Mark Armour

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. 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 the 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 but while this approach did not bear fruit, 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. 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. 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, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. 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 ball club 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 skills 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 him 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 over 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 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 were 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. Click here to view the article

The role of the GM has changed so much in the past 100 years that deciding what work is or is not "above and beyond or completely outside of General Manager" is really just a matter of what you are comfortable with. What Dan and I are considering is the person who is in charge of the Baseball Operations department. We are pretty comfortable that we can properly identify that person throughout history, and we are very comfortable that we have done so with John Hart.

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. Buzzie Bavasi masterfully presided over a Dodger team that won eight pennants (and twice lost pennant playoffs) and four World Series titles. He was an organization man in an unparalleled organization,filled with talented men like owner Walter O’Malley, farm director Fresco Thompson, scouting director Al Campanis, manager Walter Alston, the game’s best scouts and instructors and many of its best players. But O’Malley hired Bavasi to run the Dodgers and generally left him alone to do so for 18 years. He would not regret it. “[bavasi] learned [baseball] under Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey,” Jim Murray once wrote. “That was like learning war under Genghis Kahn and Machiavelli. And Bavasi never knew what it was to work under a dilettante owner, some millionaire who wanted a ball club instead of a yacht.” Bavasi grew up in a wealthy family in Scarsdale, NY, earned a business degree from DePauw University, and took a job working for MacPhail in 1939. He spent the next decade, save for two years in the army, working in the Dodger system, eventually running their Triple-A club in Montreal. After the 1950 season, Rickey, who had taken over the team in 1942, left the Dodgers for the Pirates, and O’Malley, now in complete control, made Bavasi the new general manager, though he did not get that title for several years. Rickey left behind a great team, a group that would win four pennants in Bavasi’s first six years — Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Don Newcombe, Gil Hodges and others — players who would later be known as “The Boys of Summer.” Bavasi did not have to add core players, but he did quite a bit of maintenance to keep the team running at peak performance. He acquired Andy Pafko during the 1951 season, which ended with the playoff loss to the Giants. The same year he purchased Joe Black and Jim Gilliam from the Baltimore Elite Giants — Black gave them one great year, and Gilliam a decade of solid play. After the 1953 season, Bavasi hired manager Walter Alston, who filled the position for 23 years. Having lost World Series in 1952 and 1953, Brooklyn finally won its first, and only, title in 1955, led by heroes (and recent signees) Sandy Amoros and Johnny Podres. The next year Bavasi acquired Sal Maglie in May, and Maglie finished 13-5 with a 2.87 ERA and helped get them back to the Series. After the 1957 season the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, a move which also acts as a useful historical divide for the team and for Bavasi. While it is fair to consider Bavasi the capable caretaker of Branch Rickey’s old team in Brooklyn, that was no longer true by the late 1950s. All of the old “Boys of Summer” were gone or fading, and the team’s continued success in LA should be credited to Bavasi and his organization, and to a masterfully rebuilt team. The new Dodgers, including Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Tommy Davis, signed while the team was still in Brooklyn, but the Dodger scouts (and O’Malley’s bankroll) really went to work once they relocated to LA, landing Ron Fairly, Willie Davis, Frank Howard and more. The 1959 Dodgers won a surprising championship with a blend of the past, future, and a few short term solutions, though without star performances. For his efforts Bavasi took home the Executive of the Year award, but he did not rest on his success — by 1961 Howard, Fairly and both Davises had joined the lineup. From 1962 through 1966 the Dodgers won three pennants (losing a playoff for another), and two World Series. The key to most of these teams were the power pitching of Koufax and Drysdale, and a good offense led by the young players, plus Maury Wills, who also joined the lineup in 1960. It was a remarkable team, and no one deserves more credit for it than Buzzie Bavasi. One man who appreciated him was his boss. “The wheels are always turning in Buzzie’s head,” O’Malley once said. “He’ll work for you 24 hours a day. This is because the man doesn’t sleep.” As good as the Dodgers were, Bavasi is perhaps underappreciated because he made fewer trades than his contemporaries. “Why play poker,” he said, “when you’re the only one in the game with any money?” The Dodgers developed their own talent, and Bavasi was rarely called upon to find more. In fact, several times every year Bavasi sold players to other teams, and his trades usually included cash sent his way. This income, often well over $100K per year, was reinvested in the organization. After 18 years as GM, Bavasi longed to get into ownership, which in 1968 caused him to buy into the new San Diego franchise and take control as president and GM. This proved to be a mistake. The principal owner of the Padres, C. Arnoldt Smith, a multimillionaire businessman and close friend of President Nixon, was immediately beset with financial difficulties — including the collapse of his United States National Bank, at the time the largest bank failure in US history. Smith later spent time in prison for embezzlement. For the first four years Bavasi had to run a team with no money. In late 1972 Bavasi turned the GM duties over to his son, Peter, while remaining as president. In 1974 Smith, facing financial and legal problems, sold the Padres to Ray Kroc, and the team began to improve. Dave Winfield, drafted in 1973, joined the lineup immediately and became their best player. Randy Jones was a star pitcher for a couple of years. Kroc was willing to spend money — Buzzie was apparently the high bidder before Catfish Hunter signed with the Yankees as a free agent at the end of the 1974 season. He stayed aggressive when wholesale free agency started in 1976, landing Gene Tenace and Rollie Fingers. In 1977 Bavasi left the Padres to become president of the California Angels, assuming the GM duties when Harry Dalton left after the season. The Angels had some talent when Bavasi arrived, but he enhanced things considerably. Within a few months he had traded for Brian Downing and signed Lyman Bostock. The 1978 team won 87 games, the most in club history. After the season Bavasi traded for Dan Ford and Rod Carew, and in 1979 the team won its first division title. Bavasi brought in more talent in the coming years, landing Fred Lynn, Rick Burleson, Doug DeCinces, Bob Boone and Reggie Jackson, enough to cop another division crown in 1982. Both teams lost in the LCS. Bavasi ran the Angels until 1984 when he finally retired. Although he had some success in Anaheim, Bavasi’s place in history rests with his 18 years running the Dodgers. The Dodgers had a strong organization before he became GM, but Bavasi unquestionably made it stronger and led the club to some of its greatest successes, including four of the six World Series titles the franchise has won in its history. 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, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Harry Dalton was the GM for three teams over a 25 year period, winning five pennants and contending for several others. His claim to fame was his work in Baltimore, where he made a series of moves to turn a very good team into one of the greatest ever assembled.When Dalton went to work for the Orioles in late 1953, he was a 25-year-old Amherst grad just back from serving in Korea. He spent the next seven years working as a key lieutenant for farm director Jim McLaughlin. Though the Orioles organization made progress in the 1950s, things might have gone better without the ongoing battle between McLaughlin and manager/GM Paul Richards, each with his own autonomous scouting staff. Richards relinquished his GM duties to Lee MacPhail in 1958, and by 1961 both Richards and McLaughlin were gone. MacPhail promoted Dalton to run an extraordinarily productive farm system. Dalton’s talented team of scouts became known as “The Dalton Gang,” and his organization included legendary coaches and instructors like Earl Weaver and Cal Ripken, Sr. After the 1965 season MacPhail left to work in the commissioner’s office, and Dalton became general manager. The Orioles had been a good team for several years by this time, winning 97 and 94 games the previous two seasons. MacPhail’s last act was to work out a trade with the Reds that landed Frank Robinson. He left approval of the deal to Dalton, who tried to extract another piece from Reds GM Bill DeWitt. DeWitt balked, but Dalton sensibly chose to authorize the deal in its original form. Robinson became the leader of the team, and won the Triple Crown and MVP while he was at it. The Orioles won the 1966 World Series. The Orioles fell back in 1967, largely due to injuries to Robinson, Jim Palmer and Dave McNally. When the club failed to rebound adequately in 1968, reaching the All-Star break at 43-37, Dalton fired manager Hank Bauer and gave the job to Earl Weaver, who had spent many years in the organization as a minor league manager. Weaver was not shy about making changes, playing Don Buford (a great Dalton acquisition) and Ellie Hendricks, and taught the Oriole Way that Dalton had long championed in the minors. After the 1968 season Dalton traded outfielder Curt Blefary to Houston for pitcher Mike Cuellar, who won 125 games over the next six seasons. In each of the next three years the Orioles won over 100 games, waltzed to division titles, and swept the ALCS. That they only were able to win one World Series masked how great this team was. So good, in fact, that Dalton only had to make one trade of note — he dealt some unneeded players to the Padres for Pat Dobson, who won 20 games in 1971. In six years Dalton won four pennants and two World Series in Baltimore. After the 1971 season Dalton left the Orioles and took a job as GM of the Angels. The difference in the situations could hardly have been larger — the Angels had just come off a fourth-place finish on the field and a much worse one off of it. Picked to win the AL West by many pundits, they endured the emotional breakdown of their defending batting champ, Alex Johnson, the breakdown and retirement of newly acquired slugger Tony Conigliaro, a gun confrontation in the clubhouse, additional turmoil between teammates, and more. Not surprisingly, the manager and general manager both lost their jobs. Owner Gene Autry hired Dalton to straighten it all out. A few weeks after taking over, Dalton traded the longtime face of the franchise, Jim Fregosi, to the Mets for four players. One of the players, Nolan Ryan, became a star, making this the best trade in team history. Unfortunately, this proved to be the high water mark of his six years in Anaheim. A year later he made another big deal, trading star pitcher Andy Messersmith to the Dodgers for Frank Robinson (returning to the AL to utilize the new DH rule), pitcher Bill Singer (who would win 20 games the next season), and Bobby Valentine. The key to the deal for Dalton was Valentine, a talented 22-year-old who could hit, run and play centerfield. Unfortunately, in May 1973 Valentine tore up his knee on Anaheim’s chain link fence trying to catch a fly ball. He never recovered his former speed, and never fulfilled the promise many thought he had. Dalton continued to make deals, but he just never really had enough talent. The team had drafted Frank Tanana in 1971, and a few years later he and Ryan were their best two players. The only impact player drafted on Dalton’s watch was Carney Lansford, who did not help until Dalton had left. Desperate for offense, in late 1975 he traded Ed Figueroa and Mickey Rivers for Bobby Bonds, in what turned into a great deal for the Yankees. Bonds had a great year for the Angels in 1977 before he moved on to his next stop. With the advent of free agency in 1976 Autry was ready to go all-in, and Dalton made an unappreciated, canny move. The rules in the first year of free agency stipulated that a team could only sign two players, unless they lost more than two themselves, in which case they could sign as many as they lost. The Angels played the 1976 season with two unsigned players: seldom used utility men Paul Dade and Billy Smith. On September 9, the Angels purchased infielder Tim Nordbrook from the Orioles, an unusual transaction for a team that was in fifth place. What made this deal interesting was that Nordbrook was also soon to be a free agent, giving the Angels a total of three. The Angels made no effort to sign Nordbrook, so they ultimately “lost” three players who combined for 25 at-bats and 4 hits in the 1976 season. Having lost three players, Dalton was able to sign Don Baylor, Joe Rudi, and Bobby Grich. The Angels looked to be a contender for 1977, but Rudi and Grich both got hurt and the team stumbled to fifth place. Rudi was through, but Grich recovered to continue his great career the next season. Too late for Dalton, who left after the season to become GM of the Brewers. Dalton likely could have stayed on, but he was unhappy when Autry hired Buzzy Bavasi to be team president, Dalton’s boss. When Bud Selig offered him the job in Milwaukee, Dalton was assured that he would be in charge. The squad he left behind in California would capture its first division title two years later. In Milwaukee, Dalton inherited some talent: Robin Yount, Cecil Cooper, Sixto Lezcano, and Paul Molitor (who would debut in 1978). That said, the team had won 67 games in 1977, and had not finished .500 in their nine-year history. That would change quickly as the Brewers won 93 games in 1978, advanced to the playoffs in 1981 and to the World Series in 1982. The six-year period from 1978 to 1983 remains the best in Brewers' history. Dalton made some good moves to get this team over the hump and keep it there. He traded for Buck Martinez and Ben Oglivie soon after he arrived. He made a huge deal in December 1980 with the Cardinals, landing Rollie Fingers and Pete Vukovich (who between them won the next two Cy Young Awards), and catcher Ted Simmons, their new cleanup hitter. After a few down years, the Brewers came back to contention in the late 1980s with a new team centered around Molitor and Yount, plus players Dalton’s staff had signed or drafted, like Teddy Higuera, BJ Surhoff, and Chris Bosio. Milwaukee won 91 games in 1987 and finished just two games back in 1988 but failed to get back to the post-season. Dalton was released from his contract after the 1991 season after 14 years in charge. That Dalton was not able to repeat his Baltimore success in his next two stops is not surprising — his Oriole squads were among the best teams ever, a team he helped put together in the minor leagues and helped turn into a juggernaut as the GM. He inherited a mess with the Angels, and while he improved the talent level, he was not able to win the division. In Milwaukee he had more talent to work with and he made some key additions that helped the Brewers capture their only pennant. 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, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Frank Cashen had two stints running a big league baseball operation. In his first job he oversaw a budding great team as president and later kept it contending while in the GM role as well. At his second stop he took over a long-struggling franchise that needed a complete transformation. He succeeded at these two opposite challenges masterfully, meriting his status as one baseball’s best baseball ops executives.Cashen spent 17 years as a sportswriter in Baltimore, earning a law degree at night. In the late 1950s he went to work for Jerry Hoffberger, a long-time minority owner of the Orioles, first running a couple of race tracks and later working as the advertising chief for Hoffberger’s brewery. When Hoffberger assumed control of the team in 1965, he asked Cashen, a brilliant and trusted executive who nonetheless had no experience in the business of baseball, to oversee it. Not long after, general manager Lee MacPhail left to work in the commissioner’s office, and Cashen promoted Harry Dalton to be the Orioles GM. Cashen was Dalton’s boss, but he needed the talented Dalton to run baseball operations. The team won four pennants and two World Series during the six years (1966-71) of this arrangement. After the 1971 season, fresh off three straight pennants, Dalton left to run the lowly California Angels, saying he wanted a new challenge. Rather than hiring a replacement, Cashen took over the GM duties himself. This was not a big surprise — Cashen had been intimately involved in the day-to-day work that Dalton had been doing. Although the Orioles were on a great run, the team was aging and would change rapidly over the next few years. Just a few weeks after taking over, Cashen traded star and leader Frank Robinson to the Dodgers, a move that Dalton recommended before he left. The team was stunned, and many blamed Robinson’s departure for their team-wide, year-long batting slump, dropping from a league-leading 4.70 runs per game to just 3.37, and a third place finish. But Cashen got them back over 90 wins the next three years, making key deals that landed Tommy Davis, Ross Grimsley, Lee May, Ken Singleton, and Mike Torrez. Together with youngsters Bobby Grich, Don Baylor, and Al Bumbry, and a few key holdovers, especially Jim Palmer, the team won division titles in 1973 and 1974, and took the Red Sox down to the wire before losing in 1975. After the season Cashen resigned and went back to work in Hoffberger’s brewery. Cashen left the organization in great shape, and they remained the gold standard for excellence throughout the system. Soon players like Doug DeCinces, Eddie Murray and Mike Flanagan would be joining the big club, keeping their great run going another decade. Cashen spent a couple of years out of the game before working in the commissioner’s office for two years. In early 1980 Nelson Doubleday, the new owner of the New York Mets, talked Cashen into joining the team's front office, giving him complete control of the club, as both GM and the COO. The Mets had been a woeful team for four years, and in 1979 played before fewer than 800,000 fans (still the low water mark for the team). Cashen told ownership that he needed at least four years to turn the organization around, and he began by revamping the scouting and minor league systems. Over the next several years the Mets developed Daryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Kevin Mitchell, Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson, Rick Aguilera and several others. Meanwhile, Cashen made some early high-profile attempts to improve the big league team. He acquired sluggers Dave Kingman and Ellis Valentine in 1981, but neither helped much. Cashen dealt for George Foster in 1982, but the slugger’s days of stardom proved to be over. Cashen first hit the jackpot in June 1983 when he traded Neil Allen for Keith Hernandez. Coupled with the debut of Strawberry a month earlier, the Mets had arguably the two best position players they have ever had. Cashen’s biggest decision for 1984 was the hiring of new manager — Davey Johnson, who Cashen knew from his Oriole days. Johnson had managed in the system, and like Cashen wanted to play the kids rather than continuing to lose with veterans. In 1984 the Mets finally broke through, winning 90 games after having won fewer than 70 for seven consecutive seasons. The biggest improvement on the club was the pitching, which featured three rookies: Ron Darling (acquired from Texas), Sid Fernandez (acquired from the Dodgers), and 19-year-old phenom Dwight Gooden. In the following off-season Cashen landed third baseman Howard Johnson and catcher Gary Carter in separate deals, and suddenly the Mets had one of the game’s best offenses to go with their great pitching. New York won 98 games and took the Cardinals down to the season’s final days before falling three games short. While Carter, Hernandez and Strawberry had good years, it was Gooden who had a season for the ages — 24-4, 1.53. After the 1985 season Cashen made another great trade, dealing unneeded players to the Red Sox for pitcher Bob Ojeda. The resultant Mets made a mockery out of the league in 1986, winning 108 games and waltzing to the division title, then survived two brutal playoff series to win their first title since 1969. It was an extremely well-balanced team, with the best offense and pitching in the league, and only one player, Hernandez, with 5 WAR. The club was filled with young stars and seemed poised to win several more championships. This did not happen, even with Cashen making two more great trades that winter, landing Kevin McReynolds and David Cone. Gooden entered drug rehab in April 1987, and it was Gooden’s problems more than any other that foretold the Mets’ decline. They remained a competitive team for several years, and won 100 games and the NL East in 1988, but were never again able to put it together as they had in 1986. Gooden and Strawberry, their two bright young stars, had good years remaining, but both had long battles with drugs and crime, likely costing them both Hall of Fame careers. Hernandez and Carter declined for more a conventional reason-- aging-- and the team appeared rudderless by 1990. Cashen let Davey Johnson go during another second place finish in 1990, and resigned himself after the 1991 squad finished fifth. He remained an advisor to the Mets for several years. Cashen’s front office record is extraordinary. He directed a great organization in Baltimore and after taking over as GM he made some great trades to keep the Orioles in contention and won two division titles in four years. In New York he inherited a mess, and used the Oriole model to build the organization — scouting, player development and excellent young pitching. Although it ended sooner than he would have liked, the seven-year run (1984-1990) averaged 94 wins per season, finishing first or second every year, and captured a title. This was the most successful period ever for the club, on and off the field. Coupled with a down period for the Yankees, the Mets were by far the most popular team in New York for several years, giving hope, even today, that they could be so once again with another great team. 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, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball depicted Billy Beane as the leading figure in the spread of analytics (more broadly: the use of data and evidence) in baseball management. Twelve years later all front offices combine analytics and scouting, and the dwindling number of people who decry this revolution have tended to blame Beane and other like-minded GMs,while those who applaud it have treated Beane like their heroic surrogate. His ranking here indicates that we believe the introduction of analytics has advanced front office decision-making, which we do, but we also believe his impressive record fully justifies his standing. A former first-round draft pick of the Mets, Beane spent parts of six seasons in the big leagues without earning regular playing time. In 1990 Beane finally gave up and took a job as an advanced scout with the A’s. Beane spent the next seven years working with Sandy Alderson in Oakland, learning to view the game the way his boss did — using sabermetric principals to find undervalued players. After the 1997 season Alderson resigned and Beane took over. The A’s had been going through a rough patch — new ownership had ordered Alderson to slash expenses, and the team has been on the low end of baseball payrolls ever since. After a great five-year run, the club had been under .500 since 1992. The rise of the A’s in the early Beane years was due primarily to their great use of the amateur draft throughout the 1990s, when they selected Jason Giambi, Eric Chavez, Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, and Barry Zito, and the signing of Miguel Tejada from the Dominican Republic in 1993. When Beane took over, the big league team was struggling but this help was just around the corner. But Beane also made several low-cost deals that paid short-term dividends, dramatically enhancing this core. Among these acquisitions were Gil Heredia (28 wins in two years), Kenny Rogers (16-8 in 1998), John Jaha (35 home runs in 1999), Jason Isringhausen, Randy Valarde, Terrence Long, Kevin Appier (15-11 in 2000), Cory Lidle, Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye, Scott Hatteberg, David Justice, and Billy Koch. Most of these players were bought cheaply and were moved if they attained free agency or got expensive. Beane was one of the first to believe that closers were fungible assets, and he was quick to move players like Isringhausen and Koch if he found a buyer who overvalued their save totals. Armed with his emerging core and his shrewd short-term patches, the A’s won 91 games and the division in 2000, and followed that with 102, 103, 96, and 91 wins the next four years. They made the playoffs four times and lost in the division series (in the full five games) all four seasons. In 2003, when the A’s were coming off their two best seasons, Moneyball was released, and a debate ensued as to why the A’s were successful. The principal premise of the book– that Beane was winning with low payrolls at least partly by finding market inefficiencies, in other words players undervalued by other clubs–was undeniable. In 2001 the A’s had the second lowest payroll in baseball and won 102 games, and did basically the same thing the next year. Yes, Beane was fortunate to have inherited a young core, but Brian Cashman inherited a great core in the same year (1998), had more than three times the payroll, and won fewer games in these two seasons. Beane was clearly doing something better than everyone else. The controversy surrounding the book arose because Lewis depicted Beane as being at war with the scouts, who were often mocked as out-of-touch and unable to recognize good players who did not have obvious “tools”. As Lewis wrote: “[beane] flirted with the idea of firing all the scouts and just drafting kids straight from [assistant GM Paul DePodesta’s] laptop.” Many baseball people were appalled — particularly because it should have been obvious that Beane’s A’s were a reflection of great scouting. His long-time scouting director Grady Fuson, who deserves much of the credit for their drafts and signings, left the club in 2001 to take a promotion with the Texas Rangers before the book came out depicting him and his scouts as dinosaurs. (In the movie Beane is shown firing a clueless Fuson, which did not happen.) Pat Gillick, whose Mariners competed with Beane in these years, also took offense at the book’s depiction of scouts, suggesting that Beane was going to have a tough time competing unless he paid his young players when they became free agents. And in fact this is what happened. In the ensuing years the A’s lost all of their great players one by one and gradually slipped out of contention, with only one playoff appearance the rest of the 2000s and no more than eighty-one wins between 2007 and 2011. Much of the fall-off can be attributed to the lack of success from Oakland’s college-centric drafting philosophy. From 2002 (the year after Fuson left) to 2009, the A’s drafts produced only three players who have turned in more than 10 career WAR, and no stars. Moreover, due to their small market size and intelligent use of expiring contracts to land compensatory picks, Beane had amassed a total of twenty-one first-round picks (including supplemental choices). In 2010 Fuson returned to the A’s as a special consultant to Beane, surprising many observers, at least partly because he was persuaded that Beane had begun to blend analytics and scouting as many successful teams had been doing. In 2012 the Athletics returned to the top with back-to-back division titles and posted their best two records since the year Moneyball came out. It was a team filled with players Beane had acquired cheaply in trades (Josh Reddick, John Donaldson, Jarrod Parker) or in free agent signings (Coco Crisp, Brandon Moss, Bartolo Colon), a testament to the A’s ability to discover under-appreciated talent. Beane occasionally spent money, like on Yoenis Cespedes and Scott Kazmir, but their 2014 payroll was twenty-fifth of thirty teams in baseball. Unlike the team from the early 2000s, the recent A’s have not had the benefit of a great core of developed talent. But the drafting of AJ Griffin and Sonny Gray early in the 2010s suggests that the A’s are again receiving value from the draft. Overall, their recent success, including a 2014 wild card appearance, testifies to Beane, his scouting organization, and his analytical staff, all working together. Seventeen years after taking over, Beane is still playing with less money, and he is still winning. 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 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, cross-posting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. [This one is from Mark] Were we to give Al Campanis credit for all his accomplishments in baseball operations, he would rank much higher than this, perhaps in the top five. Among other things, he was a legendary scout, a brilliant scouting director, and one of baseball’s most influential instructors. He did this over a two-decade career with the Dodgers before assuming control of the baseball team in late 1968.For this exercise, we will ignore all that and consider his years as GM (1969-1987), when he won four NL pennants and the 1981 World Series. Campanis had a brief major league career (seven games for the 1943 Dodgers) and a minor league career most interesting for his role in helping Jackie Robinson break in with the 1946 Montreal Royals. In fact, Dodger GM Branch Rickey requested Campanis go to Montreal to work with Robinson on infield play (the two men formed the double play combination). Campanis spent a few more years playing and managing in the system before beginning work full time for the major league club. Once Walter O’Malley took control of the Dodgers in late 1950 he put Buzzy Bavasi in charge of the big league team and Fresco Thompson in charge of the farm system. For the next eighteen years the two men remained at their posts, and Campanis worked with them doing seemingly everything that needed to be done. Starting as a scout, he created the first tryout camps in Puerto Rico and Cuba (he was fluent in Spanish, along with French, Greek and Italian). He opened a pipeline from Latin America for the Dodgers, which other teams emulated. He signed Roberto Clemente and Sandy Koufax, among many others, and devised a 60-to-80 scouting scale (which was later expanded to 20-to-80). He ran “Dodgertown” at Vero Beach, a first-of-its-kind camp the Dodgers used for their minor leaguers and for spring training. He turned his course material, derived from the teaching of Rickey, into the book The Dodgers’ Way to Play Baseball, an influential instructional tool used across the country and world for 25 years. The Dodgers earned a reputation as the best organization in baseball beginning in the 1950s, and Campanis was the living embodiment of the “Dodger Way,” a term he coined. He was named scouting director, a role he was already performing, once the team moved to LA in 1958, and he developed a system-wide manual for scouts that was far ahead of its time. Before the draft was instituted, the Dodgers were leaders in amateur talent acquisition, leading to four pennants and two Series victories between 1959 and 1966, and masters once the draft was in place. In 1968 Bavasi left to become president of the expansion Padres and O’Malley promoted Thompson to GM. A few months later, Thompson died, and O’Malley turned to Campanis. After a long run of success, the Dodgers dropped well below .500 in both 1967 and 1968, having lost Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills, and many of the key players from their mid-1960s run. The team rebounded back over .500 in 1969 and stayed there for a decade, a run of success with two primary causes. First, with the onset of amateur draft in 1965, Campanis continued the Dodgers’ great run of amateur talent acquisition, overseeing several great drafts including the greatest draft year in history in 1968, when the Dodgers selected 234 future bWAR. After selecting Bill Russell, Charlie Hough and Steve Yeager in the previous two years, in 1968 Campanis landed Ron Cey, Dave Lopes, Steve Garvey, Doyle Alexander, Joe Ferguson, Geoff Zahn, and Bill Buckner. Since the average draft traditionally yields about 28-30 WAR, the Dodgers got nearly eight years’ worth of value in one year. Second, from 1970 through 1976 Campanis made a remarkable series of trades, one excellent deal after another without really making a bad one. In October 1970 he traded two role players for Dick Allen. After one great season, Campanis turned around and traded Allen for Tommy John, who had several excellent seasons in Los Angeles. Campanis traded for Al Downing, who produced a 20-win season. He acquired Frank Robinson (surrendering Doyle Alexander, who had a fine career ahead of him), and (as he did with Allen) traded Robinson a year later for a package that included Andy Messersmith, who had three great seasons pitching in Dodger blue. In December 1973 Campanis made two great trades. First he dealt longtime centerfielder Willie Davis to the Expos for relief pitcher Mike Marshall. The next day he traded pitcher Claude Osteen for centerfielder Jimmie Wynn. In 1974 Marshall pitched in a record 102 games and 210 innings in relief, winning the NL Cy Young Award, while Wynn hit 32 home runs with a 151 OPS+. The 1974 Dodgers broke through with 102 wins and the NL pennant. After getting one more All-Star season out of Wynn, Campanis flipped him to Atlanta for Dusty Baker — Wynn was finished, while Baker gave the Dodgers eight years of solid play. Campanis also acquired Burt Hooton for nothing in 1975, Pedro Guerrero in a minor league trade the same year, and then Reggie Smith in 1976. All three gave multiple years of star play for Los Angeles. Between 1970 and 1976, the Dodgers finished second six times (five times to the Reds) and won the pennant in the other season. The Big Red Machine was a tough mountain to get over, but the Dodgers finally did so by winning back-to-back pennants in 1977 and 1978. Those star-filled clubs were primarily led by Campanis draft choices (Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey) and trade acquisitions (Baker, Smith, Hooton, John). They were an excellent team, though they lost both World Series to the Yankees. The Dodgers finally won the Series in 1981, with a team heavily fortified with the additions of Guerrero, Jerry Reuss (acquired in a 1979 deal) and Fernando Valenzuela, signed in 1979. The Dodgers system was still churning out prospects, winning the Rookie of the Year award four years in a row beginning in 1979. After a near miss in 1982, the Dodgers won the division in both 1983 and 1985, losing the NLCS both times. In early 1987, Campanis appeared on the ABC news program Nightline, to mark the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut in the major leagues. Unfortunately, Campanis made some incendiary comments about the qualifications of African-Americans to serve in baseball management. Though he apologized and many friends came to his defense, his quotes were disturbing enough that the Dodgers let him go a day or two later. His career in baseball was over. It was a sad way to end an otherwise great career in the game. (The year after he left, his team won the World Series again, their last at this writing.) In 18 seasons, Campanis’s Dodgers won six division titles and finished second in eight seasons, three times by a single game. After years of working in the organization to help develop major league players, Al Campanis did a very fine job once given control of the big league team. 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