2019 MLB Season: Rating the NL East general managers

Alex Anthopoulos put together an exceptional 2019 MLB season, boosting his team to the division title. For Miami’s Mike Hill, the story was less rewarding.

With each passing MLB season, the role of front offices generally – and general managers in particular – grow 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 helped set salary levels – understands the vital nature of such decisions.

In the National League East, five men held primary responsibility for front office decision-making during the 2019 MLB season.  Those five are Brody Van Wagenen of the New York Mets, Alex Anthopoulos of the Atlanta Braves, Matt Klentak of the Philadelphia Phillies, Mike Rizzo of the Washington Nationals and Mike Hill of the Miami Marlins. Although none acted alone or dictatorially, they are the faces of the processes by which their respected clubs were assembled.

Obviously not all began the season operating on the same plane. In Miami, Hill is bound by financial constraints that do not affect VanWagenen or Klentak to the same extent.

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

The method of evaluating the answer to that question isn’t all that complicated. For every general manager, 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.

Here’s how the five NL East GMs rated fort the 2019 MLB season.

2019 MLB Season: The NL East’s best GM

Alex Anthopoulos, Atlanta Braves

Three players fueled the Atlanta offense in 2019, and Alex Anthopoulos’ fingerprints are all over each of them.

It was Anthopoulos who pulled the trigger on the one-year signing of Josh Donaldson for mega-money. Given Donaldson’s injury history, that signing was wide open to second-guessing, but it paid huge dividends. Donaldson delivered 37 home runs, 94 RBIs and a +4.0 WAA, the team’s best.

Anthopoulos also pulled the trigger on the re-signings of the Braves’ two young phenoms, Ozzie Albies – for seven seasons — and Ronald Acuna for eight. Together they contributed another +6.0 WAA.

Those three decisions alone enhanced Anthopoulos’ short-term resume by a full 10.0 games.

That wasn’t all. The mid-season signing of pitcher Dallas Keuchel added 1.1 WAA and a 3.75 WAA in 19 starts. Mike Soroka came up from the minors and went 13-4 with a 2.68 ERA in 29 starts, good for another 4.2 WAA.

With every GM, the impact of most moves is less profound, and that includes Anthopoulos. But subtleties add up, too. Of 33 players moved onto the Atlanta roster this season, two-thirds produced positive values. Not a single one generated a value of -1.0 or worse.

Add everything up and you realize you are looking at the best GM performance for 2019 in the NL East … and probably in all of MLB.

Short-term acquisitions: +0.2

Short-term trade losses: 0.0

Short-term free agent signings: +11.0

Short-term free agent losses: +1.8

Short-term rookie production: +2.1

Short-term total: +15.1

2019 MLB Season: The NL East’s best GM

Mike Rizzo, Washington Nationals

Irrespective of anything Rizzo did during the 2019 MLB season, he’ll probably be best remembered for something he didn’t do. When the team lost 19 of its first 50 games, Rizzo didn’t fire manager Dave Martinez. The Nats responded to that vote of confidence by finishing 74-38 and winning the first NL wild card.

It was a smart hands-off move, and it capped a decent, if not spectacular year for Rizzo, who has established himself as a consistent short-term artist. Following a rocky debut as GM in 2010, Rizzo has improved the Nats short-term in eight of the ensuing nine seasons, and by an average of more than four games per season.

His 3.1 game upgrade in 2019 was pretty much in line with that history.

Rizzo did it by working two areas: free agency and his farm system. From the Nats’ system came the heralded Victor Robles, contributing 2.1 WAA as the regular center fielder. Less heralded but nearly as impactful was the September promotion of minor league journeyman pitcher Austin Voth. He started four games down the stretch, compiling a 3.30 ERA and +0.9 WAA.

At the free agent table, Rizzo made three steals. The most heralded was his December signing of pitcher Patrick Corbin through 2024 at amounts varying from $12 million to $35 million annually. In the short-term, anyway, Corbin made Rizzo look like a genius, going 14-7 with a 3.25 ERA.

Less heralded, but also useful, was Rizzo’s signing of Anibal Sanchez for two years at $13 million. Sanchez delivered an 11-8 record and +2.3 WAA.  And as a fillip, he got Asdrubal Cabrera on the cheap three days after Texas released him in August. Cabrera batted .323 during the pennant stretch and contributed 1.0 WAA.

Short-term acquisitions: 0.0

Short-term trade losses: -1.6

Short-term free agent signings: +3.2

Short-term free agent losses: -0.2

Short-term rookie production: +1.7

Short-term total: +3.1

2019 MLB Season: The NL East’s best GM

Brody Van Wagenen, New York Mets

The 2019 MLB season was Van Wagenen’s debut season as the Mets general manager displayed noteworthy strengths and exploitable weaknesses.

It’s tempting to dismiss the strengths in two words: Pete Alonso. Yes, critics might argue, Van Wagenen had the wisdom to call him up to the majors, but that’s a Captain Obvious-level decision, so what of it?

Although inarguable, that dismissal is a bit unfair to Van Wagenen, who also less obviously showed a fine eye for assessing talent that may or may not be worth keeping.  During the course of his first general managerial season, Van Wagenen sold or traded six Mets who saw major league service for their new teams. Five of those six experienced down seasons for those new teams.

Part of any team’s success lies in knowing when to cut ties with a player. Van Wagenen appears to know when it’s time to say good-bye.

He also had the good sense to get ace Jacob deGrom to agree to an extension through 2023, which deGrom repaid with another Cy Young-worthy season. His 11-8, 2.43 ERA in 32 starts translated to +5.6 WAA.

Van Wagenen was measurably less successful in actually extracting talent for the Mets in exchange for the departing players. For an executive with a reputation as a deal-maker, it was a problematic failure. The December acquisition of Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz from Seattle in exchange for five second-tier players was heralded at the time as sheer genius. Cano was supposed to stabilize New York’s infield, while Diaz was the perceived closer the team had needed.

In retrospect, the deal more nearly amounted to an exchange of full garbage cans. Cano batted .256 with little power while Diaz blew several late-season, mission-critical saves. Based on cumulative impact, their presence cost the Mets two games in the standings. The Mets fell three games short of the second wild card, so while the deal didn’t turn out to be a poison pill, it was also hardly less than a vitamin.

Short-term acquisitions: -4.1

Short-term trade losses: +2.5

Short-term free agent signings: +3.3

Short-term free agent losses: -1.5

Short-term rookie production: +0.8

Short-term total: +1.0

2019 MLB Season: The NL East’s best GM

Mike Hill, Miami Marlins

Derek Jeter must be an extremely patient boss. How else to explain Hill’s continued presence in Miami’s decision-making chair?

For the third consecutive season – which is to say for literally every day Hill has worked for Jeter and Marlins owner Bruce Sherman – he produced one of the majors’ worst performance records. While it’s easy, and to a degree accurate, to ascribe Hill’s problems to payroll-related management restrictions, it’s also true that other GMs find ways to work around those strictures. Tampa Bay and Oakland are both in this year’s post-season despite the majors’ smallest and third smallest payrolls.

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Hill’s shortcomings are manifest, but especially noticeable in the players he brings into the Marlins’ fold. This season he obtained nine players via trade, waiver claim or purchase, none of whom produced a WAA in excess of +0.2 games. The net impact of the nine on the Marlins fortunes was -4.1 games.

Another nine arrived via the open market. There was a day not long ago when Curtis Granderson had value to a team, but that day is not today. In exchange for the $1.75 million the Marlins gave Granderson, he gave them a .183 average, 98 strikeouts, and a -1.7 WAA. When the Blue Jays got tired of nursing Harold Ramirez through their minor league system, Hill signed him and pronounced him a big leaguer. Ramirez responded with a weak on-base average, 91 strikeouts and a -1.2 WAA.

Miami’s rookie crop produced one player of value this season, pitcher Zac Gallen. In seven starts, he put together a 2.72 ERA, fanning 43 in 36 innings…so the Marlins traded him to Arizona.

Short-term acquisitions: -2.9

Short-term trade losses: -3.5

Short-term free agent signings: -4.4

Short-term free agent losses: +1.8

Short-term rookie production: -1.0

Short-term total: -10.0