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2019 MLB Season: Rating the NL Central GMs

By Bill Felber

CINCINNATI, OH - JUNE 02: Sonny Gray #54 of the Cincinnati Reds pitches during a game against the Washington Nationals at Great American Ball Park on June 2, 2019 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Nationals won 4-1. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
CINCINNATI, OH - JUNE 02: Sonny Gray #54 of the Cincinnati Reds pitches during a game against the Washington Nationals at Great American Ball Park on June 2, 2019 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Nationals won 4-1. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images) /

From best to worst, evaluating the performances of the five general managers running NL Central teams for the 2019 MLB season.

So far this 2019 MLB season, the NL Central is the most cutthroat division in baseball, and it shows up in the mid-season ratings of the five teams’ general managers.

Those ratings are generally positive, and they’re also competitive. Only 3.9 games separate the first four GMs in the rating. Only one of the five front office executives has a negative rating.

As a group, the talent base in the NL Central has improved by a total of 7.0 games since the end of the 2018 season. That’s measured by Wins Above Average, a zero-based variant of Wins Above Replacement.

This is the third of a series of six articles through the All-Star break looking at the impacts of general manager moves. Teams will be analyzed on a division-by-division basis. WAA is the preferred method of assessment because it possesses all the statistical advantages of WAR while being pegged to the average performance of a current major league player rather than to a replacement player. That means an average score is, quite conveniently, 0.0.

Because teams are judged only on the basis of moves made since the end of the previous season, the assessment won’t necessarily mirror the standings. Some teams are populated principally by players who were contractually obligated to the team since before the end of 2018, meaning their performances do not figure into this rating.

Nor do the decisions made by field managers, since they cannot be quantified. That means however important the winter decision to hire David Bell was to Cincinnati’s fortunes, his hiring is not part of the equation.

All we are interested in here is the impact of player personnel decisions made since the end of the 2018 season. Still, those decisions could take several forms: acquiring a player by trade or sale, trading or selling a player, signing a free agent, extending a player already on your team to a new contract carrying into his normal free agent years, or allowing a player to leave via free agency.

Use of players who retain rookie status also counts.

From best to worst, here’s how the GMs of the five NL Central teams have done to date.

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