Among AL West GMs, Houston Astros Jeff Luhnow rules

Rating the division’s general managers for their 2019 performance

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 West, the five general managers are: Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers, Jerry DiPoto, Seattle Mariners, Bill Eppler, Los Angeles Angels, David Forst (with Billy Beane), Oakland Athletics, and Jeff Luhnow, Houston Astros.

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 – improve his team during the 2019 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 are 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 the order in which the teams finished, here’s how the five AL West GMs rated.