GM Update #11: Jim Campbell

As previously promised, today we roll out the goods on longtime Tigers GM Jim Campbell. Campbell’s tenure ran more than 20 years, during which time he won a World Series and set the team up for another. Mark Armour and Dan Levitt named him their 22nd best team builder of all time. In the modern sense of it. Well, maybe. The figures we’ve arrived at from his transaction logs tell a somewhat different story, especially when we couple it with a piece or two of key information.

Let’s do the numbers.

Team Performance

• RECORD: Won-Loss record while GM was in office
• PCT: Winning percentage
• vs EXP: An adaptation of the expected wins formula Bill James introduced in his managers book. Except we use pythagenpat records instead of actual records to calculate it.
• OCT: Postseason apperances (starting in 1969).
• OCT v EXP: Measures postseason appearances against the basic probability of any random team making it.
• WS APP: World Series appearances
• WS APP v EXP: Similar to OCT v EXP
• WS WINS: Championships won
• WS WINS v EXP: Ditto
• MGR PYTH: This is the team’s variance against its Pythagenpat record as a measure of how much value the GM’s manager brought to the team.

TEAM PERFORMANCE

NAME	RECORD	PCT.	VS EXP	OCT	OCT VS EXP	WS APP	WS APP VS EXP	WS WINS	WS WINS VS EXP	MGR PYTH
BARROW	2281-1394	.621	+160	N/A	N/A	14	+11	10	+8.5	+72
BAVASI 1	2386-2166	.524	+54	2	+0.2	8	+5.1	4	+2.5	+42
BROWN	1816-1625	.524	+48	5	+2.5	2	-0.2	2	+0.9	-5
CAMPANIS	1576-1280	.552	+44	6	+4.9	4	+2.5	1	+0.2	+8
CAMPBELL	1733-1605	.519	+40	1	-1.5	1	-0.8	1	+0.1	+31
CASHEN	1342-1177	.533	+27	4	+1.2	1	-0.3	1	+0.4	-1
DALTON	2175-1965	.525	+64	4	+1.4	5	+3.0	2	+0.9	+9
GILLICK	2276-1993	.533	+95	11	+5.7	3	+1.0	3	+2.1	+23
GRIFFITH	2967-2964	.500	+24	N/A	N/A	3	-1.88	1	-1.44	+35
HOWSAM	1331-1049	.559	+63	5	+3.3	4	+2.8	2	+1.4	+44
MACPHAIL1	904-777	.538	+69	N/A	N/A	2	+0.6	1	+0.3	+6
MACPHAIL2	1181-1036	.526	+54	0	-0.7	0	-1.4	0	-0.8	+31
QUINN	2147-2126	.502	+20	0	-0.5	3	-0.1	1	-0.5	-7
RICKEY	3265-3015	.520	+87	N/A	N/A	8	+2.7	4	+1.5	+46
SCHUERHOLZ	2348-1794	.567	+140	16	+10.8	6	+3.4	2	+1.1	+69
WEISS	1503-1303	.536	+28	N/A	N/A	10	+7.9	7	+5.9	+3
BAVASI 2	756-869	.465	-41	0	-2.9	0	-0.6	0	-0.3	-6
ROBINSON	683-772	.469	-6	0	-1.5	0	-0.5	0	-0.3	-5
SEGHI	883-989	.472	-11	0	-2.0	0	-0.9	0	-0.5	-4
SMITH	566-776	.422	-49	0	-2.1	0	-0.6	0	-0.3	-38

Campbell’s teams performed reasonably well. Just a little worse than Joe Brown’s Pirates in a GM career of comparable length. On the other hand, among our good GMs (the ones above the gray line), his winning percentage is the third worst. Branch Rickey’s is only one point better, but then Branch Rickey has nearly double the number of team decisions under his belt. Looking beyond the W-L record, and comparing again to Brown, Campbell was a little worse in wins against expectation, but did much better in wins against Pythagenpat. The latter suggests that hiring Billy Martin, Ralph Houk, Mayo Smith, and, of course, Sparky Anderson was a lot better than giving the helm to mostly Danny Murtaugh. On the other hand Brown’s teams got into the playoffs more, got to one more World Series, and won one more title. Campbell’s record is not superb at the team level. It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not great.

GM Performance

Now let’s look at how the GMs themselves did at constructing competitive clubs. BASE: Talent in WAR that a GM inherited

• GM: Talent in WAR that a GM acquired
• CONT GOAL: The amount of talent the GM needed to acquire to field a contender, a .550 team
• %GOAL: How close he got, a career average of the seasonal averages
• med%GOAL: Median seasonal %GOAL
• WS GOAL: The amount of talent the GM needed to acquire to field a typical WS entrant in his era
• %GOAL: How close he got, a career average if the seasonal averages
• med%GOAL: Median seasonal %GOAL

GM PERFORMANCE

NAME	BASE	GM	CONT GOAL	avg%GOAL	med%GOAL	WS GOAL	avg%GOAL	med%GOAL
BARROW	217	923	719	128%	119%	959	96%	94%
BAVASI 1	373	690	791	91%	100%	972	71%	88%
BROWN	281	552	557	97%	101%	696	76%	81%
CAMPANIS	342	407	364	128%	119%	469	87%	90%
CAMPBELL	354	386	493	78%	89%	596	65%	68%
CASHEN	255	361	370	98%	85%	462	78%	61%
DALTON	500	426	337	126%	84%	449	95%	68%
GILLICK	385	684	671	108%	107%	807	88%	91%
GRIFFITH	198	1025	1313	78%	79%	1703	60%	60%
HOWSAM	338	229	243	83%	81%	350	60%	53%
MACPHAIL1	183	193	257	69%	46%	356	46%	36%
MACPHAIL2	300	185	258	72%	69%	346	53%	57%
QUINN	222	729	824	92%	97%	1066	68%	72%
RICKEY	428	879	1132	73%	78%	1580	52%	58%
SCHUERHOLZ	487	576	539	116%	105%	667	87%	88%
WEISS	252	358	460	78%	107%	615	58%	67%
BAVASI 2	191	128	234	63%	52%	282	48%	47%
ROBINSON	124	183	260	74%	73%	315	58%	60%
SEGHI	115	239	350	63%	72%	420	53%	60%
SMITH	97	114	247	46%	55%	293	41%	47%

Campbell did a pretty good job of keeping the Tigers in contention with frequency. He’s middle of the pack so far in that regard. He’s also middle of the pack for creating World Series level teams. Again there’s nothing here that’s screaming out PICK ME!

Transactions Detail

OK, let’s see what these guys actually did to build their teams.

• AM FA: Amateur free agent
• PUR: Purchased from another pro team
• FA: Free agent (includes the short-lived free-agent compensation picks of the early 1980s)
• AM DF: Amateur draft (any time of year, only players who signed with the team and played in MLB)
• R5 DF: Rule 5 Draft
• ML DF: Minor League Draft and First Year Draft
• ML XD: Expansion Draft
• TR: Trade
• WV: Waivers
• SLD: Players sold to other teams
• REL: Players released
• NOTE: Unkown transactions not included except in TOT

TRANSACTION DETAILS: NUMBER OF INBOUND TRANSACTIONS

NAME	AM FA	PUR	FA	AM DFT	R5 DFT	ML DFT	EX DFT	TR	WV	TOT
BARROW	49	45	13	N/A	4	2	N/A	74	6	294
BAVASI 1	101	42	48	69	6	15	29	135	2	455
BROWN	93	27	20	49	7	7	0	85	3	294
CAMPANIS	40	10	38	79	5	2	0	69	2	247
CAMPBELL	35	30	25	95	7	5	0	92	7	303
CASHEN	31	8	46	97	4	2	0	116	3	313
DALTON	36	37	91	127	15	2	0	141	7	461
GILLICK	71	40	207	148	19	8	0	130	31	663
GRIFFITH	36	72	18	N/A	35	2	N/A	115	23	608
HOWSAM	33	23	14	50	7	1	0	95	1	228
MACPHAIL1	45	73	18	N/A	10	1	N/A	43	14	246
MACPHAIL2	47	38	18	33	13	6	0	82	7	255
QUINN	137	70	33	25	16	15	0	113	8	436
RICKEY	174	78	32	N/A	25	11	N/A	108	24	748
SCHUERHOLZ	62	14	265	142	7	1	0	150	17	659
WEISS	131	66	17	13	9	8	22	70	9	360
BAVASI 2	16	15	157	43	4	0	0	69	16	322
ROBINSON	11	15	130	70	4	1	0	58	15	309
SEGHI	10	14	33	38	4	1	0	106	5	212
SMITH	11	7	103	34	9	2	0	65	22	254

TRANSACTION DETAILS: NUMBER OF OUTBOUND TRANSACTIONS

NAME	SOLD	REL	R5 DFT	ML DFT	EX DFT	TR	WV	TOT
BARROW	65	16	14	2	N/A	74	13	213
BAVASI 1	49	59	27	13	6	135	10	308
BROWN	46	51	14	15	12	85	6	218
CAMPANIS	13	63	12	5	0	69	8	179
CAMPBELL	52	59	6	4	11	92	7	237
CASHEN	21	45	16	4	0	116	3	208
DALTON	33	89	16	2	11	141	0	300
GILLICK	25	127	22	2	6	130	21	337
GRIFFITH	69	36	3	1	N/A	115	21	304
HOWSAM	22	24	11	3	5	95	1	164
MACPHAIL1	37	27	3	0	N/A	43	6	129
MACPHAIL2	28	30	14	0	14	82	3	178
QUINN	82	51	21	15	0	113	5	300
RICKEY	111	50	36	9	N/A	108	34	388
SCHUERHOLZ	6	170	11	2	6	150	18	366
WEISS	37	44	18	7	0	70	9	207
BAVASI 2	6	83	0	0	2	69	3	169
ROBINSON	4	66	3	1	5	58	13	155
SEGHI	10	39	2	0	0	106	1	165
SMITH	4	53	5	3	0	65	15	151

As we look at the number of transactions Campbell made, let’s group him with an appropriate cohort: those who spent all or most of their career in the amateur draft era but not to deep into the free agent era. And we’ll see how many transactions they made per annum.

• Campanis (1969-1986): 14 Inbound / 10 Outbound per season
• Campbell (1963-1983): 14 Inbound / 11 Outbound per season
• Cashen (1972-1975, 1980-1991): 20 Inbound / 13 Outbound per season
• Dalton (1966-1991): 18 Inbound / 12 Outbound per season
• Howsam (1965-1967, 1983-1984): 15 Inbound / 11 Outbound per season
• MacPhail 2 (1956-1965, 1967-1973): 18 Inbound / 13 Outbound per season

As you can see, Campbell was very careful. Al Campanis didn’t need to make lots of transactions. He had a huge farm surplus to work with and a core of talent that lasted for nearly ever. He didn’t need to get free agents, go waiver trawling, or make splashy trades because his farm system kept burping up quality players. Similar things could be said about Bob Howsam. How much tinkering do you need to do to Bench, Rose, Perez, Morgan, Concepcion, Foster, and company? Also, Bob Howsam hated free agency with a passion, an owner’s kind of executive. On the other end, MacPhail oversaw two rebuilds and needed to make more transactions to improve his talent base, while Harry Dalton moved his pieces around the chessboard pretty frequently in the scramble for contention. Campbell, on the other hand, had no such conditions. When he took the job in Detroit, most of the key pieces to the 1968 pennant winner were already in place: Kaline, Cash, Freehan, McAuliffe, Lolich, Horton. Many of those guys had come aboard while Campbell had been Farm Director (1956 to 1961) or Farm and Scouting Director (1961-1962), so he had a big hand in acquiring them, of course. His two important additions as GM were pitchers Denny McClain and Earl Wilson. He added no other crucial pieces to that team. That same team, for the most part, won the East in 1972 with contributions from Campbell adds Joe Coleman and Aurelio Rodriguez. All told, however, Campbell’s acquisitions from the time he gained the GM’s seat didn’t do most of the heavy lifting for his only two October teams. After 1972, the Tigers retracted their claws and didn’t play much meaningful baseball until the early 1980s. The question at hand is exactly how much Jim Campbell had to do with the next wave of Tiger greats.

TRANSACTION DETAILS: VALUE IN WAR TO TEAM OF INBOUND TRANSACTIONS

NAME	AM FA	PUR	FA	AM DFT	R5 DFT	ML DFT	EX DFT	TR	WV	TOT
BARROW	297	124	154	N/A	-1	0	N/A	480	7	1216
BAVASI 1	430	70	36	235	1	0	54	257	-1	1106
BROWN	313	2	3	228	2	4	0	216	-2	765
CAMPANIS	48	40	2	171	-1	1	0	257	0	518
CAMPBELL	9	13	7	352	1	-1	0	164	29	580
CASHEN	56	2	9	251	-1	0	0	270	3	590
DALTON	18	47	65	313	4	1	0	285	2	733
GILLICK	132	62	194	295	60	-1	0	228	-2	978
GRIFFITH	95	233	26	N/A	39	-1	N/A	416	11	1087
HOWSAM	98	7	2	104	6	0	0	228	0	445
MACPHAIL1	116	100	38	N/A	19	0	N/A	219	48	632
MACPHAIL2	244	0	16	113	13	0	0	195	8	632
QUINN	443	45	183	141	25	2	0	480	1	1318
RICKEY	794	116	211	N/A	122	1	N/A	262	0	1898
SCHUERHOLZ	117	9	142	298	-1	0	0	246	7	818
WEISS	480	70	5	21	-1	-1	11	168	7	764
BAVASI 2	27	9	96	131	0	0	0	24	5	290
ROBINSON	7	14	69	98	6	0	0	59	8	264
SEGHI	-4	14	4	32	2	2	0	275	-1	323
SMITH	3	-2	27	36	-2	3	0	140	10	215

TRANSACTION DETAILS: VALUE IN WAR OF PLAYERS IN OUTBOUND TRANSACTIONS

NAME	SOLD	REL	R5 DFT	ML DFT	EX DFT	TR	WV	TOT
BARROW	158	3	50	26	N/A	440	75	794
BAVASI 1	15	20	129	20	30	438	19	674
BROWN	18	10	4	29	59	343	-2	471
CAMPANIS	22	13	4	23	0	298	17	374
CAMPBELL	39	9	-2	0	29	154	1	239
CASHEN	-3	8	8	4	0	304	-1	330
DALTON	18	0	7	0	42	284	0	354
GILLICK	16	20	25	0	-2	285	10	357
GRIFFITH	157	-2	0	0	N/A	528	73	832
HOWSAM	8	4	27	-1	-3	251	0	286
MACPHAIL1	45	39	9	0	N/A	146	4	395
MACPHAIL2	37	-2	15	0	95	166	1	332
QUINN	75	38	3	81	0	496	25	711
RICKEY	337	10	62	-4	N/A	573	8	1040
SCHUERHOLZ	7	46	2	-1	26	246	6	332
WEISS	28	22	13	51	0	326	17	463
BAVASI 2	1	8	0	0	-1	147	0	154
ROBINSON	3	10	2	3	12	92	8	129
SEGHI	2	3	16	-2	0	253	0	272
SMITH	2	1	0	0	0	141	0	144

Overall, Jim Campbell did a pretty good job of acquiring talented players. The amount of Inbound value is pretty good, especially for a GM of his era. He’s also number one on the board among good GMs in terms of the least value given away. This is a fine combination, obviously. There is, however, just a little more to it.

There’s nothing in the Outbound transactions that should make you start. Campbell did a really nice job limiting the downside risk of letting players go. He didn’t make many moves, and those he did on the Outbound side didn’t haunt him too badly. He rarely let go of a top-quality player. He also came out ahead on trades, which is good, and which we’ll look at a little more in just a minute, though he made few of them. On the Inbound side, however, there are some strange goings on. He got nearly two-thirds of the value he acquired in the draft. Yet, he got next to nothing out of the Amateur Free Agent market. He never signed free agents, never got much out of the Rule 5 draft. Even in trades, he got and gave up relatively little. Denny McClain accounts for the relatively good showing in the waiver market (though Johnny Sain might also have something to do with the success of that particular move). So what do we make of this? Without more information, we’d say that Campbell’s philosophy was to build from within via amateur talent and make a few stabilizing trades as needed. A classic scouting/development approach, right?

Except the facts don’t really match up.

If Campbell was so into the amateur market why does he show up as the very worst among the GMs we’ve so far analyzed at signing amateur talent? How bad were they at this facet of the game? The best amateur free agent they signed was Ron LeFlore, who Billy Martin, himself, recommended after watching the fleet-footed outfielder play in a prison game. Yes, LeFlore was incarcerated, got out, signed, and put up 14 WAR for the Bengals. No other Tigers signed as amateur free agents exceeded 1 WAR for the team. What about Latin America? Good question. The first and only person from south of the Rio Grande that the Tigers signed on Campbell’s watch who contributed to the big-league team was Cuban defector Barbaro Garbey in 1980. To make the picture more bleak in this regard, Campbell did sign Dick Drago (21 career WAR) in 1964. But he never brought him up to Detroit and lost him in the 1969 expansion draft. If a team was being built by developing home-grown talent, how can they miss on that guy?

Here’s another odd piece of information. Prior to 1975, no player the Tigers selected in the January or June amateur drafts gave the team more than 5 WAR. The first amateur draft picks to return much value were Tom Brookens (12 WAR) and Dave Rozema (15 WAR), both chosen in the 1975 January draft. The entire reason the Tigers fell out of contention in the mid-late 1970s was the inability of Jim Campbell’s scouting department to find foreign or domestic talent of any quality.

But what suddenly turned their scouting around so that they drafted 329 WAR in just the four years 1975-1978? The answer there is Bill Lajoie. For years and years, Eddie Katalinas had functioned as the team’s scouting director. Katalinas had scouted and signed Al Kaline in the 1950s, and when Campbell was promoted to GM, Katalinas took over as the head of scouting. Faced with awful drafts for nearly a decade, Campbell tapped Bill Lajoie to head up scouting and pushed Katalinas first into the Farm Director role, and then in a role subordinate to that. With Lajoie at the helm of scouting, the Tigers, picking very high in the draft several years running, took:

• 1975 (January): Brookens and Rozema
• 1976 (January): Steve Kemp (16 WAR)
• 1976 (June): Lance Parrish (30), Mark Fidrych (11), Jason Thompson (12), Lou Whitaker (75), and Alan Trammell (70)
• 1977 (June): Dan Petry (17) and Jack Morris (38)
• 1978 (June): Kirk Gibson (24)

And that is how you build a great team very quickly. You hire Bill Lajoie to do your drafting. Actually, it’s not that simple because Lajoie never again drafted a player who made good in Detroit. He did pick Howard Johnson (1979) and Glenn Wilson (1981) after that, but both were dealt before they blossomed. So was Lajoie an inspired hire that brought the team four great years of drafting? Or did the Tigers just strike it rich out of sheer blind-squirrel dumb luck? How much of the credit do we give Campbell for the hire? And for listening to his scouting director? It’s a little hard to say. But that right there was the core of the next great Tigers team that won it all in 1984 and made the ALCS in 1987.

OK, before we go, the trades game. Here are all the trades that Jim Campbell won or lost by 10 WAR

Trades Won

• 11/27/81 (+29): Received Chet Lemon (31) for Steve Kemp (2)
• 10/9/70 (+20): Received Ed Brinkmann, Joe Coleman, Jim Hannan, and Aurelio Rodriguez (28) for Elliot Maddox, Denny McClain, Norm McRae, and Don Wert (8)
• 6/14/66 (+15): Received Joe Christopher and Earl Wilson (16) for Don Demeter and Julio Navarro (1)
• 12/9/81 (+12): Received Larry Herndon (11) for Mike Chris and Dan Schatzeder (-1)
• 12/6/75 (+11): Received Jim Crawford, Milt May, and Dave Roberts (3) for Terry Humphrey, Mark Lemongello, Gene Pent, and Leon Roberts (14)

Trades Lost

• 12/5/63 (-28): Received Don Demeter and Jack Hamilton (2) for Jim Bunning and Gus Triandos (30)
• 10/14/63 (-12): Received Bruce Brubaker (0) for Pat Jarvis (12)
• 12/4/69 (-12): Received Joe Niekro (4) for Dave Campbell and Pat Dobson (16)
• 12/15/65 (-11): Received Dick Tracewski (1) for Phil Regan (12)

That’s a nice set of wins and losses. Obviously Jim Bunning was a stupid trade, but the Lemon for Kemp deal appears to have been a shrewd swap of a guy with limited but powerful skills for another with a broad range of abilities. And it is something like poetic justice that Don Demeter, a piece in the Bunning deal made it into the Earl Wilson fleecing. Overall, one thing to note is that Campbell rarely made in-season moves. He vastly preferred to make changes during the winter and avoid tinkering during the season.

So there you have it. It’s a very strange resume, and I can’t say that I’m entirely clear on it and on how to interpret it. Usually that doesn’t bode well for a candidate in my eyes. Especially because Campbell appears to have squandered the opportunity to transform his team on the fly by failing to go into the Latin American markets in a timely manner, eschewing free agency, and using too few of the talent-procurement channels available to him. Of course, some of that could have been limitations set on him by ownership, but it might also have been a lack of vision. I guess you had to be there.