General manager vets who are candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s executive suite
By Bill Felber
More maybes
Erik Neander is the latest wonder worker in small market Tampa Bay. As general manager since 2017, he has presided over division champions in 2019 and 2020, and a 2020 World Series entry. If the Rays reach postseason play this fall (that seems likely), it will be their fifth straight accomplishment of Neander’s tenure.
When Sandy Alderson stepped down as president of the Mets last year, it ended a 41-season career with five teams. Alderson was GM of the Athletics from 1981 to 1997, moving to San Diego in 2005, to the Mets in 2011, back to Oakland as an aide to Billy Beane in 2019 and back to the Mets as president in 2020. Forty years is its own credential, but Alderson can also point to three straight pennants in Oakland (1988-90), the 1989 World Series win, and the 2015 pennant with the Mets.
If these five entries deserve election, what’s the problem? In most cases it’s simply the backlog of candidates ahead of them; no executive is going in ahead of Cashman and Beane. It’s also true that the Contemporary Baseball Committee (which has charge of recent front office candidates) did not even consider any on their 2023 ballot. Execs often have to wait their turn behind players.
In a couple of cases tenure may also be an issue. Citing just one, Neander is to this point just seven seasons into his leadership of a team; give him another 12 or 15 and we’ll talk.
And while Colletti laid the foundation for the present Dodger dynasty (players he introduced to L.A. include Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Janssen and Yasiel Puig), he was gone by the time that dynasty really took hold.