Erik Neander has maneuvered the Tampa Bay Rays into a contending position during the 2019 MLB season
Wonder why the Tampa Bay Rays have been able to hang so closely to the New York Yankees in the AL East? Look no further than the job done this off-season by Rays general manager Erik Neander.
Neander’s various personnel moves have improved the Rays by 7.9 Wins Wins Above Average through the mid-season. That is the best performance by any general manager in MLB.
It’s also significantly better than any other GM in the division, including Yankees’ GM Brian Cashman or Dave Dombrowski, president and GM of the world champion Boston Red Sox.
This is the last of six articles through the All Star break looking at the impacts of general manager moves. Teams are 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 contractually obligated to the team since before the end of the 2018, meaning their performances do not figure into this rating.
All we are interested in here is the impact of personnel decisions made since the end of the 2018 season. 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 AL East teams have done to date.