MLB impact: Ranking baseball’s decision makers for 2018: Part 1
By Bill Felber
31. Mike Hill, Miami Marlins, -20.8 games
Hill’s owner-driven destruction of the Marlins got headlines during the winter of 2018-19. He traded away reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton, future NL MVP Christian Yelich, and slugger Marcel Ozuna, as it turns out shipping +8.0 games of net value to other teams.
In exchange, he got Starlin Castro (+1.2), Lewis Brinson (-1.5), Sandy Alcantara (+0.2), Magneuris Sierra (-1.8), and seven minor leaguers. The sum is close to a 10-game movement out of town.
Hill tried to offset that drain by stocking up on low-cost free agents, mostly names that have habituated the fringes of big league activity. You’ve heard casually of most of them: Cameron Maybin, J.B. Shuck, Dan Straily, Javy Guerra and Bryan Holaday. The net impact of those moves was about what you would expect: -7.4 games of WAA.
Finally, the Marlins relied on a dozen farm system products. The best, outfielder Brian Anderson, batted .273 with 11 home runs, 65 RBIs and a +1.8 WAA. But the other 11 netted -5.9 WAA.
In defense of Hill, he obviously was merely doing the work of his new bosses, who ordered a payroll reduction. The bottom line, though, was that Hill produced the 16th worst season in the history of baseball general management, and he became one of only 22 GMs ever to hurt his team by 20 games or more in a single season. Still, it was only the second worst GM performance in Marlins history. Under similar circumstances in 1998, Dave Dombrowski’s dismantling of the world champion Marlins netted out at -39.1 games.