Daniel R Levitt

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post.
 
John Schuerholz spent 26 seasons as a big league GM, winning 16 division titles, six pennants and two World Series. In Kansas City he oversaw that franchise’s only World Series. After moving to Atlanta he took over a team that had lost more than 90 games for four consecutive years and won the next 14 division titles (excepting the truncated 1994 strike season) and five pennants. Schuerholz displayed an uncanny knack for retooling his team, knowing which holes could be filled by integrating prospects and which needed outside solutions.
 
A Baltimore native, Schuerholz left his junior high school teaching position to join the Orioles front office in 1966. Two years later he became an administrative assistant with the expansion Royals and worked his way up to farm director in 1975, and Vice President of Player Personnel in 1979. Finally, in October 1981 the Royals named him GM, promoting incumbent Joe Burke to president.
 
The Kansas City team he inherited had won the AL pennant in 1980, but slipped below .500 in the strike-shortened 1981 season. In one of his first moves he hoped to fill a couple of needs for his mostly veteran team by swapping several young players for Vida Blue and outfielder Jerry Martin. The team rebounded to 90 wins in 1982, but Blue and Martin proved a distraction in 1983, as a cocaine investigation dogged them and other players. After the season those two, along with stars Willie Wilson and Willie Mays Aikens, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to three months in prison.
 
Rather than try to rebuild his aging rotation with veterans, in 1984 Schuerholz introduced a trio of young starters: Bret Saberhagen (20), Mark Gubicza (21), and Danny Jackson (22). For 1985 he acquired veteran catcher Jim Sundberg to help his young staff acclimate, and in conjunction with offensive mainstays George Brett, Frank White, Willie Wilson, Steve Balboni and Lonnie Smith (the last two great trade acquisitions by Schuerholz), Kansas City won the franchise’s first and so far only World Series.
 
Over the remainder of the 1980s, the Royals remained at the margin of the division race but could not capture another title. The team made some astute draft picks, such as Bo Jackson, but Schuerholz also made what he considered his worst deal, swapping David Cone for Ed Hearn, and some suspect free agent signings towards the end of the decade. By this time the Royals executive suite was becoming a little unwieldy; the two owners were not in complete agreement, and Burke remained tangentially involved as well.
 
In October 1990 Schuerholz joined the Atlanta Braves as GM with full authority over baseball operations. He inherited a franchise coming off a last place finish that had not been relevant for some time. Nevertheless, the team had a solid core of young pitchers: John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Steve Avery, plus outfielders Ron Gant and David Justice. As he had back in Kansas City, Schuerholz went to work to support his young hurlers, acquiring four solid defensive players: Sid Bream, Rafael Belliard, Terry Pendleton, and Otis Nixon. Pendleton had a great hitting season and won the league MVP, and the Braves won their first pennant since 1958 before losing in the World Series. With pretty much the same line up the team captured the flag the next year but again fell short in the World Series.
 
Schuerholz was not typically a participant in the big name free agent auctions, but prior to the 1993 season, the Braves rocked the baseball world by signing free-agent Greg Maddux, the 26-year-old ace of the Chicago Cubs, to bolster a pitching staff that was already the envy of the league. Maddux responded with the second of his four straight Cy Young awards.
 
The Braves could not have maintained their success for a decade without a continual influx of talent. The team that won the World Series in 1995 was much different than the one that had lost four years earlier: five of the eight position players, two starting pitchers, most of the bench and all of the bullpen had turned over. When the Braves lost the World Series in 1999, five of the eight position players, two starters, and all of the bench and bullpen were different from the champions of 1995.
 
Schuerholz made several impressive trades to keep his team competitive, but more importantly he continually addressed aging and ineffective players with internal solutions (if available) as opposed trading his prospects for aging veterans. Good teams are often reluctant to give significant roles to untested players. The Braves of the early 1990s had several veteran journeymen that needed replacing within a few years. What set the Braves apart from other great teams of the past generation is their willingness to give regular roles to the jewels of their farm system. When Terry Pendleton or Ron Gant needed replacing, Schuerholz did not trade his young talent for veteran solutions. In 1994 the Braves gave starting positions to Javy Lopez and Ryan Klesko, and within two years both Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones were key players. Later still, Rafael Furcal, Marcus Giles and Adam LaRoche claimed jobs.
 
Schuerholz often liked to note that the Braves on average turned over ten players on their roster every year. “One of the key responsibilities we have as general managers is managing change effectively,” he said. “I think it’s true in any business. We exist in an environment where change occurs in a bizarre fashion at a bizarre pace. We have to keep our antennas up and keep our minds open. We have to understand that change in inevitable, especially in our business, where we rely on human beings to perform physically, and we have to be able to manage the changes that are required in an effective manner.”
 
A comparison to the Cleveland Indians of the 1990s under general manager John Hart (now Schuerholz’s GM in Atlanta) is instructive. Hart built a great team in Cleveland that blossomed in 1994-96, but as holes emerged he seemed reluctant to fill them from within the organization. Over the next few years he dealt such players as Sean Casey, Danny Graves, Jeromy Burnitz, Albie Lopez, Brian Giles, and Richie Sexon, often acquiring a veteran player who proved less productive than a possible internal solution.
 
One of the reasons the Braves magnificent run eventually ended is because the farm system could not continue to produce stars the way it had in the mid-1990s, putting additional pressure on Schuerholz’s trades and free agent signings. Nevertheless, even in 2002 and 2003, twelve years after Schuerholz’s first division title the team was still winning 101 games a year.
 
After the 2007 season Schuerholz was named team president, and he promoted Frank Wren to GM. After a few mediocre years, the Braves returned to the postseason in 2010, making it again in 2012 and 2013. After missing the playoffs in 2014 Schuerholz dismissed Wren and made Hart the GM.
 
The Atlanta Braves from 1991 to 2005 enjoyed one of the most impressive runs of success by a franchise in baseball history. The team has been underrated because they navigated through the post-season unscathed only once, but Schuerholz’s maneuvering that kept this team at the top for fourteen years is truly remarkable. When added to his legacy in Kansas City, Schuerholz clearly merits a ranking among the best ten general managers ever.
 
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.
 
After the 1996 season Florida Marlins owner Wayne Huizinga—angling for a new publicly financed stadium–asked general manager Dave Dombrowski what it would take to produce a winner the following season. Dombrowski didn’t prevaricate. He told his boss that he would deliver if allowed to take the payroll from around $31 million (in the lower third of the league) to roughly $44.5 million (near the top). Huizinga told him to go for it, and Dombrowski went to work, pulling the levers masterfully. In the end he overspent his projection by a couple of million but brought South Florida a World Series champion in only their fifth season of major league baseball. Once in a while you really can deliver on demand.
 
When he first took over the Expos in mid-1988, the 31-year-old Dombrowski was the youngest GM in baseball. Three years later he moved on to Florida where he assembled the World Series champion before salvaging a respectable return when forced to dismantle it. Finally, in Detroit, his third and current GM job, he rebuilt a struggling franchise, delivering two pennants and a recent string of division titles. Overall, Dombrowski’s won-loss record as a GM is less than stellar because he spent much of his time building up from the bottom. But at his two stops of any length, Dombrowski turned hapless franchises into winners with staying power—though only in Detroit was he allowed to execute on his longer term plans.
 
When Dombrowski told his eighth grade teacher as part of a student survey that he wanted to be a big league GM, she told him, “I can’t put that down. Nobody wants to do that.” But Dombrowski was persistent. His college thesis at Western Michigan was titled “The General Manager: The Man in the Middle.” After graduation, White Sox GM Roland Hemond appreciated Dombrowski’s passion and brains and gave him a job. A decade later he was in charge of the Expos.
 
Immediately after taking over in July 1988 Dombrowski pulled the trigger on a couple of trades, showing that he would be aggressive despite, or possibly because of, his youth. The next year Charles Bronfman, the original Expos owner, was thinking of selling, but wanted one more crack at a championship. Accordingly, with the team in contention at mid-season, Dombrowski made a couple deals for veteran pitchers, one of which turned out regrettably when he included a young Randy Johnson in a deal for ace pitcher Mark Langston. The Expos finished 81- 81 for the third consecutive year and many of their best players, such as Langston, Hubie Brooks, Pascual Perez, and Bryn Smith, left as free agents. They also failed to sign their first round draft pick, catcher Charles Johnson.
 
Bolstered by three rookies in 1990—Marquis Grissom, Larry Walker, and Delino DeShields—Montreal overcame its free agent losses and jumped to 85 wins. Rule 5 pickup Bill Sampen led the team in victories; free agent pick up Oil Can Boyd started 31 games with a 2.93 ERA; and Dombrowski acquired Moises Alou in a midseason trade. For his efforts Dombrowski was named UPI baseball executive of the year. Unfortunately, the team dropped back to 71 wins in 1991, despite a similar lineup (though Dombrowski had swapped Tim Raines—past his dominant prime–for Ivan Calderon and Barry Jones before the season).
 
As the 1991 season dragged on, Dombrowski grew more frustrated with his financial constraints. In September he joined the expansion Florida Marlins to build an organization and team for the inaugural 1993 season. The Expos organization he left behind contained many of the players that would contribute on the 1994 squad that would have the best record in baseball. Drafted and signed amateurs during his three plus years at the helm included Rondell White, Ugueth Urbina, Chris Haney, Cliff Floyd, Mark Grudzielanek, Matt Stairs, and Kirk Rueter.
 
In Florida, Dombrowski set about building the club’s system, bringing in a bevy of veteran scouts from Montreal and elsewhere. With his first pick in the 1992 amateur draft Dombrowski again nabbed Charles Johnson, whom he drafted and lost in Montreal. At the expansion draft Dombrowski picked up a number of useful veterans to either play or trade: Brian Harvey, Trevor Hoffman, Carl Everett, Jeff Conine, Greg Hibbard, and Danny Jackson. Dombrowski also made a huge trade that first season, landing 24-year-old Gary Sheffield and also dealt for future closer Rob Nen.
 
By 1995 Dombrowski realized that the team’s pitching was not as far along as its hitting, so in December he signed two quality undervalued hurlers: Kevin Brown and Al Leiter. For 1996, he also introduced 19-year-old Columbian signee Edgar Renteria. Their fourth season was the Marlins most successful in team history (every year they had won more games than the year before). But Huizenga wanted to accelerate the process.
 
To put the Marlins over the top, Dombrowski bolstered his squad with three of the top free agents on the market, Alex Fernandez, Bobby Bonilla, and Moises Alou, and several key role players. He also hired manager Jim Leyland, who had recently resigned from the Pirates. The team qualified for the postseason as the NL wildcard and went on to win the World Series.
 
But Huizenga did not get the stadium he wanted, claimed to be losing money, and wanted out of baseball. He gave Dombrowski the opposite directive of the one he had given twelve months earlier: drastically reduce payroll to make the team more saleable. If the rise of the Marlins was steady and unrelenting, the fall was startlingly swift. By Thanksgiving, Dombrowski had traded Alou, Nen, Conine, and Devon White. By New Year’s Day, Brown, Dennis Cook, and Kurt Abbott were also ex-Marlins. The 1998 team, the defending World Champions, finished 54-108, one of the worst records of the expansion era.
 
After the team’s sale, Dombrowski began to rebuild the team’s talent level under new owner John Henry, though the team maintained one of baseball’s lowest payrolls. At the conclusion of the 2001 season, with the team’s future in doubt, Dombrowski moved on to the Detroit Tigers as team president. He left behind a nucleus that would become (or used as trade chips to build) the 2003 world championship club.
 
In 2001 the Tigers had finished below .500 for the eighth consecutive year, and owner Mike Ilitch wanted a strong hand in charge. In April 2002 Dombrowski assumed the GM mantle as well. He quickly realized that his rebuilding task was even more daunting than it appeared on the surface. The Tigers were burdened with a number of bad contracts with injured or non-productive players. At an ill-advised “private” venting in front of some season ticket holders, Dombrowski named Craig Paquette, Dean Palmer, Damion Easley, Matt Anderson, Danny Patterson, Bobby Higginson, and Steve Sparks. Basically untradeable, these seven players, under contract for roughly $40 million, accounted for a huge portion of the payroll. The 2002 team finished 55 – 106, with little payroll flexibility. Dombrowski had his work cut out for him.
 
The next season was even worse. The 2003 Tigers started 3-25 en route to 119 losses, one shy of the 1962 Mets all-time record. Once again, however, Dombrowski was slowly rebuilding his team at a steady pace, using many sources. And as in his early days in Florida, his owner would pay up for scouts and front office executives. Dombrowski also brought in Jim Leyland, his World Series manager in Florida, after the 2005 season. His rebuilding culminated in the 2006 pennant.
 
Nearly all the key 2006 players were acquired under Dombrowski’s reign. Fireballing hurlers John Verlander and Joel Zumaya and center fielder Curtis Granderson came from the draft; infielders Placido Polanco and Carlos Guillen were trade acquisitions; Ivan Rodriguez was signed as free agent in February 2004, as much to make a statement as for his abilities, and Magglio Ordonez was signed a year later, overpriced but useful nonetheless; Todd Jones was signed as a free agent for 2005, and Kenny Rogers for 2006; Chris Shelton was a Rule 5 draftee; and Nate Robertson and Jeremy Bonderman were both acquired as youngsters early in Dombrowski’s tenure as part of veteran for prospects deals.
 
When several players suffered injuries in 2007 the team fell back, and Dombrowski realized he needed to again retool his squad. In December he made a huge trade, sending top prospects to Florida for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. The latter was coming off of a Cy Young runner up season, but was never healthy or effective in Detroit. Cabrera, however, became one of the best players in the game. Dombrowski’s trade record for the next few years was uncanny—he always seemed to know when to trade prospects for veterans or vice-versa. Moreover, he once again needed to maneuver around large contracts with players who no longer justified them, such as Willis and Ordonez.
 
In late 2009 in a three-way swap he surrendered Curtis Granderson, but received Austin Jackson and Max Scherzer. Going back the other way, at mid-season in 2010 and 2011 he landed first Jhonny Peralta and then Doug Fister for prospects. In another great trade at mid-season in 2012 he landed Omar Infante and Anibal Sanchez for several more farm hands. Enough of the prospects Dombrowski didn’t trade, such as Alex Avila and Rick Porcello, developed into quality major leaguers, injecting some youth into the team.
 
Dombrowski also showed a knack for finding undervalued free agents and signing them for reasonable contracts, including Jose Valverde (before 2011), Victor Martinez (2011), Brad Penny (2011), and Torii Hunter (2013). After appearing to overpay for Prince Fielder, Dombrowski swapped him for Ian Kinsler to regain some payroll flexibility.
 
Dombrowski’s astute roster manipulation led to four consecutive division titles and one pennant from 2011 to 2014. Several recent more suspect trades, free agent losses, and an apparently thin farm system give some pause as to how much longer the string can continue. But Dombrowski has demonstrated an uncanny knack for both rebuilding teams and keeping them competitive. With Dombrowski in charge Detroit should remain a relevant and competitive franchise.
 
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.

#25 — Andy MacPhail
 
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.
 
Andy MacPhail had big shoes to fill. Both his father Lee and his grandfather Larry are in the Hall of Fame as baseball executives. When the Minnesota Twins promoted the 33-year-old MacPhail to run the club, they surely took his pedigree into account. He lived up to his surname, and his surprisingly quick success cemented a wave of extremely young GMs, a couple with similar front office bloodlines.
 
Coming out of college in 1976 MacPhail knew he wanted a career in a baseball front office and thought he had lined up a position with the Montreal Expos. Unfortunately, when the American League awarded an expansion franchise to Toronto that spring, creating a second major league team in Canada, the Expos were so dismayed with American League president Lee MacPhail that they rescinded the employment offer to Lee’s son. Andy quickly rebounded, taking a positon with the Cubs in park operations and player development. In early 1982, just 28, he joined Houston as assistant to general manager Al Rosen.
 
New Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad brought in MacPhail as vice president of player personnel in 1985 and one year later made him general manager, at 33 the youngest GM in baseball. The Twins had been mired in mediocrity or worse for the previous decade and a half; nevertheless the squad MacPhail took over had a number of talented young homegrown players, including Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, and Frank Viola.
 
MacPhail made several moves to bolster his nucleus with veteran talent, trading for left fielder Dan Gladden and closer Jeff Reardon and signing reliever Juan Berenguer. The 1987 Twins crept up to 85 wins, but it was enough to win a weak AL West and beat the Tigers in the ALCS. When the Twins defeated the Cardinals in the 1987 World Series, everyone associated with the team became a regional hero, perhaps because other than the Minneapolis Lakers in the late 1940s and early 1950s (before the NBA was popularly established as a national league), no Minnesota professional team had won a championship in any of the four major sports. MacPhail was hailed as “Boy Wonder.”
 
Despite his quick success, MacPhail recognized that lower revenue teams could only compete cyclically and that a team needed a solid crop of low-salaried youngsters and under-appreciated veterans who could ripen concurrently, leaving some payroll available to plug holes with free agents. Sensing the team was not ready to compete for a title, in 1989 MacPhail traded Viola, the previous year’s Cy Young Award Winner, for several players, most notably pitchers Rick Aguilera and Kevin Tapani. The Twins fell to last place in 1990, but MacPhail felt his restructured team had enough talent and some payroll flexibility.
 
Before the 1991 season he signed free agents Mike Pagliarulo, Jack Morris, and Chili Davis, while farm products Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Erickson came through with star-quality seasons. The team won 95 games, going from last to first in their division, and again prevailed in a seven game World Series. More than two decades later, these two Twins World Series victories remain Minnesota’s only substantive men’s professional sports championships. During his stint in Minnesota MacPhail was brilliant at managing his payroll, recognizing when he had a team close to contention, and using his payroll capacity to acquire in the right veterans.
 
MacPhail’s success helped usher in a new era of very young GMs. Oakland had hired Sandy Alderson in 1983, and Texas had brought in Tom Grieve a year later—both just 35—but after MacPhail the minimum age fell even further. Dave Dombrowski and Jim Bowden were only 31 and Randy Smith just 29 when hired. Smith and Bill Bavasi, just 36 when he became a GM, were like MacPhail scions of successful front office executives. Somewhat surprisingly, other than by Alderson, the analytic revolution that was slowly seeping into baseball before Moneyball was not really embraced by this generation of young GMs.
 
The Twins remained competitive in 1992, but fell off quickly thereafter as several players left as free agents, the pitching deteriorated, and several younger players performed below expectations. With rapidly increasing salaries throughout baseball after an arbitrator ruled the owners had been colluding to keep salaries down, MacPhail was becoming increasingly pessimistic on the future of small market clubs. “I can’t make it work anymore,” MacPhail said regarding even his successful cyclic approach to building a competitive team.
 
After a players strike shut down the final phase of the 1994 baseball season, the Tribune Company hired MacPhail to be president and CEO of the Cubs, one of baseball’s most venerable but long-suffering teams. As his title implied, MacPhail was responsible for the entire franchise and named Ed Lynch his general manager. MacPhail intended to build a “development-based” organization while at the same time bringing in veterans to keep Chicago competitive in a weak division.
 
In mid-2000, after just one playoff appearance in five years, MacPhail jettisoned Lynch and assumed the GM duties himself. He got the club up to 88 wins in 2001, but the next July MacPhail named Jim Hendry the GM. In 2003 the Cubs won 88 games and qualified for the playoffs, where the team advanced to the NLCS, before losing a heartbreaking seven game series to the Marlins. The Cubs would not make the post season again under MacPhail’s reign, and he resigned after a disappointing 66-96 record in 2006. Certainly the Cubs suffered some bad luck—phenom pitchers Kerry Wood and Mark Prior pitched 200 or more innings only three times between them due to injuries–but the farm system did not deliver as expected and several prospects were traded away with little substantive return. In contrast, MacPhail was highly successful in the off-field part of his job, as attendance and revenues surged during his 12 years at the helm.
 
MacPhail was not unemployed for long; in mid-2007 Orioles owner Peter Angelos brought him aboard as president of baseball operations, acting as a general manager with considerable authority. Baltimore had fallen on hard times since consecutive ALCS trips in the late 1990s, winning fewer than 80 games every year from 1998 to 2007, but MacPhail again hoped to create a “top echelon scouting and development franchise.” When the farm system appeared to be more efficient at developing pitching, MacPhail’s strategy evolved to “buy the bats and grow the arms.”
 
Unfortunately, many of the young hurlers never progressed as hoped, and the Orioles lost over 90 games every season through 2011, after which MacPhail resigned. The next year Baltimore was baseball’s surprise team; they won 93 games and made the playoffs, mostly with a team built by MacPhail. Although he wasn’t around to enjoy it, MacPhail’s farm system and savvy trades for the likes of Adam Jones, Mark Reynolds, J.J. Hardy, and Chris Davis left the Orioles with a solid talent base.
 
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.