Top 10 GM's In Baseball

[jjgott]

Jon Heyman from SI has the Top 10 GM's in Baseball. No mention of Doug Melvin.

[valpocrewsader]

How dare he overlook our many recent winning seasons and playoff appearances.

[endaround]

Calling the Ramirez trade superb is funny. Than again Pat Gillick, does much more need to be said?

[Ennder]

How dare he overlook our many recent winning seasons and playoff appearances.

 

Yep, I'm sure that SI is using shallow metrics like this to decide which of course is completely meaningless.

[adambr2]

I don't have a problem with most of them. Cashman in the top 5 is a joke, though.

[crewcrazy]

No problems with the top three or so, but after that it gets a little dicey. I'd say Melvin deserves some credit for turning a 100-loss team into a playoff contender, and the fact that Kenny Williams is on that list instead of DM is pretty laughable. The list could be worse -- he could have included Brian Sabean (He's gotten the Giants to the playoffs! He put together a World Series team! He *has* to be a good GM!).

[hauser42]

I don't have a problem with most of them. Cashman in the top 5 is a joke, though.

 

His record speaks for its self. Yes he has a lot of money to use, but the Yankees in the past burned a lot of money on players and got no results. The 80s and most of the 90s the Yankees were not the big dogs on the block. Even if you spend money you have to do it correctly and he has also a good job of using his minors to trade for holes.

[Ennder]

I don't know, Cashman hasn't made very man good deals that I can think of and he's just thrown a lot of money at good players in the FA market. Never seems like the Yankees get a 'steal'. I don't think Cashman is a bad GM per say but being in the top 5 just shows that this study is looking at W way too much.

 

Here is some nice conversation on the article.. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2008/02/heymans-top-10.html#comments

 

I haven't given a ton of thought to my own top ten, but I'd probably have Beane, Gillick, and Cashman lower with Byrnes and Towers higher and Doug Melvin in there. What's your top ten? No ties.

[joepepsi]

It is difficult to imagine how good Cashman would be without a $200 million payroll. The core team of young stars that won all those Championships--Jeter, Posada, Bernie, Pettitte, Rivera--were products of Gene Michael and Bob Watson regimes. Most of the stars Cashman signed--Clemens, ARod, Giambi, Sheffield, Matsui--begged to come to New York.

 

Melvin deserves to be on the list as much as Minaya, O'Dowd, or Byrnes.

[Thurston Fluff]

some consideration should be given to longevity and success in more than one place. Epstein has done a great job with Boston. Then agian he should have. Boston is not all that hard of a job. They have all the resources necessary to be a great franchise. I think the job guys like Melvin did in multiple places or guys like Beane who do so on 1/3 of the budget should get some amount of consideration for the relative success under much more difficult situations. To say Epstin is the top GM after a five year span, in a place where all the resources are there for instant success, is a bit premature. If he does so for another 5 or so years then it would be more impressive. Or had he done so in a place like KC in the same time span then it would be way more impressive.

[hauser42]

I don't know, Cashman hasn't made very man good deals that I can think of and he's just thrown a lot of money at good players in the FA market. Never seems like the Yankees get a 'steal'. I don't think Cashman is a bad GM per say but being in the top 5 just shows that this study is looking at W way too much.

 

Here is some nice conversation on the article.. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2008/02/heymans-top-10.html#comments

 

I haven't given a ton of thought to my own top ten, but I'd probably have Beane, Gillick, and Cashman lower with Byrnes and Towers higher and Doug Melvin in there. What's your top ten? No ties.

Yankees have always thrown money around and never won. Look what they gave the likes of Winfield, Bayloer, Kemp, and ton of players that were at the top of their game. They still could not win it with all that talent and money.

 

Cashman is very unlikely to steal young players because he is always in contention and needs to use the farm system for the missing parts. His trade of Sheffield is solid for the prospects he got, although they are what they are prospects and may not turn out.

[rluzinski]

Trying to gauge a GM's performance, relative to his peers, is very difficult, since each GM is working under drastically different circumstances. What you definitely don't do, is just look at wins and titles.

 

I think Melvin has done an excellent job getting the Brewers back to respectability without much money. I'd be comfortable with labeling him as an above average GM. It's the next three or four years that's going to prove whether he deserves to be mentioned as one of the best, however. He was given time to develop his own players and now he's being given a reasonable payroll.

[Tbadder]

I think there's a lot to be said for the above quote. Large market, high payroll teams should be compared just as small market, low payroll teams. Given this it's pretty easy to figure out that there's probably ten guys here on Brewerfan.net that could've done just as well with Cashman's payroll.

[brewcrewreview]

I'm sorry, but I don't think myself or anyone here on brewerfan.net are capable of doing a better job than Cashman or any other GM for that matter.

[twobrewers]

I was disappointed to see no mention of Melvin as well. But honestly, that article is so slanted towards major market teams it isn't fair.

 

A team with a $200 Millon dollar payroll has very little in common with Florida.

 

And I don't have a problem with Cashman on that list, only under the assumption that a lot of his moves may have been pushed from above. (Cashman has had to fight pretty hard to keep their minor league system in tact, and it looks like it will finally pay of this year)

[hauser42]

Not suprised that Melvin is not on the list, I think his time with the Rangers has weighed him down. He was under orders to give out some big money to guys that did not work out.

 

I dont believe there is even 3 guys on this board that could do the job Cashman is doing. It is real easy to think you can do a GM's job the lazyboy. Playing fantasy baseball isn't even close to being a GM. There is no boss breathing down your neck to win, millions of fans wanting nothing but a title every year, and the dam New York media and their no shame in writing any story they see fit. I'm sure for just those reason alone the field is narrowed and lets not get into player evaluations and stuff that really make GMs good.

[foamboy1]

Hmmm...no mention of Sal Bando or Dean Taylor either.

[TooLiveBrew]

The core team of young stars that won all those Championships--Jeter, Posada, Bernie, Pettitte, Rivera--were products of Gene Michael and Bob Watson regimes.

 

This is the point to keep in mind. Cashman has finally been granted as much autonomy as he'll ever have in NY - and the best deals to point to are the Sheff trade to Det., and not selling off their young pitching for veterans this offseason. I really don't think you can analyze a guy fairly with all the meddling Steinbrenner has done. However, the Igawa signing has been disastrous - maybe the Yanks needed a contract to take the place of Pavano's (which still has another year left!) as 'least-efficient allocation of dollars' in MLB.

 

I mean, Ca$hman had a deal in place & agreed upon with Vladimir Guerrero, only to have The Boss go out to dinner with Gary Sheffield & negotiate a deal at their table, & ink it that evening. That's a kind of 'drastically different' circumstance to which rluz was referring, methinks.

 

Cashman retained A-Rod, Cano, & their young pitching... meanwhile he's saddled with Giambi/Pavano/Igawa/Mussina/Damon contracts that exemplify the 'old guard' of Steinbrenner veteran idolatry. Not that he hasn't had his own role in the vet. love-ins, but I genuinely don't believe that you can make a fair assessment of Brian Cashman until at least after the 2008 season. I honestly believe that 2007 was his first 'real' season as GM.

[slack00]

If winning is a prerequisite (at least as much it seems to be) shouldn't Schuerholz from the Braves be on this list?

[crewcrazy]

Schuerholz resigned the GM position after last season, but ended up getting a position higher up in the Atlanta front office. If he was still an active GM, I would think he would have to make the list (same goes for Walt Jocketty and Terry Ryan...a lot of good GM's stepped down after last season).

 

As for Cashman's ill-fated signing of Kei Igawa, I think that was more of a pressure move from the Steinbrenners to respond to losing out on the Dice-K sweepstakes. They went after Dice-K hard and it was a rare occasion where the Yankees lost a bidding war. Signing Igawa was a panic move that was doomed to fail -- the guy's numbers in Japan weren't even all that special...he was basically just junkballing lefty innings-eater over there; I don't know what else the Yankees could have expected over here in the States, let alone in the AL East. With that said, the Yankees seem to think that he could potentially slide into their 5th rotation spot sometime this season and hopefully do well enough to keep Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen. The fact that Igawa's going to get another shot to stick as a 5th starter this year is proof that most teams are lucky to have 4 quality starters and that the Brewers are really lucky to have 6 or 7 of them.

[TooLiveBrew]

As for Cashman's ill-fated signing of Kei Igawa, I think that was more of a pressure move from the Steinbrenners to respond to losing out on the Dice-K sweepstakes. They went after Dice-K hard and it was a rare occasion where the Yankees lost a bidding war. Signing Igawa was a panic move that was doomed to fail -- the guy's numbers in Japan weren't even all that special...he was basically just junkballing lefty innings-eater over there; I don't know what else the Yankees could have expected over here in the States, let alone in the AL East.

 

That's a great synopsis imo.

 

 

I don't think Vargas is that much (if at all) better than Igawa. Right now, Wang, Pettite, Moose, Kennedy, & Hughes are all ahead of Kei, so any 'competing' he's doing is for AAA & then 'first called-up due to injury' status. Obviously if you throw Chamberlin in the mix, that puts Igawa at #7.

[TooLiveBrew]

brewcrewreview's comment was a direct response to another poster claiming that people here on BF.net could do a better job as NYY GM than Ca$hman.

[DougJones43]

brewcrewreview's comment was a direct response to another poster claiming that people here on BF.net could do a better job as NYY GM than Ca$hman.

 

I don't think that post was meant to be taken literally. Point taken, however. I'll remove the post as it isn't really warranted.

 

And for what it's worth, I agree that using W-L and/or playoff appearances isn't a great metric. However, I think that you need to prove you can have some success in that regard before you can really be considered a top ten GM. I mean, even with the discepency in circumstances, that is the ultimate goal right? Like Russ said, now that DM has had time and a decent payroll to work with, results need to be part of ultimately judging his performance.

[Tbadder]

I respectfully disagree. I do think there are at least ten of us who could manage the Yankees better than Cashman has. Lets not sell ourselves short here boys and girls. Many of us work at complex jobs that carry responsiblity, but very few of us have the support and infrastructure to handle the complexities. Cashman has enormous resources at his disposal--both in monies and people. In the case of the Brewers think about how Ash and Jack Z. make things easier and more efficient. Now I'm not saying there's not a legitmate counterpoint here, but there's also a ton of hyper intelligent Brewerfan members who not only understand baseball but also have a mix of savvy and common sense that a GM needs.

[TooLiveBrew]

there's also a ton of hyper intelligent Brewerfan members who not only understand baseball but also have a mix of savvy and common sense that a GM needs.

 

While this is true,

 

 

I respectfully disagree. I do think there are at least ten of us who could manage the Yankees better than Cashman has.

 

I can't find any way to agree with that part.