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

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

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

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

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

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

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. Along with our countdown of the greatest 25 GMs in history, we occasionally plan to write about some people who did not make our list, as well as other topics related to baseball operations and front offices. Calvin Griffith is not eligible for our Top 25 because we chose to not include people who also owned the team, although despite his successes in the 1960s he would not have made the list in any case..When Calvin Griffith formally took over the Washington Senators in late 1955 after the death of his uncle Clark, he became the last of the family-owners to act as his own general manager. After more than half a century, many writers have a tendency to wax nostalgic about these owner-operators. In fact, these men, who had no outside source of income, often ran their clubs on a shoestring budget and spent much less on scouting and minor league operations than the wealthier franchises. By the early 1950s some of these teams were spectacularly unsuccessful. Somewhat astonishingly, Griffith proved an exception—at least for a while. During the 1960s the Twins were one of the American League’s best clubs and led the league in attendance over the decade. The organization that Calvin inherited evolved into an extended family operation. Brothers Sherry, Jimmy and Billy Robertson and brother-in-law Joe Haynes all held key executive positions within the system. And all had grown up around baseball and were competent at their jobs. But Griffith was very much in charge and immersed himself in all aspects of the team. Until the travel got to be too much, he personally saw in action nearly all the players receiving large amateur bonuses or acquired by trade. When he felt his managers were not being aggressive enough getting his young phenoms into the lineup, he forced the issue with future stars such as Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Rod Carew. Another time, when he thought the coaching was subpar, he kept his manager but revamped his on-field staff with expensive, big-name coaches. Because Griffith spent most of his energy concentrating on the baseball side of the operation, he neglected expanding or pursuing additional revenue sources, a shortcoming that exacerbated his lack of non-baseball resources. Griffith was a unique blend of bluster, naiveté and baseball smarts. Before formally joining the Senator organization in 1942, he had honed his craft working in the minors as both a manager and front office executive, and by the early 1950s was helping his aging uncle run the team. During his long apprenticeship Griffith had learned the baseball business but could never generalize beyond the lessons of the time and place in which he had learned them. Once the environment changed, Griffith was lost. He also remained surprisingly unpolished, which caused further difficulties in the 1970s and 1980s as he was forced to deal with increasingly sophisticated fellow owners, players, agents and press. By the late 1950s Washington was finishing last in American League attendance every year, usually by quite a distance. When Minnesota's Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul came calling to entice a move, Griffith was more than ready to listen, and the Senators moved to Minnesota for the 1961 season, causing the AL to put a new expansion team in Washington. The Twins had jumped to fifth in 1960 after three consecutive last-place finishes, and the franchise Griffith brought to Minnesota was laden with talent. Many of the players had been signed as amateurs: Harmon Killebrew as a bonus baby (1954), Bob Allison (1955), Jimmie Hall, Jim Kaat (1957), and Rich Rollins (1960). The Senators organization was also at the forefront of signing Latin American--particularly Cuban-- players, a talent source that was especially attractive to the Griffiths because it was inexpensive. Legendary scout Joe Cambria helped deliver several extremely talented Cuban ballplayers to the franchise, including Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Zoilo Versalles, and Tony Oliva. Just before the start of the 1960 season, Griffith made a great trade with Bill Veeck and the White Sox. He dealt 32-year-old Roy Sievers for two young players, Earl Battey and Don Mincher, plus $150,000. Over the next five years, as the youngsters matured, Griffith shrewdly reinforced his team. He traded for key pitchers Jim Perry and Jim “Mudcat” Grant, forking over about $25,000 in the latter deal, and purchased two veteran relievers, Al Worthington and Johnny Klippstein. Griffith wouldn’t spend beyond his relatively meager means to build a winner, but he wasn’t looking to pull money out of the franchise—he wanted to win and would do everything he could within his financial wherewithal. In 1965 the Twins won 102 games and the American League pennant. After losing a seven-game World Series to the Dodgers, the young and talented Twins appeared poised for many years of pennant contention. To Griffith’s credit, he had also assembled one of baseball’s more racially mixed teams. Many of the team’s stars were African-Americans or dark-skinned Cubans. Nevertheless, the Twins failed to capture a winnable American League over the next three years, principally because of a dramatic and unexpected drop-off by some for the team’s top position players. Griffith did his best to compensate, promoting Rod Carew in 1967 and trading for Dean Chance. The Twins won the new AL West in 1969 under manager Billy Martin, but lost to the Orioles in the ALCS. Griffith fired the mercurial Martin, and helped by a 19-year-old Bert Blyleven, the Twins won the division title again the next year. As the core of the team aged, however, Griffith could not replace his stars. And while he smartly traded for Larry Hisle in 1972 and stole Lyman Bostock as a late round amateur draft pick that same year, Griffith’s scouting and player development machine was only slowly recovering from the death of Haynes in 1967 and Sherry Robertson in 1970. The team played roughly .500 ball over the five years from 1971 through 1975, but attendance fell off significantly—from third in the league in 1971 to last by 1974--and Griffith lost around $2 million. When free agency came in 1976, Griffith was ill- prepared to meet it, both financially and because he had a league leading 22 unsigned players. In the first few years of free agency the Twins lost Bill Campbell, Eric Solderholm, Larry Hisle, Lyman Bostock, and Tom Burgmeier. Griffith was also forced to trade Blyleven and Carew before they became free agents, though he engineered a nice return for both, including $250,000 in the Blyleven deal. Griffith slashed his payroll to the league’s basement, so when the team flirted at the edges of contention in 1976 and 1977 Griffith could claim a profit. Nonetheless, Griffith had little chance of competing without outside resources, a more enlightened approach to additional revenue sources, or a rebound in attendance. The opening of the Metrodome in 1982 did little to help. The Twins again finished last at the gate and bottomed out on the field with a record of 60-102. After continued financial struggles and flirting with moving the franchise, Griffith finally gave up and sold the team in 1984. He left behind the nucleus of the 1987 world championship squad, including Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Tom Brunansky, Gary Gaetti and Greg Gagne. In September 1978 Griffith’s legacy was marred by his appearance at the Lions Club in Waseca, Minnesota. In what he thought were off the record comments, Griffith disparaged nearly everyone, but most incendiary were his racist comments regarding the reasons for moving the franchise to Minnesota. Griffith may have put together an integrated team, but he was also the product of a franchise and era that for many years had segregated seating in Washington’s Griffith Stadium and was the last team to desegregate its spring training accommodations in Florida. In his first 15 years at the helm Griffith masterminded the turnaround of one of baseball’s most hapless franchises and oversaw one the American League’s better teams of the 1960s. When Minnesota initially proved to be the financial bonanza he had hoped for, Griffith spent the additional revenues building a pennant winner. He purchased players, included money in trades, and paid top salaries to his stars. But as the economics of the game changed, Griffith had little to fall back on except his baseball intelligence, which left him and the Twins constantly struggling on the field and at the gate. To read more about the history of baseball operations and the GM, please buy our new book In Pursuit of Pennants–Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball via the publisher or at your favorite on-line store. Click here to view the article

This post is part of a series in which Mark Armour and I count down the 25 best GMs in history, crossposting from our blog. For an explanation, please see this post. George Weiss presided over the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball history. Under Weiss’s leadership, from 1948 through 1960 the New York Yankees won ten pennants and seven World Series in a thirteen year span. After a slip to third in 1959 Weiss retooled his squad and returned to the top the following season. For this accomplishment The Sporting News named Weiss Executive the Year, the fourth time Weiss had been so honored, more than anyone else in the history of award. For Weiss it was a particularly satisfying honor because the Yankees owners had just forced him out of his position as GM, citing his advanced age of 65. The team Weiss had built went on to win the next four pennants as well, giving the Yankees an incredible fourteen in sixteen years. Promoted to general manager after the 1947 World Series, the Yankees were already established as baseballs preeminent organization. In the aftermath of the war, however, the existing pecking order was as open as it had been for many years for new leadership. It is to Weiss’s credit that he quickly re-embarked the Yankees on one of the great runs in American sports history. Weiss succeeded because he understood the importance of creating a strong organization, and he ran it smartly and efficiently. He was not afraid to have strong, intelligent men in subordinate roles. As top assistants Weiss at various times had Bill Dewitt, a one-time baseball owner, and Lee MacPhail, a future great GM and American League president whose father Larry once went on a tirade against Weiss. He also included his entire front office staff in decisions. “The entire organization bears down all the time. Every day, 12 months a year,” Weiss once said. “There’s a restaurant in New York which advertises that it threw away the key when it opened for business. That’s the picture I carry of the Yankees.” In today’s world of 24-hour sports channels and football coaches sleeping in their office, this may seem unremarkable. But in the 1950s, with family ownership and sportsmen owners, Weiss’s professional approach was groundbreaking. Weiss successfully ran minor league franchises until the Yankees hired him to build and run their fledgling farm system in early 1932, and he quickly turned it into the league’s preeminent operation. A Baseball Digest study in May 1958 looked at which teams had originally signed the active major league players. Of the 318 regulars and top reserves (approximately 20 per team) 43 had originally been signed by the Yankees, nearly one-seventh of the total. The Yankees were landing quality as well as quantity. All-time greats Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford graduated to the Yankees early in Weiss’s tenure as general manager. Yogi Berra was called up just prior to Weiss’s promotion while he still ran the farm system. That these three were among the best half-dozen players in the league begins to explain the Yankees on-going dominance. Weiss and his crack scouts also filled in around their stars with capable regulars, constantly looking to improve at all positions. From the end of World War II until the introduction of the amateur draft in 1965, teams stocked their farm systems by signing amateur talent. Weiss and the Yankees, as one of the wealthier franchises naturally competed for many of these players. They paid some top prices for the era, notably $65,000 for Andy Carey, but didn’t differentiate themselves solely with their checkbook. Weiss believed his scouts could out hustle their competitors and dig up amateurs others might miss or not fully recognize their potential. They proved him right: Mantle, Berra, Ford plus future stars such as Bill Skowron, Gil McDougald, Hank Bauer, Bobby Richardson, and Tony Kubek all cost less than $7,000. The Yankees farm system proved much more successful at developing position players than pitchers. Other than Ford and Vic Raschi, most of the top Yankees pitching during Weiss’s tenure came through trades. The farm system’s surplus of talent and Weiss’s trading acumen allowed the Yankees to pick up most of their top pitchers from other organizations. Valuable hurlers Eddie Lopat, Allie Reynolds and Bob Turley, among others, came via the trade route. Weiss trusted his great scouts to be able to recognize pitchers of ability often struggling with poor won-loss records on second-division teams. He would then acquire these hurlers by surrendering prospects and occasionally cash. Weiss became a master of the mid-season trade, often using his cash and prospects to add a valuable veteran for the stretch drive. Late in the 1949 season Weiss purchased aging veteran Johnny Mize, who still had a couple of good years left, for $40,000. Other midseason acquisitions included Johnny Sain, Johnny Hopp, Ewell Blackwell, Harry Simpson, and Ryne Duren. Weiss found another source of talent in the Kansas City Athletics. Other than the deal that brought Roger Maris to New York, however, the trades were not nearly as one-sided as often remembered. Kansas City needed to find players somewhere and the World Champion Yankees had good ones. To some degree, the legacy of all post war general managers and owners is determined by their response to integration. Weiss and the Yankees have been rightly criticized for their slow reaction to bringing in black players. The team’s first black player, Elston Howard, did not appear with the Yankees until 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Brooklyn. Weiss was certainly not alone in either baseball or American society in his embarrassing resistance to integrate. Ten of the sixteen teams still had no black players as late as September 1953. Moreover, most teams did not integrate solely due to a sense of responsibility or morality. Teams signed black players because they wanted to win, and once Robinson had broken down the door and played so well, integration was the best (and cheapest) way to find top talent. The Yankees, uniquely, continued to win without aggressively signing black talent. Weiss had a reputation as a tough negotiator with his players, which in fact made him little different from most other front office executives. In this era before free agency a player was effectively bound to his team for life, or until the team wanted to trade or release him. With no alternative employment within baseball, the players had little leverage to earn their market value. Relative to the rest of baseball the Yankees paid respectable salaries. For example in 1954, one of the few years the Yankees failed to win the pennant, the team paid a league high $674,622 in player salaries. Pennant winning Cleveland was second at $592,660; the rest of the league ranged from $357,329 to $450,796. In other words, the Yankees had a payroll 50 percent greater than all but one team. After the Yankees let him go after the 1960 World Series, Weiss still had one act remaining in his baseball career, eagerly jumping into all the challenges and headaches of building the expansion New York Mets organization from scratch. The problem of landing good players turned out to be much more difficult than Weiss imagined. Very few players of major league ability were made available through expansion draft. And with no minor league system, the Mets had no players on hand to trade. Thus, to stock his organization with talent Weiss was limited to trying to make one-sided trades, finding serviceable major league players through waivers, and signing amateur free agents and waiting for them to develop. The lack of talent quickly became apparent, and for their first several years the Mets were the laughingstock of baseball. The team lost an all-time record 120 games in its inaugural season and saw little improvement on the field over the next few years. But by the time Weiss retired after the 1966 season, he had assembled the front office infrastructure that would create the “miracle” 1969 World Series champion and remain a consistent pennant contender thereafter. Given the Yankees remarkable run with Weiss at the helm, we could have ranked him even higher than we did. The main reason we left him here is because we felt his efforts were considerably aided by the underwhelming, uncommitted and financially compromised competition in the AL in the 1950s. Among the seven teams Weiss competed with, the under-capitalized Browns, Athletics and Senators had no chance at the pennant and no hope of rebuilding with better players. The Chicago White Sox were still run by the Comiskey family, which had not won a pennant since the Black Sox scandal of 1919. In Detroit, the Tigers had deteriorated since the death of Frank Navin in 1945. Only Cleveland and Boston offered any realistic competition to the Yankees, and the Red Sox wasted much of Tom Yawkey’s money on untried bonus players. Weiss did his job exceptionally well, even considering his weak competition, and is certainly worthy of his top five placement. For a supposedly unemotional man, Weiss was surprisingly sentimental about his baseball career. In his stately old home in Greenwich, Weiss had what he called his “Baseball Room.” Filled with all sorts of memorabilia, including original player contracts and personalized mementoes from baseball greats Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson though Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, the room reflected Weiss’s life. He had spent his entire adult life in baseball with few hobbies. During that time he had helped build and then presided over arguably the greatest sustained run of greatness in American sports history. The mementos and memories were well earned. 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. Along with our countdown of the greatest 25 GMs in history, we occasioally plan to write about some people who did not make our list (as well as other topics related to baseball operations and front offices). Calvin Griffith is not eligable for our Top 25 because we chose to not include people who also owned the team (although despite his successes in the 1960s he would not have made the list in any case). When Calvin Griffith formally took over the Washington Senators in late 1955 after the death of his uncle Clark, he became the last of the family owners to act as his own general manager. After more than half a century, many writers have a tendency to wax nostalgic on these owner-operators. In fact, these men, who had no outside source of income, often ran their clubs on a shoestring budget and spent much less on scouting and minor league operations than the wealthier franchises. By the early 1950s some of these teams were spectacularly unsuccessful. Somewhat astonishingly, Griffith proved an exception—at least for a while. During the 1960s the Twins were one of the American League’s best clubs and led the league in attendance over the decade. The organization that Calvin inherited evolved into an extended family operation. Brothers Sherry, Jimmy and Billy Robertson and brother-in-law Joe Haynes all held down key executive positions within the system. And all had grown up around baseball and were competent at their jobs. But Griffith was very much in charge and immersed himself in all aspects of the team. Until the travel got to be too much, he personally saw in action nearly all the players receiving large amateur bonuses or acquired by trade. When he felt his managers were not being aggressive enough getting his young phenoms into the lineup, he forced the issue with future stars such as Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Rod Carew. Another time, when he thought the coaching was subpar, he kept his manager but revamped his on-field staff with expensive, big-name coaches. Because Griffith spent most of his energy concentrating on the baseball side of the operation, he neglected expanding or pursuing additional revenue sources, a shortcoming that exacerbated his lack of non-baseball resources. Griffith was a unique blend of bluster, naiveté, and baseball smarts. Before formally joining the Senator organization in 1942, he had honed his craft working in the minors as both a manager and front office executive, and by the early 1950s was helping his aging uncle run the team. During his long apprenticeship Griffith had learned the baseball business but could never generalize beyond the lessons of the time and place in which he learned them. Once the environment changed, Griffith was lost. He also remained surprisingly unpolished, which caused further difficulties in the 1970s and 1980s as he was forced to deal with increasingly sophisticated fellow owners, players, agents, and press. By the late 1950s Washington was finishing last in American League attendance every year, usually by quite a distance. When Minnesota's Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul came calling to entice a move, Griffith was more than ready to listen, and the Senators moved to Minnesota for the 1961 season, causing the AL to put a new expansion team in Washington. The Twins had jumped to fifth in 1960 after three consecutive last place finishes, and the franchise Griffith brought to Minnesota was laden with talent. Many of the players had been signed as amateurs: Harmon Killebrew as a bonus baby (1954), Bob Allison (1955), Jimmie Hall, Jim Kaat (1957), and Rich Rollins (1960). The Senators organization was also at the forefront of signing Latin American--particularly Cuban-- players, a talent source that was especially attractive to the Griffiths because it was inexpensive. Legendary scout Joe Cambria helped deliver several extremely talented Cuban ballplayers to the franchise, including Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Zoilo Versalles, and Tony Oliva. Just before the start of the 1960 season, Griffith made a great trade with Bill Veeck and the White Sox. He dealt 32-year-old Roy Sievers for two young players, Earl Battey and Don Mincher, plus $150,000. Over the next five years, as the youngsters matured Griffith shrewdly reinforced his team. He traded for key pitchers Jim Perry and Jim “Mudcat” Grant (forking over about $25,000 in the latter deal) and purchased two veteran relievers, Al Worthington and Johnny Klippstein. Griffith wouldn’t spend beyond his relatively meager means to build a winner, but he wasn’t looking to pull money out of the franchise—he wanted to win and would do everything he could within his financial wherewithal. In 1965 the Twins won 102 games and the American League pennant. After losing a seven-game World Series to the Dodgers, the young and talented Twins appeared poised for many years of pennant contention. To Griffith’s credit, he had also assembled one of baseball’s more racially mixed teams. Many of the team’s stars were African-Americans or dark-skinned Cubans. Nevertheless, the Twins failed to capture a winnable American League over the next three years, principally because of a dramatic and unexpected drop-off of some of the team’s top position players. Griffith did his best to compensate, promoting Rod Carew in 1967 and trading for Dean Chance. The Twins won the new AL West in 1969 under manager Billy Martin, but lost to the Orioles in the ALCS. Griffith fired the mercurial Martin, and helped by a 19-year-old Bert Blyleven, the Twins won the division title again the next year. As the core of the team aged, however, Griffith could not replace his stars. And while he smartly traded for Larry Hisle in 1972 and stole Lyman Bostock as a late round amateur draft pick that same year, Griffith’s scouting and player development machine was only slowly recovering from the death of Haynes in 1967 and Sherry Robertson in 1970. The team played roughly .500 ball over the five years from 1971 through 1975, but attendance fell off significantly—from third in the league in 1971 to last by 1974--and Griffith lost around $2 million. When free agency came in 1976, Griffith was ill prepared to meet it, both financially and because he had a league leading 22 unsigned players. In the first few years of free agency the Twins lost Bill Campbell, Eric Solderholm, Larry Hisle, Lyman Bostock, and Tom Burgmeier. Griffith was also forced to trade Blyleven and Carew before they became free agents, though he engineered a nice return for both (including $250,000 in the Blyleven deal). Griffith slashed his payroll to the league’s basement, so when the team flirted at the edges of contention in 1976 and 1977 Griffith could claim a profit. Nonetheless, Griffith had little chance of competing without outside resources, a more enlightened approach to additional revenue sources, or a rebound in attendance. The opening of the Metrodome in 1982 did little to help. The Twins again finished last at the gate and bottomed out on the field with a record of 60-102. After continued financial struggles and flirting with moving the franchise, Griffith finally gave up and sold the team in 1984. He left behind the nucleus of the 1987 world championship squad, including Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Tom Brunansky, Gary Gaetti, and Greg Gagne. In September 1978 Griffith’s legacy was marred by his appearance at the Lions Club in Waseca, Minnesota. In what he thought were off the record comments, Griffith disparaged nearly everyone, but most incendiary were his racist comments regarding the reasons for moving the franchise to Minnesota. Griffith may have put together an integrated team, but he was also the product of a franchise and era that for many years had segregated seating in Washington’s Griffith Stadium and was the last team to desegregate its spring training accommodations in Florida. In his first 15-years at the helm Griffith masterminded the turnaround of one of baseball’s most hapless franchises and oversaw one the American League’s better teams of the 1960s. When Minnesota initially proved to be the financial bonanza he had hoped for, Griffith spent the additional revenues building a pennant winner. He purchased players, included money in trades, and paid top salaries to his stars. But as the economics of the game changed, Griffith had little to fall back on except his baseball intelligence, which left him and the Twins constantly struggling on the field and at the gate. 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.

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] Buzzie Bavasi masterfully presided over a Dodger team that won eight pennants (plus 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, 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 a 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 again. 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 is 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.

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] 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 would land 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. 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 had for him. 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 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.

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. 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. 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