2021 MLB general manager ratings: The NL East

Much was expected of NL East teams in 2021. The Mets, Braves, Phillies, and sometimes Nats all were widely projected as legitimate postseason threats.

In the end, the fact that only the Braves made it – and they with the worst record of any postseason team – justifies the conclusion that the NL East division was largely a disappointment.

The same was true of the teams’ general managers. Only two of the five people who run NL East teams produced a positive impact by his or her personnel decisions in 2021. The average impact of an NL East general manager on team performance this past season was -1.7 games.

Our standard for evaluating the performance of a MLB general manager (or other chief executive who holds a functionally similar title) is simple. We attach a value to every personnel move made since the conclusion of the 2020 season last October. The sum of the values is the GM’s rating.

The value is determined by the Wins Above Average (WAA) generated by the player during 2021. WAA is an offshoot of WAR, and it is ideal for this purpose because unlike WAR it is zero-based. That means if we say a GM impacted a team by +2.5 games in 2021, that general manager cumulatively improved the team’s fortunes by that many games.

Conversely, a GM with a negative cumulative WAA can be said to have hurt the team’s pennant prospects by that amount.

Broadly speaking, an MLB general manager can impact a team in any of five ways: by trades, purchase and waiver claims, by free agent signings or extensions, by farm system callups, by the players traded away or sold, and by the players who are released or lost to free agency.

Each general manager should, of course, be judged in the context of what they are attempting to accomplish. As an example, Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer conducted a midseason teardown of his roster that was virtually guaranteed to produce a negative rating for Hoyer by season’s end.

Hoyer would probably be OK with that; the moves were designed for future, not present impact.

In the end, the best way to understand the rating is this: It tells how much better or worse a general manager made a team’s roster compared with what would have occurred had he (or in the case of the Miami Marlins, she) done nothing at all.

For that reason, the ratings do not necessarily correlate with the final standings. Some GMs are starting from a better position than others.

With that as an explanation, here’s how the five NL East general managers scored in 2021.

Sam Fuld, Philadelphia Phillies vice president and general manager

+3.2 WAA

Fuld was named general manager by Dave Dombrowski, the team’s new president, last December. He aggressively pursued Philadelphia’s pennant prospects, making 49 personnel moves that impacted the team’s roster.

A  total of 23 of those moves – 54 percent – worked against the Phillies, which makes Fuld’s debut sound like a failure. What saved it were the quality of the successes, four of which stand out.

The first and most meaningful was Fuld’s decision to ride with Ranger Suarez – a fourth-year player but technically still a rookie—as part of the answer to the team’s perennially questionable mound staff.

Suarez served a vital utility role. He made 39 appearances, a dozen of them as a starter, and went 8-5 with a 1.36 ERA over 106 innings.

That added up to a 4.4 WAA and made Suarez from start to finish easily the Phillies’ most valuable pitcher not named Zack Wheeler.

Fuld’s signing of catcher J.T. Realmuto to a five-year, $112 million contract paid off when Realmuto delivered above-average work both at and behind the plate. It added up to another +1.6 WAA.

Fuld knew who to get rid of as well as who to keep. He declined to try to re-sign veteran pitcher Jake Arrieta, then watched Arrieta stumble through an awful 5-14, 7.39, -3.6 WAA with the Cubs and Padres. Fuld also managed to package pitcher Spencer Howard off to Texas. There Howard went 0-3 with a 9.70 ERA and -1.4 WAA in eight starts.

Those moves weren’t enough to enable Fuld’s Phillies do more than make a run at the defending division Braves. But at least Fuld did create a positive impact, which was more than could be said for virtually all of his peers.

Mike Rizzo, Washington Nationals president of baseball operations  and general manager

+0.3 WAA

That Rizzo could generate a modestly positive impact on his team during a season in which he firesaled Max Scherzer AND Trea Turner is actually a pretty profound tribute to his acumen as an MLB general manager.

Rizzo’s 49 player personnel moves broke evenly in terms of helping and hurting the Nats: 21 created positive short-term impacts, another 21 proved negative, and seven were neutral.

As you will surmise, the trade of Scherzer (+2.1 for the Dodgers) and Turner (+1.7) were the low marks.

Of the four players who came back to Washington, only catcher Keibert Ruiz made a 2021 impact…and it was modestly positive. So a full assessment of that deal must await future developments.

But Rizzo largely offset the short-term damage done by that trade in other ways. The acquisition of first baseman Josh Bell from Pittsburgh looked bad for the first half of the season. But Bell eventually settled in, producing a .261 average, 26 home runs, and +1.2 WAA.

The departures of Adam Eaton, Josh Harrison, and Kurt Suzuki were less publicized, but poor performances with their new teams added 4.1 games to Rizzo’s score.

Foisting off unproductive assets on other MLB teams may not be the blueprint to success. But it does have its value, opening opportunities for potentially more productive hands. None of that kept the Nationals out of last place in 2021, but it does elevate Rizzo to the status of second-most effective general manager in the division this past season.

Kim Ng, Miami Marlins, general manager

-2.4 WAA

The closely scrutinized debut season of MLB’s first female general manager turned out to be pretty normal. Ng’s -2.4 overall rating places her squarely in the mid-rank of the MLB general manager class.

Ng was not shy about trying to upgrade Miami’s talent base. She made 56 personnel moves that directly affected the 2021 team. The problem was that only 36 percent worked out in a positive fashion; 50 percent had a negative impact, and 14 percent registered neutral.

The good news was that few of those personnel moves produced significant impacts in any direction.

From a headline standpoint, the big move was the trade of outfielder Starling Marte to Oakland for pitcher Jesus Luzardo. Since Marte generated a +1.1 impact for the A’s while Luzardo (4-5, 6.44, -1.1) hurt the Marlins, the short term impact did no credit to Ng’s reputation.

Of course, Ng didn’t make the deal for short term impact, so a true assessment of the trade must await the extent to which Luzardo helps the Marlins in 2022 and beyond.

In December, Ng drafted pitcher Paul Campbell from the Tampa Bay system. It was another short term flop that may or may not develop down the road. Campbell made 16 appearances, mostly in relief, with a 2-3 record and 6.41 ERA, amounting to a -1.2 WAA.

Journeymen Joe Panik and Sandy Leon came in to fill gaps. Nobody expected either to develop, and they didn’t, combining to hurt the Marlins by 3.0 games.

The bottom-line assessment of Ng’s first season is that she took some risks that usually don’t work out in the short-run, and didn’t in this case either. The true test will be what happens moving forward.

Sandy Alderson, New York Mets, president (Zack Scott acting general manager)

-3.2 WAA

Given the expectations surrounding Alderson’s return to the Mets front office, this time under new owner Steve Cohen, it’s impossible to characterize the result as anything but disappointing. The Mets were supposed to win and they didn’t. Alderson can’t even plead inexperience, having run the team for most of the past decade.

There was a sort of death-by-a-thousand-cuts aspect to Alderson’s return. He made 61 player personnel moves in an attempt to turn the franchise around, including some especially flashy ones. It was Alderson who swung the deals that brought Francisco Lindor and later Javier Baez to shore up the middle defense.

Those deals worked out OK. Lindor didn’t hit, but he did field and he produced a decent +1.3 WAA. Baez added +1.2 WAA following his deadline trade from Chicago.

The signing of starter Marcus Stroman (+1.8) also paid off nicely.

The problem was all the little stuff Alderson did that petered out. There was a lot of it. More than 60 percent of his transactions impacted the Mets negatively in 2021; only 31 percent produced a positive impact.

Few of the impacts were dramatically harmful – the signing of free agent catcher James McCann (.232, 46 RBIs, -1.6 WAA) being the notable exception. But the cumulative impact of literally dozens of modestly negative personnel moves eventually condemned the Mets to third place and a sub-.500 record.

That’s not what Cohen had in mind when he brought Alderson back.