Thad Levine, Minnesota Twins senior vice president and general manager
-16.4
The Twins were probably MLB’s biggest disappointment. The two-time defending division champions discovered fifth place by mid April and never got it together.
A substantial portion of that flop was the fault of Levine, who had the worst performance of any GM in 2021. His trade maneuverings cost Minnesota 2.9 games in the standings, his free agent activity cost an additional 6.5 games, and his farm system promotions subtracted a final 7.0 games.
Levine made 52 personnel moves in an effort to resuscitate the Twins, but for the most part, those only dug the hole deeper. A distressing 32 of those moves – 62 percent – brought negative results.
The most positively impactful player drawn by Levine to the Twins’ orbit in 2021 was Juan Minaya, a reliever with four years’ experience on Chicago’s South Side. Minaya’s net value was +0.8 WAA.
The problem was Minaya represented Levine’s best MLB work. In contrast, five of his pitching moves produced impacts of -1.0 WAA or worse, among them J.A. Happ (-2.6), Matt Shoemaker (-2.3), Griffin Jax (-1.9), Randy Dobnak (-1.8), and Alex Colome (-1.0). Happ and Shoemaker were so bad that the former was traded away and the latter released at midseason.
Levine’s disastrous 2021 represented a turnaround for him. In 2019 and 2020, his work yielded positive short term results averaging +6.9 WAA per season.