MLB: Ranking the decade’s best general managers
By Bill Felber
MLB: Ranking the decade’s best general managers
7. Andrew Friedman, +67.0 games (Rays, 2010-14, Dodgers, 2019)
Forced to take one general manager to turn a franchise around, you’d be hard-pressed to identify a better choice than Andrew Friedman. The Rays were awful when he took it over and inside of two years he put it in the World Series.
The Dodgers were so impressed by Friedman that they lured him to be president of the organization following the 2014 season, in the process rebranding their own very successful GM, Ned Colletti, as “senior advisor”.
The odd thing is that Friedman has perhaps the least typical resume of any modern GM.
An avid baseball player as a youth, his career, and plans were cut short by an injury while playing college ball at Tulane. Instead, following graduation in 1999 Friedman put his classroom knowledge to work as a young and successful analyst for major investment firms. That success brought him in touch with Stuart Sternberg, who at the time was putting together a syndicate to purchase the Devil Rays from Vincent Namoli. When Sternberg sealed the deal in 2004, he hired Friedman as director of baseball development. Friedman succeeded Chuck LaMar as GM following the 2005 season.
Since Friedman was not yet 30, many assumed his hiring represented one more desperate “save a buck” measure by the new ownership of a futile franchise. Wrong. Drafting brilliantly — Jeremy Hellickson, David Price, Reid Brignac – Friedman built a foundation. In 2008, that foundation exploded upon the American League East. The Rays, who had won just 66 games a season before, won 97, knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs altogether, and reached the World Series before losing in five games to the Phillies.
The Rays repeated in 2009, then made the post-season again in 2011. In 2012, for the first time, Friedman’s moves backfired, actually costing Tampa a playoff spot. But it cemented his reputation as a mover and shaker, representing the third season in four that his decisions had been the reason for his team’s success or failure.
Moving to LA, he hired Farhan Zaidi as general manager, then opened up the checkbooks to record levels. It bought Friedman an NL West championship and a first-round playoff exit in five games at the hands of the New York Mets.
When Zaidi left for San Francisco following the 2018 season, Friedman calculated that he could do the GM job as well as anybody he could hire. His various moves improved the already strong Dodgers by 9.4 games, although the vagaries of post-season play caused them to bow out to the surprising Washington Nationals in the Division Series round.