Hall of Fame-worthy team executives

If the MLB Hall of Fame membership is light at any position, it’s probably the one that is most critical to team success: front office management.

Of the more than 330 people who have been elected to the Hall since its inception in 1936, only 40 were voted in as ‘executives.’ But that number is greatly inflated since the umbrella term encompasses league founders, commissioners, league presidents and team owners as well as front office executives.

On fact, only a relative handful of people whose primary qualification was management of the front office of an MLB team have been elected to Hall membership. It is a distinguished if short list indeed: Branch Rickey, John Schuerholz, Ed Barrow, George Weiss, Larry MacPhail, and Pat Gillick.

You could arguably add two or three more names who worked in a front office to the list – Lee MacPhail and Bill Veeck come to mind – but MacPhail was probably better known as a league president and Veeck as a team owner.

There are highly deserving front office candidates. But on the rare occasions when one or more Hall committees even consider their names they have to date always come up short.

This is a look at seven distinguished veterans of major league front office management who deserve enshrinement. Three are still active, and –given the heightened focus of the importance of a front office exec to team success — they stand a chance of being elected at a future date. The other four are at this stage longshots who need some measure of divine intervention. They deserve it.

In chronological order of their activity, here are backgrounders on the four front office leaders who have been badly overlooked followed by the three most likely current candidates.

Arthur Soden

Nearly a century after his 1925 passing, only the most experienced of baseball analysts are even aware that somebody named Arthur Soden existed. He not only existed, but for the better part of three centuries in the game’s formative years he was possibly the dominant force.

Soden was the lead voice of a three-person team that owned and operated the Boston Beaneaters of the 19th Century National League. In those days owners did not hire someone to operate the front office for them; in Boston Soden assumed that task for the trio.

Purchasing the Beaneaters in 1877, Soden and his co-owners controlled the Boston National League franchise for three decades. For much of that period the Beaneaters were the game’s dominant force, winning National League pennants in 1877, 1878, 1883, 1891 1892, 1893, 1897 and 1898. That’s eight pennants in a 22-year stretch, three more than any other team.

He was also a driving force in shaping the way the game was played. Soden was the lead planner in creation of the ‘Reserve Clause’ that ruled baseball contracts for the better part of a century. That may not be a politically popular posture today, but if nothing else it demonstrates the dominant role Soden played in shaping the game.

His 1887 purchase of King Kelly from the Cubs legitimized and made popular the strategy of purchasing talent from other teams.

Teams run by Soden enjoyed 20 winning seasons, and featured six future Hall of Famers who spent the majority of their careers working for Soden. Those six were George Wright, Tommy McCarthy, Hugh Duffy, Kid Nichols and John Clarkson along with manager Frank Selee.

In the entire history of Hall of Fame voting, Arthur Soden has never gotten a single vote.

Paul Owens

If one man can be said to have saved the Philadelphia Phillies franchise, that man is Paul Owens.

Owens was a career minor leaguer who worked his way through various lower-level positions in the Phillies’ front office, eventually leading to his appointment as director of the farm system. Midway through a 1972 season in which the Phillies went 59-97 – their worst record since 1945 – he was named general manager.

A few weeks later Owens daringly appointed himself as field manager, saying he needed to do so in order to properly evaluate the team’s talent. He stepped down from his field duties at season’s end.

Under Owens’ guidance, the Phillies improved quickly and steadily. In 1974 they were 80-82, rising to 86 wins in 1975 and a 101-win division title in 1976.

From 1976 through 1983, the Phillies were probably the National League’s most consistent winners. They won the NL East five times, ran up a .559 winning percentage for those eight seasons, won the century-old franchise’s first World Series in 1980, and returned to the Series in 1983, losing to Baltimore.

The 1976 and 1977  teams Owens constructed remain today the franchise’s only two 100-game winners.

In the middle of the 1983 season, with the Phillies lingering at .500, Owens again fired his manager and appointed himself to take over. The Phils won 47 of their final 77 games and eliminated the Dodgers in a four-game NLCS to advance to the Series.

His team’s six playoff appearances in eight seasons remains a franchise record for success over that period of seasons.

Like Soden a century earlier, Owens has never gotten a whiff of Hall of Fame support.

Walt Jocketty

Jocketty had a brilliant front office career with two NL Central franchises. With respect to his time running the St. Louis Cardinals, it can safely be said that since Branch Rickey left in the early 1940s, only John Mozeliak could challenge Jocketty as the team’s premier front office executive.

Jocketty was appointed GM of the Cardinals during the 1994 strike, coming over from lower-level stints in Oakland and Colorado. To him belongs the credit for twice raiding Oakland. He got Tony LaRussa to be field manager and in 1997 stole Mark McGwire away in a lopsided trade.

Between 1995 and 2007, Jocketty’s Cardinals made seven post-season appearances, and Jocketty’s player transactions had a direct role in at least four of those. He was the force behind the 2000 trade with Anaheim that brought Jim Edmonds to St. Louis, solidifying his team’s outfield decade for five years.

One season later Jocketty called up Albert Pujols from Double A to begin one of the great careers in baseball history.

In St. Louis Edmonds would become a six-time Gold Glover while Pujols would win a batting title, two home run titles, the Rookie of the Year and three MVPs.

Following the 2007 season the Cardinals fired Jocketty, but the Cincinnati Reds almost immediately hired him as an advisor, with his elevation to GM following quickly. He led the Reds to their only three post-season appearances over a quarter-century span before retiring to an advisory capacity.

Three moderns

Across more than three eventful decades, Dave Dombrowski has guided the fortunes of no fewer than five major league franchises, and yes, that’s a record. Starting with the Montreal Expos in 1988, he joined the expansion Florida Marlins following the 1991 season, and built their 1997 World Series winners.

Dombrowski was also responsible for the 1998 tear-down that followed that championship, so by 2001 he relocated again, this time to Detroit. The Tigers averaged just 55 wins in his first three seasons, but in 2006 Dombrowski’s restricting paid off in a World Series berth. They returned to the Series in  2012 but were swept by San Francisco.

The Red Sox hired Dombrowski in 2017, and one season later he won his fourth pennant and second World Series as that team’s president.  When he left following the 2019 season, the Phillies hired Dombrowski and by 2022 he had that team in the World Series as well.

It may be a long time before somebody heads up pennant winning organizations for four different franchises.

Billy Beane’s work running the Oakland Athletics reshaped the way the game is structured. Applying SABRmetric principles to the problem of running a low-budget operation, Beans took the Athletics to 11 post-seasons between 2000 and 2020.

Like Beane appointed a GM prior to the 1998 season, Brian Cashman just got a contract extension ensuring he will put in three decades running the Yankees. In a front office hallowed by the ghosts of Ed Barrow,  George Weiss and both MacPhails, that is already a franchise record.

Cashman’s teams gave him World Series wins in his first three tries, 1998, 1999 and 2000, and added a fourth in 2009. Granted the Yankees have all the advantages money brings, but it’s still worth noting that only four times in his lengthy tenure have Cashman’s teams failed to qualify for post-season play. That includes 14 division championships.