How the front office rating works
It’s the job of the front office to assess a team’s needs and acquire talent filling those needs. The front offices that do the best job still may not produce a winner – they may have started from too deep a talent hole. But they deserve credit for producing improvement.
This is one in a series of assessments of the performances of front offices for the 2024 season. Each front office is given a score based on the total Wins Above Average of the players they either traded for, signed via free agency or extension, or promoted from their farm system, since the conclusion of the 2023 postseason.
A front office’s score also includes the total Wins Above Average of players traded away or lost to free agency since the end of the 2023 postseason. The front offices are being presented in order of their total value from No. 30 (worst) all the way to No. 1 (best).
These ratings do not necessarily reflect the final standings. As it happens, two of the 10 worst front office performances this season were delivered by playoff teams while two of the four best were produced by the front offices of non-playoff teams.
How can that be? The reason is that front offices are measured based only on the talent they acquired or lost during the past 12 months. Players on multi-year contracts, or already under team control, don’t count toward this rating.
T-28. Colorado Rockies, Bill Schmidt, senior vice president and general manager, -11.5 WAA
Schmidt is a quarter-century veteran of the Rockies front office who worked his way up to interim GM when Jeff Bridich was let go in May of 2021. The Monfort brothers, Dick and Charlie, the owners of the franchise, made him full-time GM at season’s end.
Schmidt’s record is not inspiring. His teams are 188-298 since the start of the 2022 season, a disquieting .386 winning percentage, with annual last-place finishes in the NL West. Combine those numbers with the fact that Schmidt is operating on a year-to-year contract, and his is one of the game’s more tenuous leadership positions.
The 2024 season did nothing to burnish Schmidt’s job security. His front office made a relatively somnolent 47 moves impacting major leaguers since the end of the 2023 post-season, but only 15 of those moves actually benefitted the Rockies.
If you’re keeping track, that equals Pittsburgh and Kansas City for the fewest number of positive-impact personnel moves of any major league front office in 2024.
Of the remaining moves, 29 were negative and three neutral.
Five most impactful Schmidt moves (by WAA)
1. Signed free agent Jake Cave -1.8
2. Promoted rookie Hunter Goodman -1.6
3. Signed free agent Dakota Hudson -1.6
4. Promoted rookie Jordan Beck -1.4
5. Promoted rookie Anthony Molina -1.4
Schmidt did make two personnel decisions he could hang his hat on with pride. In November he turned pitcher Chase Anderson loose to free agency; Anderson pitched 58 awful innings for Boston and Texas, running up a -1.3 WAA that perversely looks like a credit on Schmidt’s resume.
His big strike was the seven-year deal given to budding star Ezequiel Tovar. That move looked good when Tovar responded with a solid age-22 season both at bat and at shortstop. He hit .269 with a league-leading 45 doubles and 78 RBIs.
That was good for +1.5 WAA. Unfortunately, Tovar was the only Schmidt action that benefitted the team by at least one game. In stark contrast, he brought in or extended eight faces onto the roster who hurt the Rockies by at least one game, those ranging from spring training outfield pickup Jake Cave (-1.8) to veteran Charley Blackmon, whose valedictory season scored out at -1.0.
The 2024 front office rating system: No. 30, Los Angeles Angels
Today: T-28. Colorado Rockies, Bill Schmidt, Senior VP and general manager, -11.5
Next: T-28, Miami Marlins, Peter Bendix, President of Baseball Operations, -11.5