future major league players and stars acquired by the Yankees scouts. The Yankees won four consecutive World Series from 1936 to 1939. During this great run Barrow and manager Joe McCarthy successfully integrated the products of their farm system into a championship squad, a gutsy but long-term, high-yield approach. By 1939, many of the key players, such as Joe Gordon, Red Rolfe, Charlie Keller, Atley Donald, Marius Russo, and Johnny Murphy had been signed as amateurs and graduated from the Yankees farm system. When Ruppert died in 1939, Barrow took over as team president but still ran the team as the de facto GM. In early 1945 the Ruppert trust, needing money to pay its taxes, sold the Yankees to a triumvirate of Larry MacPhail, Del Webb, and Dan Topping. Barrow disliked the flashy MacPhail and unsuccessfully tried to interest his hunting buddy and Boston owner Tom Yawkey in purchasing the club. After the sale the new ownership kicked the 76-year-old Barrow upstairs with a title of chairman of the board, but it was a purely symbolic position. The team he was forced to sell had a culture and infrastructure in place that would help carry it to another two decades of greatness. As one of the first and most successful men ever to embrace the role of general manager, he helped fashion a position that encompassed the oversight of both the scouting staff and the farm system. That he not only shaped the role, but excelled at it, allowed him to bequeath an organization that would be the envy of baseball for many years to come. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store. Click here to view the article

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Before feuding owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston turned to Ed Barrow in 1920, the Yankees had never won a pennant. They won their first in 1921 and during Barrow’s tenure went on to win thirteen more as well as ten World Series. Technically hired as business manager—the GM position hadn’t yet been formalized—Barrow concocted on the fly the modern concept of the general manager. He had spent his entire adult life mastering just about every executive position in baseball, and now it would carry over to one more. For the next 24 years in New York he would apply that expertise to building one of the great American sports dynasties. Before joining the Yankees, Barrow had managed Babe Ruth and the Red Sox to their last World Series championship prior to the “curse.” As president of the International League in the 1910s he had led the battle against the upstart Federal League, a self-declared major league backed by some of the biggest industrialists of the era. Barrow also spent time as a minor league owner, a minor league manager, and manager of the Detroit Tigers. He prided himself on having signed Honus Wagner while a minor league owner, the immortal’s last stop before the majors. As a youth Barrow had boxed and was not afraid to mix it up with players or umpires. He knew just about everyone in baseball and at 52 was ready for a new challenge. Up to Barrow’s time with the Yankees most teams were run by a team president and the manager. Barrow grasped the potential of his new role perfectly and became the ideal for this position. He defined the job early in his tenure, telling manager Miller Huggins, “You’re the manager, and you’re going to get no interference or second guessing from me. Your job is to win, and part of my job is to see that you have the players to win with. You tell me what you need, and I’ll make the deals—and I’ll take full responsibility for every deal I make.” The team Barrow inherited had purchased Ruth the year before, and the Babe helped the team to 95 wins and a third place finish. Over the next few years Barrow went back to his old boss and Huston’s close friend, Boston owner Harry Frazee, and using Ruppert’s money bought all the rest of the Red Sox best players. Spending over $400,000 Barrow and the Yankee owners purchased Wally Schang, Everett Scott, Joe Dugan, Sam Jones, Joe Bush, Herb Pennock, and Waite Hoyt–the core of the team that would carry the Yankees to their first three pennants and first-ever World Series victory in 1923. One of the keys to the Yankees long-term success was Barrow’s amassing possibly the greatest assemblage of scouts in baseball history. After the disastrous 1925 season in which the team fell to 69 – 85, Barrow expanded and reorganized his scouts, creating arguably the first modern scouting department. He hired “Vinegar” Bill Essick to scout the west and Eddie Herr, a former Detroit Tiger scout, whom he assigned to the Midwest. Holdovers Bob Gilks and Ed Holly focused on the South and East respectively. Superscout Paul Krichell remained principally responsible for the colleges, and acted as Barrow’s right hand. Bob Connery purchased a controlling interest in the St. Paul franchise in the American Association and left the Yankees organization to run the Saints. Over the next few years Barrow continued to fine-tune his scouting staff. He brought in Gene McCann to help in the East and Johnny Nee to take over the South. Several years later the Yankees added the last of their legendary scouts, hiring Joe Devine to help out in the West. Like Barrow’s existing scouts, all three had spent time as minor league managers, a well-mined source for scouts. Once Frazee’s stable of stars ran out and the other major league teams were under little pressure to sell off their talent during the roaring twenties, Barrow needed another talent source to restock his team. At the time, prior to the inception of the farm system, the minor leagues were run independently and major league clubs purchased or drafted (hopefully) major league-ready players. Barrow’s scouts out-hustled and out-scouted the competition, identifying the top minor league players and cajoling their owners into selling. Over the next decade the Yankees purchased several future Hall of Famers along with many valuable contributors. The signing of Hall of Fame second baseman Tony Lazzeri typifies Barrow’s process. Barrow often dispatched his scouts to review prospects on short notice, and Krichell joked that every telegram from Barrow started with “immediately” or “at once.” Lazzeri was tearing up the Pacific Coast League, and Krichell traveled to Salt Lake City to scout him, liking what he saw. Although several teams showed some reservation because Lazzeri was epileptic, Krichell recommended Lazzeri to Barrow despite his price tag of $50,000 and five players–a huge outlay for the time. Given the cost, Barrow dispatched Holly to confirm Krichell’s judgment and practically ordered ex-scout Connery, now in St. Paul and no longer a Yankees employee, to also validate Krichell assessment. When the team next won the World Series in 1927, many of the key players—catcher Pat Collins, second baseman Lazzeri, shortstop Mark Koenig, outfielders Bob Meusel and Earl Combs, and pitcher Wilcy Moore—were all purchases from the minor leagues. Barrow’s crack team of scouts continued identifying and purchasing the best players over the next couple of years, including Bill Dickey, Frank Crosetti, and Lefty Gomez. With the onset of the Depression in the early 1930s, the minors looked for financial assistance from the majors. In response the majors changed the roster rules to make investing in and controlling in minor league franchises worthwhile. Ruppert quickly grasped the impact of this rule change, ordered Barrow to establish a farm system, and hired George Weiss to run it. To stock what would quickly become the best minor league system in the league, Barrow redirected his scouts to spend more time chasing top amateurs. Of course, the scouts did not completely forgo the high, independent minors, and in 1934 the Yankees purchased Joe DiMaggio for $25,000 and five players, a discount price because of his reportedly bum knee. Landing the best amateurs required wits, money, salesmanship, and hustle. The Yankee scouts became renowned for selling the benefits of the Yankee organization to prospective signees, and directed by Barrow, quickly proved their mettle in unearthing amateur talent. In 1937, for example, when the Yankees easily won the pennant and World Series, their top farm team in Newark won more than 70% of its games. This minor league team, often considered one of the greatest ever, was led by many future major league players and stars acquired by the Yankees scouts. The Yankees won four consecutive World Series from 1936 to 1939. During this great run Barrow and manager Joe McCarthy successfully integrated the products of their farm system onto a championship squad, a gutsy but long-term, high-yield approach. By 1939, many of the key players, such as Joe Gordon, Red Rolfe, Charlie Keller, Atley Donald, Marius Russo, and Johnny Murphy, had been signed as amateurs and graduated from the Yankees farm system. When Ruppert died in 1939, Barrow took over as team president but still ran the team as the de facto GM. In early 1945 the Ruppert trust, needing money to pay its taxes, sold the Yankees to a triumvirate of Larry MacPhail, Del Webb, and Dan Topping. Barrow disliked the flashy MacPhail and unsuccessfully tried to interest his hunting buddy and Boston owner Tom Yawkey in purchasing the club. After the sale the new ownership kicked the 76-year-old Barrow upstairs with a title of chairman of the board, but it was a purely symbolic position. The team he was forced to sell had a culture and infrastructure in place that would help carry it to another two decades of greatness. As one of the first and most successful men ever to embrace the role of general manager, he helped fashion a position that encompassed the oversight of both the scouting staff and the farm system. That he not only shaped the role, but excelled at it, allowed him to bequeath an organization that would be the envy of baseball for many years to come. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store.

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Bob Howsam considered himself the last of a breed. A protégé of Branch Rickey, who believed in scouting, player development, and the art of making a deal, Howsam built one of history’s greatest teams, the 1970s Cincinnati Reds, a ballclub that reflected that same Rickey-like approach. And he did so at a time when a general manager could not outspend his competition on amateur players around the country, or invest heavily in free agents. Between the advent of the amateur draft (1965) and free agency (1976) Howsam had to rely on the smarts and talent evaluation of his staff and himself. Howsam had all this plus confidence, and he loved working in the game played under these rules. In 1948 Howsam cobbled together family money to purchase the Denver Bears, a team he ran for the next 13 years, winning a few league titles, setting attendance records, and winning two minor league Executive of the Year awards. In the early 1950s his Single-A team affiliated with the Pirates, allowing to work with and befriend Branch Rickey. In the late 1950s Denver was the Yankees Triple-A club, allowing him to work with George Weiss. Howsam credited both men for his later success — he learned talent evaluation (especially youth and speed) from Rickey, and business and organization from Weiss. By the late 1950s Howsam had reason to feel that he had conquered minor-league baseball. To that end, he spent a couple of years on two unrelated efforts—bringing professional football and major league baseball teams to Denver. Howsam was one of the leaders behind the Continental League, a proposed rival to the American and National Leagues that planned to open in 1961 — Howsam would have run the Denver club. In football he owned the inaugural Denver Broncos of the AFL. The club finished just 4-9-1 in 1960, and reportedly lost $1 million for Howsam and his family. At the end of the season Howsam sold his business, which meant he lost not only the Broncos, but the Bears and his stadium. He and a friend spent the next three years selling mutual funds. In August 1964 baseball called him back, somewhat unexpectedly. The St. Louis Cardinals were in the midst of a disappointing season and owner Gussie Busch surprisingly fired his general manager, Bing Devine. Busch had employed Branch Rickey as a senior adviser, and most observers felt that Rickey had undermined Devine, publicly questioning many of the trades he had made. In any event, Rickey now recommended Howsam, his protégé, who became the GM. As fate would have it, the Cardinals rallied (aided by the Phillies collapse) and won the World Series. This was awkward for Howsam, who obviously had nothing to do with the team’s success, but instead had to deal with resentment for the firing of Devine (who was named Executive of the Year a few months after getting axed). After the series victory, manager Johnny Keane resigned, and Busch let Rickey go. Despite the circus he walked into, and the fact that his team was a champion, Howsam was confident enough in his abilities that he overhauled the front office considerably, keeping only people he trusted and believed in. After the 1965 club fell to seventh place, Howsam traded three aging regulars — Bill White, Dick Groat, and Ken Boyer — very popular players who Howsam correctly believed were near the end of the road. In early 1966 he acquired Orlando Cepeda from the Giants, and after the season picked up Roger Maris from the Yankees. Maris and Cepeda became the number three and four hitters for the club that won the next two pennants and the 1967 World Series. But by that time, Howsam had moved on to Cincinnati. The Reds had been purchased by a group of local businessman who bought the club primarily to keep it in the city. They did not know anything about how to run a team, and hired Howsam and gave him a three-year contract, more money, and complete power. Unlike most GMs then or later, Howsam ran the entire operation in Cincinnati with very little interference from his bosses. He inherited a fair bit of talent in Cincinnati. Though the Reds had fallen to 78-84 in 1966, their worst finish since 1960, the farm system had recently produced Pete Rose, Tony Perez, and Lee May, and in 1967 would offer up Johnny Bench. Several of Howsam’s early deals were to trade veterans who were blocking his talented youngsters. Like Rickey, he did not want to have to pay veteran salaries to reserve players, who would likely resent having lost their job. More than anything, Howsam was a master deal-maker. He had an organization of talent evaluators he believed in, and every fall he held multi-day meetings to go over every player in his organization, and in other team’s organizations. He asked his staff not only for frank assessments of his own team, but also for detailed information on how players on other teams might be valued by their management. When he called a GM to make a deal, he wanted to know before dialing the phone what players his counterpart undervalued. Like Rickey, he looked to trade his players when he sensed decline was coming. In late 1968 he traded star center fielder Vada Pinson to the Cardinals for a player he believed could be Pinson’s equal, only seven years younger, in Bobby Tolan. In the same deal he got Wayne Granger, who became the Reds primary relief pitcher. Howsam made lots of deals, and he almost always got the younger player. In Howsam’s first three years in charge, the Reds won 87, 83, and 89 games, respectively, finishing only four games out in 1969. After that season Howsam replaced manager Dave Bristol, whom he had inherited, with 35-year-old Sparky Anderson, who had five years of minor-league experience. The choice was met with derision, but Anderson proved to be one of history’s greatest skippers. In his first season the Reds finished 102-60, losing the World Series to the Baltimore Orioles. The Reds had acquired the nickname “The Big Red Machine,” and were led by offensive stars Bench, Rose, May, Perez, and Tolan. In 1971 a number of Reds had off-years, and the team fell to 79-83 and a tie for fourth. Howsam and Anderson determined that they needed more team speed to return to the top. In December 1971, Howsam pulled off his most famous deal, trading Lee May, second baseman Tommy Helms, and utilityman Jimmie Stewart to the Astros for second baseman Joe Morgan, infielder Denis Menke, outfielders Cesar Geronimo and Ed Armbrister, and pitcher Jack Billingham. Billingham and Geronimo were key members of the upcoming teams, while Morgan, an unappreciated star in Houston, became the best player in baseball. Howsam also added outfielder George Foster and pitcher Tom Hall through trades in 1971. It was the Morgan trade that turned the Reds from a good team to one of the best teams ever. Over the next five years (1972-76) the Reds won 502 games, four division titles and two World Series. They had the best record in baseball three times, and the year they did not make the post-season, 1974, their 98 wins were surpassed in the game only by the Dodgers, who were in their division. The team was upset in the 1972 World Series by the A’s, and in the 1973 NLCS by the Mets, before finally breaking through with back to back titles in 1975 and 1976. By this time the Reds featured several players drafted by Howsam’s scouts and developed in his system — Ken Griffey, Dave Concepcion, Don Gullett, Rawly Eastwick — and key Howsam trade acquistions — Morgan, Geronimo, Billingham, Foster, Fred Norman, Clay Carroll, Pedro Borbon. During this time, an era of increasing facial hair in the culture and in baseball, the Reds stood out for their short hair and clean shaven faces. Howsam had very conservative views about the baseball and his players. He was insistent that they wear their uniform a certain way—not too baggy, socks visible up nearly to the knee, low stirrups, black shoes—and the uniforms were clean and pressed each day. While the Cardinals’ players had chafed at Howsam’s old-fashioned sensibilities, the Reds players, starting with the leaders like Rose and Bench, went along. One notable exception was Ross Grimsley, a young star pitcher, who was traded to the Orioles in 1973. To Howsam, looking and performing as a team was part of the formula for success. The 1976 Reds swept the Yankees in the World Series, their second straight, the crowning achievement of Howsam’s career. He later said that he felt some sadness knowing that no team would ever be put together the way his team had been. Howsam was referring to the onset of free agency in baseball, which would take place in the upcoming offseason for the first time. Howsam was one of baseball’s most vocal hawks on labor matters, speaking out for holding the line during the 1972 strike and the 1976 lockout. The Reds lost star pitcher Don Gullett to free agency that fall, and lost several other free agents in the coming years, foremost among them Rose and Morgan. After the 1977 season Howsam resigned, taking a position as vice chairman of the board. Despite the free agency losses, the club Howsam built contended for four more years. Midway through the 1983 season Howsam returned as general manager, a position he held for two years. Howsam’s biggest move was to reacquire Rose in August 1984 and make him player-manager. Rose helped turn the Reds around—beginning in 1985, they finished second for four straight seasons. Howsam retired, as planned, effective July 1, 1985. Although Howsam’s work in St. Louis is underappreciated (his on-the-fly rebuild is a big reason for the 1967 and 1968 pennants), his efforts to build the Big Red Machine, to take a good team and turn it into a legendary one, is what he is most famous for. But still, he is not appreciated enough. He is not in the Hall of Fame, for one thing. He built and presided over an incredible team, a team filled with some of baseball’s most iconic players, at one of the most competitive periods in baseball history and in its strongest league. With an amateur draft and no free agency, the GMs of the time had to rely on talent evaluation and their own genius. No one ever did it better than Robert Lee Howsam. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store.