2019 MLB Season: Rating the AL Central general managers

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(Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images) /

The Minnesota Twins GM deserves plenty of credit. Other AL Central GMs, notably Al Avila and Dayton Moore, face questions as the 2019 MLB season concludes.

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 helped set salary levels – understands the vital nature of such decisions.

In the American League Central, five men held primary responsibility for front office decision-making during 2019. Those five are Rick Hahn of the Chicago White Sox, Michael Chernoff of the Cleveland Indians, Alex Avila of the Detroit Tigers, Dayton Moore of the Kansas City Royals and Thad Levine of the Minnesota Twins. Although none acted alone or dictatorially, they are the faces of the processes by which their respected clubs were assembled.

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 David Hill.

Here’s how the five AL Central GMs rated.

2019 MLB Season: The AL Central’s best GM

Thad Levine (Derek Falvey), Minnesota Twins

With the exception of Atlanta’s Alex Anthopoulos, Levine played a larger role in his team’s success this season than any GM in MLB.

In concert with Twins chief baseball officer Derek Falvey, his maneuvering since the conclusion of the 2018 season added 11.5 games of talent to the Twins roster. Minnesota qualified for post-season play by a margin of eight games. It is no great stretch to argue that Levine and Falvey manipulated the Twins into the playoffs.

The most significant chunk of that improvement lay in their decision to tie up budding star Jorge Polanco via a deal guaranteeing Polanco $22 million through 2023 with additional options for two additional seasons. Polanco returned the favor with a .295 average and +3.5 WAA.

The free-agent signing of Nelson Cruz got a lot more attention, particularly when Cruz went on a home run binge that only stopped at 41. Cruz was worth another 2.6 WAA.

Overall, Levine and Falvey signed or re-signed 11 players during the 2019 MLB season, and four of them returned a value in excess of +1.0 WAA.

Although the performance of Minnesota’s rookie class was not sensational, as a group it required less of a learning curve than is normally the case. The average impact of a major league rookie class is roughly -1.0 WAA – call it a natural learning curve – but Levine’s Twins produced a half-game of positive value for their new team.

The best was probably utility player Luis Arreaz, whose .334 average translated to a +0.6 WAA while he shifted across virtually every position on the field.

Levine and Falvey also displayed a discerning ear for when to say farewell. He detached nine players from the 2018 roster who landed with different teams either through trades, sales or via free agency. Not a single one of the nine produced any positive value for their new teams.

Short-term acquisitions: -0.7

Short-term trade losses: +1.5

Short-term free agent signings: +7.4

Short-term free agent losses: +2.8

Short-term rookie production: +0.5

Short-term total: +11.5

2019 MLB Season: The AL Central’s best GM

Mike Chernoff (Chris Antonetti), Cleveland Indians

Chernoff (and his boss, team president Chris Antonetti) faced a major challenge entering the 2019 MLB season, continuing Cleveland’s recent dominance of the AL Central in the face of accelerating budget issues. They nearly pulled it off, the Indians staying in contention for post-season play until the final weekend.

As it was, the Indians won 93 games, a total that would have guaranteed them a post-season berth any year since 2011 except this one. In fact, Cleveland won the AL Central last season with two fewer victories than the Indians achieved this year.

In the end, Chernoff’s report card showed a largely uneventful performance that had little measurable impact on his team’s success. Cleveland’s fate may have been influenced more by ace pitcher Cory Kluber’s injury, or by his poor performance when healthy, than by anything the front office did.

The most notable thing the front office did was trade frontline starter Trevor Bauer to Cincinnati in July in the hope of jolting the team’s offense to life. In exchange for Bauer, the Indians got Yasiel Puig from the Reds and Franmil Reyes from San Diego.

Puig brought a .297 average but only two home runs and a -0.2 WAA to Cleveland. Reyes, a 23-year-old outfielder with some believe star potential, was a short-term flop, batting just .237 with a -0.6 WAA. Given Bauer’s equally lackluster showing in his new Reds uniform, it would be a stretch to argue that the deal backfired on the Indians…but it is no stretch to contend that it failed to live up to the short-term hype.

When teams resort to budget reductions as the Indians did during the 2019 MLB season, it generally means they must rely on farm system talent to gain, or maintain, pennant race altitude. Chernoff (and Antonetti) promoted nine first-year players to the major league club, among whom Aaron Civale stood out. In 10 stretch run starts, Civale went 3-4 with a 2.34 ERA good for a +1.1 WAA.

But that was about it. The group as a whole netted the team just +0.7 WAA, which means everybody other than Civale had a net negative impact. Beyond that, Chernoff and Antonetti may have shipped off their best asset, selling minor leaguer Asher Wojciechowski to Baltimore in July. With the Orioles, Wojciechowski went 4-8 with a 4.92 ERA, but generated 0.6 WAA.

The synoptic assessment of Chernoff’s season is, in a word, ordinary. Nothing he did hurt Cleveland’s pennant prospects, but nothing he did helped those prospects either.

Short-term acquisitions: -0.3

Short-term trade losses: +0.6

Short-term free agent signings: -0.2

Short-term free agent losses: +0.2

Short-term rookie production: +0.7

Short-term total: +1.0

(Photo by Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images) /

2019 MLB Season: The AL Central’s best GM

Rick Hahn, Chicago White Sox

This was supposed to be the season the White Sox began reaping the benefits of the tearing-down they underwent a couple of seasons ago. Certainly there was an improvement; Chicago’s 72 wins marked an inarguable 10-game improvement, and several of the team’s projected stars – notably Eloy Jimenez, Yoan Moncada, and Lucas Giolito – plainly improved.

Still there remains that matter of the yawning 28 and one-half game gap between the Sox and he division lead, a chasm that did not shrink from the depths of the teardown. That makes it an open question of how much ground Hahn’s rebuilding process has actually made up.

Contrary to the hopes and dreams of South Side fans, the raw data suggests that Hahn’s plan hasn’t yet escaped reverse. The collective impact of his 2018 moves was -6.5 games, a total that would be hard to overcome even if the team’s developing core was generating victories.

The problem was that core didn’t generate positive movement. True, the faces of the rebuild – Jimenez, Moncada and Giolito – did produce a collective +6.4 games of WAA in 2019. But the rest of the Sox nucleus – 19 players under control for 2019 prior to the end of the 2018 season – netted –7.9 games of impact.

Six – Wellington Castillo, Daniel Palka, Daniel Covey, Reynaldo Lopez, Charlie Tilson, and Jose Rondon – hampered the rebuild by at least one full game each. That’s a lot of dead weight for the youngsters to lug around.

Hahn’s short-term report card was actually negative in all five categories, by amounts ranging up to -2.1 games for the players he acquired in deals with other teams. That notably included first baseman/DH Yonder Alonso, obtained from Cleveland in exchange for a minor leaguer in December and released in July to minimize the damage imposed by his -1.8 WAA.

Short-term acquisitions: -2.1

Short-term trade losses: -0.4

Short-term free agent signings: -1.7

Short-term free agent losses: -0.3

Short-term rookie production: -2.0

Short-term total: -6.5

2019 MLB Season: The AL Central’s best GM

Dayton Moore, Kansas City Royals

With a young and hopefully developing team, Moore made the logical decision to pursue development through the farm system. That strategy flopped, saddling the Royals with their second successive 100-loss season.

Moore’s plan for the season leaned heavily on 15 first-year prospects called to the big leagues at one point or another during the year. Seven were pitchers, including Glenn Sparkman, who made 23 starts and worked 136 innings.

That investment may someday pay off. But for the 2019 MLB season, those seven pitchers contributed -4.2 WAA to the cause. Among the 15 rookies overall, the best short-term score was reliever Jake Newberry’s +0.3 in 31 innings of work; their cumulative impact was -7.9 games.

In other aspects of team-building, Moore was understandably more conservative. He signed or re-signed only nine free agents to a net impact of -1.4 WAA. Easily the most productive was the extension given to Whit Merrifield, who returned 1.7 WAA on that extension.

Moore slow-walked the trade market, obtaining only five second-line figures in deals with other teams. They netted a cumulative -0.3 WAA.

As for players exiting the organization, that barely happened. The Royals lost not a single player to free agency who subsequently played for another big-league team, and they traded away or sold just five. The most prominent were pitchers Homer Bailey and Jake Diekman (to Oakland) and catcher Martin Maldonado, traded to Chicago for Mike Montgomery in July. The net impact of those five departures was a flat 0.0.

It will be interesting to see whether Moore’s job security is influenced by the team’s pending sale. Moore has an extensive track record highlighted by the 2015 World Series championship. But he also has back-to-back horrible seasons, and there is a natural tendency on the part of any new ownership group to want to install its own people.

Short-term acquisitions: -0.3

Short-term trade losses: 0.0

Short-term free agent signings: -1.4

Short-term free agent losses: 0.0

Short-term rookie production: -7.9

Short-term total: -9.6

Detroit Tigers Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Al Avila. (Photo by Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images) /

2019 MLB Season: The AL Central’s best GM

Al Avila, Detroit Tigers

As with Mike Hill in Miami, it is not entirely clear why Tiger ownership hasn’t invited Avila to ponder the joys of retirement.

Granted, Detroit’s ability to build a successful team is hampered by the finances. Detroit already commits the highest percentage of overall revenues to on-field payroll, so asking for more budget flexibility probably isn’t an option.

At the same time, teams such as Tampa Bay and Oakland contend for playoff spots with far less financial resources than the Tigers, who are a combined 137 games under .500 since Avila took charge five seasons ago.

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Beyond that, all of the major financial constraints hamstringing the Tigers – notably the $30 million annually they owe Miguel Cabrera through 2025 –were signed on Avila’s watch.

It requires a deep dive into the Tigers roster to identify a player one can confidently project as a future star. Among position players with more than 100 plate appearances, only Victor Reyes finished with a positive contribution based on WAA…and that was just +0.3. Who else is there to believe in? Willi Castro? Travis Demeritte? Dawel Lugo?

The pitching staff was slightly more productive. Veteran starters Matthew Boyd and Daniel Norris both topped +1.0 WAA, albeit with ERAs of 4.90 and 4.68 respectively.

Getting back to Avila, he traded for five major leaguers, Demeritte (1.7) and Brandon Dixon (-1.6) being the most impactful. He signed or re-signed nine others, among them journeyman pitcher Edwin Jackson (-1.2) and veteran infielder Gordon Beckham (-1.4).

Pitcher Spencer Turnbull (3-17, 4.61 ERA, +0.9 WAA) may eventually blossom into the reliable starter the Tigers hoped for when they gave him 30 mound assignments. But it hasn’t happened yet. Nor, for the duration of Avila’s experience, has anything positive.

MLB Players Power Rankings: Top 10 Hitters in 2019. dark. Next

Short-term acquisitions: -5.0

Short-term trade losses: -0.9

Short-term free agent signings: -4.4

Short-term free agent losses: -1.5

Short-term rookie production: -6.2

Short-term total: -18.0

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