2019 MLB Season: The AL East’s best GM in 2019? Not him

Brian Cashman’s Yankees may have won the division title, but the guy pictured above actually did more to improve his team during the 2019 MLB season.

With each passing season, the role of front offices generally – and general managers in particular – grows in significance. The recent departures of such veteran field managers as Joe Maddon and Clint Hurdle should provide fresh evidence of that for any still requiring such evidence.

Front offices are assuming increasing roles in the determination of game strategy. Yet by far their most important role remains what it has always been: the accumulation of talent. Anybody who has ever hired or fired an employee – or drawn up a budget – understands the vital nature of such decisions.

In the American League East, five men held primary responsibility for front office decision-making during the 2019 MLB season.  Those five are Mike Elias of the Baltimore Orioles, the recently fired Dave Dombrowski of the Boston Red Sox, Brian Cashman of the New York Yankees, Erik Neander of the Tampa Bay Rays, and Ross Atkins of the Toronto Blue Jays. Although none acted alone or dictatorially, they are the faces of the processes by which their respective clubs were assembled.

Obviously not all began the season operating on the same plane. Cashman and Dombrowski had both more money and more talent on hand than Elias, who inherited a woeful Oriole team and whose focus thus had to be on long-term versus short-term growth.

Having conceded that, the most valid question remains: To what degree did each man – and each front office he directs – improve his team during the 2019 MLB season?

The method of evaluating the answer to that question isn’t all that complicated. We’ve assigned a value to all player-related movements occurring since the conclusion of the 2018 season. That value is determined by Wins Above Average, a zero-based variant of Wins Above Replacement.

For each GM, the calculation considers his positive or negative impact on his team in five respects: players acquired in deals with other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim; players traded, sold or waived to other teams; players signed at free agency or extended (beyond the normal; beyond the normal period of team control); players released onto the open market; and players who considered rookies.

For each GM, there is a summary of his performance followed by a brief synopsis of the numerical weight of their performance in each of the five categories and their total rating. Any rating above 0.0 represents the number of games by which a GM improved his team’s talent base, and any negative rating denotes regression. The average will always be about 0.0.

One important note: These ratings do not always follow the standings. A team may succeed because of its talent base on hand rather than due to what the GM did to that talent base. What we’re measuring here is only the impact of personnel decisions made since the end of the 2018 season.

For purposes of context, the best performance of the 2018 season was +10.2 by Milwaukee’s David Stearns. The worst was -20.5 by Miami’s Mike Hill.

In order of the standings, here’s how the five AL East GMs rated.

2019 MLB Season: The AL East’s best GM

Brian Cashman, New York Yankees

Cashman’s Yankees flew to the AL East pennant, they won 14 of 19 from the Red Sox, New York took the division by seven games, and pre-season pickups such as D.J. LeMahieu and Mike Tauchman starred. What’s to criticize?

A few things, as it turns out.

Cashman’s acquisition of LeMahieu, as innocuous as it seemed at the time, turned out to be genius when virtually his entire infield came up sore. Playing at least 40 games at first, second and third bases, LeMahieu batted .327 to finish second in the American League batting race. Mike Tauchman, obtained in what appeared to be an inconsequential trade with the Colorado Rockies, generated the offense’s third-highest WAA.

Overall Cashman signed or re-signed 13 players prior to or during the season, and they produced a combined 9.5 WAA. A full half dozen netted a half-game or better to the New York cause.

Yet the facts provide a more neutral assessment of Cashman’s season. As good as he was at acquiring talent, he also let a lot of talent leave town. A lot of talent. Begin with Sonny Gray, who following his January trade to Cincinnati for nothing, in particular, produced an 11-8, 2.87 season for the Reds that translated to 4.1 WAA out the door.

Cashman released Lance Lynn, who went to Texas and generated a 16-11 record, a 3.67 ERA and a 5.7 WAA. He took a training camp look at Gio Gonzalez, said no thanks, and Gonzalez produced a 3.50 ERA in 17 starts for Milwaukee.

The departures more than offset all the talent Cashman brought into the organization, resulting in a modest -2.0 short-term assessment of his moves. What saved Cashman and the Yankees was what always saves them: their long-term core. That core of previously signed players improved New York by more than 13 games. That’s standard procedure in the Bronx, and it’s also why they won the AL East.

Short-term acquisitions: +2.9

Short-term trade losses: -3.9

Short-term free agent signings: +9.5

Short-term free agent losses: -7.1

Short-term rookie production: -3.4

Short-term total: -2.0

2019 MLB Season: The AL East’s best GM

Erik Neander, Tampa Bay Rays

Neander’s Rays operated in the vast shadow of the dominant Yankees. For that reason, it became easy to overlook several of the Tampa Bay GM’s moves that elevated his team to post-season status.

Begin with the signing of Charlie Morton to a three-year, $45 million deal. Morton responded with a 16-6 record, 3.05 ERA and 3.3 WAA. Morton was just one of seven signings who generated a net 5.3 WAA  to the Rays’ cause. Who saw that coming?

The December three-team trade that brought in Emilio Pagan added another 1.4 WAA, much of the reason why the Rays improved by 2 games at the trade table.

He also displayed judgment in the players he shipped away from Tampa St. Pete. Since the end of the 2018 season, the Rays traded away 11 players, creating a net 2.3 game improvement to the team by their absences.

As with most teams, Neander’s rookie class stumbled through freshman orientation. Tampa used seven first-year players to a cumulative -1.4 game impact. At the same time, former rookies did far better, producing a net +3.7 score. At +2.2, 2018 rookie Willie Adames led that group.

Although Neander won’t get nearly the post-season accolade that will come to Cashman, he actually had a substantially better season. His problem was his inability to start from as strong a base as Cashman.

Short-term acquisitions: +2.0

Short-term trade losses: +2.3

Short-term free-agent signings: +5.3

Short-term free-agent losses: +0.1

Short-term rookie production: -1.2

Short-term total: +8.5

2019 MLB Season: The AL East’s best GM

Dave Dombrowski, Boston Red Sox

Dombrowski was fired as president of baseball operations both due to the team’s on-field failures and because of philosophical differences with Red Sox management.

His actual personnel decisions, the focus of this analysis, managed to net a modestly positive short-term impact on the 2019 Sox. But the disappointing performance decline of the team’s core fatally undermined that small positive step and torpedoed playoff hopes.

That long-term core – the heart of virtually every team – managed only a +1.9 score. Compare that with the +13.2 long-term score produced by Brian Cashman’s Yankees, or the +8.3 a far less distinguished core generated for Tampa Bay’s Erik Neander.

Of that world championship core, Chris Sale, David Price, Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez alone saw their performances decline by a combined 13.6 games in the 2019 MLB season. Admittedly that quartet had set a formidable bar in 2018 – Betts was the American League’s Most Valuable Player – but their production falloff proved impossible to offset.

Dombroski tried to offset those losses, but his acquisitions and signings/re-signings – Andrew Cashner, Steve Pearce, Jhoulys Chacin, Nathan Eovaldi – never had a chance to generate that kind of production.

Nor did Boston’s rookie class provide re-enforcements. The most highly touted of a dozen first-year players, infielder Michael Chavis, managed only a .254 average and fanned 127 times. Eight of those rookies were pitchers; they worked a combined nearly 300 innings and did net 2.1 WAA. That’s good for a rookie group, but way short of what was needed to offset the core’s failures.

Short-term acquisitions: -0.1

Short-term trade losses: +1.2

Short-term free agent signings: -2.9

Short-term free agent losses: +3.4

Short-term rookie production: -0.6

Short-term total: +1.0

2019 MLB Season: The AL East’s best GM

Mike Elias, Baltimore Orioles

Nobody could have had high expectations when Mike Elias was named last October to take control of the woeful Orioles. It’s no surprise, then, that Baltimore finished deep in the AL East cellar, and that Elias failed to do anything to upgrade the on-field performance.

Indeed, his -7.0 short-term score was easily the division’s worst, and among the worst in baseball. That’s not a criticism of Elias; given the sorry talent base he began with any short-term upgrade would have been ephemeral and pointless.

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Instead, what Elias tried to do was accumulate talent for future growth. Elias acquired or purchased 15 players in deals with other teams, and if any of them eventually become stars perhaps they will redeem Elias’ 2019 reputation.

Among them, the best was probably pitcher Asher Wojciechowski and infielder Hansel Alberto.  Wojciechowski went 4-8 in 16 starts, compiling a 4.92 ERA following his July 1 purchase from Cleveland. In Baltimore, those are considered promising numbers.

Alberto, selected off waivers from San Francisco in March, batted .305 in 550 plate appearances while generally shifting between second and third.

As might be expected, the Orioles dabbled only lightly in the free-agent market. Elias did sign pitcher Dan Straily to a minimum dollar deal in April, then sold him to Philadelphia at the trade deadline.

Among the rookies, pitcher John Means was easily the star. A 26-year-old, Means managed a 12-11 record and 3.60 ERA, not bad for a team that only won 54 games during the 2019 MLB season.

Short-term acquisitions: -7.0

Short-term trade losses: +2.9

Short-term free agent signings: -2.3

Short-term free agent losses: +2.7

Short-term rookie production: -3.3

Short-term total: -7.0