As a Dodger fan, I have a really hard time with a system that puts Kevin Malone as the best of anything.

Sabean's high ranking here makes a lot of sense. The man is never questioned by the San Francisco mainstream media at all. Back in the 1990s he established his press persona as an arrogant yet brilliant GM who "doesn't suffer fools" (I've seen that exact phrase used about him soooo often.) To continue to hoodwink even a fawning media, you need at least a little substance behind the reputation.

Funny that Cox was at the head of both the worst-run and 2nd-best-run organizations in the 90s.

One thing about the '90s Braves: a lot of the foundation of that team was done during the '80s, under Bobby Cox. Javy Lopez, Ryan Klesko, David Justice, John Smoltz (trade), Jeff Blauser (defensive wiz), Mark Lemke (another defensive wiz), Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, and Mark Wholers were all '80s draft picks/international signings.

Of the '90s draft picks, Chipper was the #1 overall pick in '90, and Andruw Jones was an awesome international signing in '93. Schuerholz did a good job of plugging in holes where he had to (especially in the bullpen and 1B), but he should still share the '90s success with Cox.

> 5. Pirates Larry Doughty (1990-91), Ted Simmons (1992-93), Cam Bonifay (1994-99) 1.145

Ubba grubba grooby dooby dip dip fa-tang sum-bubba doogie doogie doogie. Ju hubba hubba nooby faloopa. Buggy buggy buggy buggy. Hip hip hip hip mugga mugga mugga mugga.

I'm sorry, my brain exploded. I could not grok this.

Sabean wouldn't come out so well if you consider 2005 to 2010. Part of that is the hangover from gutting the farm system in order to surround Bonds with veterans to 'win now'. But a huge chunk of it is overpaying for free agents that weren't going to help much, and neglecting the draft and Latin America. It's hard to justify the contracts given to Zito, Renteria, Rowand, and Freddy Sanchez.

Either:

The system needs further tinkering. The Pirates coming out as the 5th-best run franchise of the 90s just looks, smells, sounds and feels SO wrong;

or the system needs further explanation as to what it's measuring and what it's NOT measuring. Seems to me all it's doing is estimating how well teams managed payroll without affecting the won-loss record too adversely. In the very short run. Only one aspect of general managing a baseball team.

With all respect I don't think this sort of methodology works when evaluating the efficacy of a general manager. For starters, I just have trouble buying a system that purports Brian Sabean to be damn near the best GM in baseball. I think numbers can certainly evaluate the utility of a player or the effectiveness of a team but a general manager's job goes beyond that. Certainly Gene Michael's early 90s Yankees lost a lot of games, but if Gene Michael stayed on as the general manager into the late 90s I have to imagine we'd see him on the other side of the list. His reconstruction and development of the farm system along with the choice of keeping home grown talent (Jeter, Williams, Pettitte, Rivera, Posada, etc) and intelligent trades (O'Neill, Cone) are the reason why the Yankees were able to win in the late 90s and this system completely fails to take that into account.

Basically the point I'm getting at is that I think any system to evaluate a GM that doesn't properly account for minor league success and development fails to grasp an enormous part of a GM's role.

Doughty (2 winning seasons), Simmons (1 of each), and Bonifay (8 straight losing seasons and his worst record yet in the final year of his last 5-year plan- 2001, 62-100, which opened PNC Park). Which one of these GMs was not like the other 2?

I don't understand why, if a win in New York generates more revenue, that this means that a NY GM can without penalty spend more money to get that win. It seems to me that if the marginal value of a $2M player in wins is the same as the value of a $10M player, then the NY GM should be properly penalized for going with the $2M player.

I think the idea of payroll efficiency is important and interesting.

I don't think that any study that shows the Yankees as one of the 5 worst run franchises of the 90's, with the Pirates as one of the best, is showing what it thinks it is showing. More precisely, the conclusion that payroll efficiency is the sole way to evaluate how good a team is run seems to be missing something.

To further bolster Hunsicker's credentials, he's been integrally involved in the Rays front office since 2007 as a VP, and look where they've gone since.

I'm sorry, but an evaluative system that puts Jocketty in the bottom 5, an Bowden and Sabean in the top 10, is useless.

I think it's interesting that the 5 best-run teams of the '90s won a total of one World Series between them.

You really need to look at what happens after a GM has been in place for 5 years before you can really judge their performance. That's when the prospects that they drafted or traded for will be reaching the majors, and the contracts that were signed before their tenure will be expiring.

I like the idea behind the methodology, but when I see the list, it seems people are rated up or down because of things like having Bonds, or being in New York, or being lucky enough to have a good year or two.

It just seems the list has more to do with how lucky a GM was than how well they performed. Did they happen to be GMing a team when it happened to win, etc.

To be fair to Shawn, I think he recognizes that. All his comments indicate that the GMs are at their position in the rankings largely due to external factors or timing issues. That does seem to call into question the purpose of the system, though, if you can write off each ranking as being due to this or that factor that the GM was not necessarily responsible for.

While I feel there is merit to Shawn's system, and that it does offer some glimpses of promise, a truly innovative system would be one that takes into account -- on an objective, numbers based level -- the situation the GM inherited as well as the situation he left with. That would be pretty tough, but much more informative.

There's a major timing issue even in the short run. E.g., Kevin Malone took over the Expos on January 27, 1994 (according to Baseball America's splendid exec database). So while he sat in the GM's chair for the strike-shortened '94 season, wasn't that roster/payroll largely determined by his predecessor? The winter meetings and major FA signing periods were both done deals by then.
Perhaps in cases of "split off-seasons" like this one (and there are no doubt many others), you can split the credit or blame for the subsequent season's results?

Perhaps a better scheme would be to judge GMs by the FAs signed, trades, and draft picks they made using something like WAR to sum up the players. Then rank by WAR/salary or something.

the clear flaw to the method is that it assumes all teams have only one goal in mind, to achieve the highest efficient return on their investment. however, clearly teams in different markets and with different operational goals have different normative aims. the marlins etc might just want to make a profit with minimal investment, while the yankees invest in stars, badly or wisely, to build their brand and thus business. at least recognize the gross simplification

I agree with the concept that GM's work from years before influences the coming years. Also, I think the statement that the large market teams are not penalized is flat wrong. In 1998, NYY had 114 wins and they end up with a score of 1.22...good for 52nd best year of the decade. What is the ceiling for a team with a payroll of $200 million? How many wins would it take for NYY to get 2.07? Is it even possible? I think this is another example of BP developing a metric to support their theories...in this case the small market/young cheap kids is the way to go.