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So who’s left among pioneers and execs? About two dozen people for the final five Hall of Miller and Eric plaques, and today I’m going to tell you a little about all of them. I’m also going to give you a status update on how the rest of our pioxec elections will go.
Turns out that we’ve whittled that number down over time from nearly 100 candidates to a quarter of that. The easy part is over. The degrees of difference between the remaining candidates are often either narrow or difficult to compare across divergent roles. Like this:
Executives
Pioneers
They come in many forms, including HoME members (author and leader of the sabrmetric revolution), J. G. Taylor Spink (publisher), Frank Jobe (surgeon), and many more. In short, anyone whose innovations wrought important, lasting effects on the quality of play. Our remaining pioneers fall into these groups:
So let’s find out whose left, starting with the more conventional executive candidates.
Special Note: Alderson is eligible for election through our initial 28 pioxec honorees because the electoral rules through 2016 allowed any sitting executive 65 or older to be eligible. Alderson was born very in 1947, so for 2016, he was 68. He will not be eligible again for us until 2018 because for 2017, the rule was changed so that sitting executives must be 70 or older.
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There is some distortion in Finley’s record that we should be aware of. He inherited an absolutely abysmal team, the Arnold Johnson A’s who in the late 1950s routinely dealt all their good players to the Yankees for a few sleeves of peanuts. Prior to Finley’s arrival, the A’s had managed a single winning season since 1950, and it was a .513 year. Since then, they’d played .388 ball, which in 162 notation is 63-99. The A’s won 61 games in Finley’s first year, then 72 and 73 as he learned how to acquire players. He realized that crappy vets wouldn’t help him contend, so he dispensed them and won 57 and 59 games in 1964 and 1965. From there, things progressed as we know. 1961–1965 happened, no denying. But the talent he inherited was that bad, in fact, -40 of his poor wins vs expected come from 1961 to 1965.
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Special note: Jocketty is eligible for election through our initial 28 pioxec honorees because the electoral rules through 2016 allowed any sitting executive 65 or older to be eligible. Jocketty was born in 1951. He will not be eligible again for us until 2021 because for 2017, the rule was changed so that sitting executives must be 70 or older.
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We recently went over his case in some detail, and here’s what we wrote:
MILLER: [Selig] forced interleague play into the game. Yuck! He made the All-Star Game worth something, so the ads say. But the game is actually as unimportant as ever. He expanded the playoffs, which I hated. But then he added the second wild card. That one-game playoff is exciting. And it’s the crapshoot that’s deserved by those who don’t win their division.
But there a huge reason that Selig rises above many others for me. He was placed in a Commissioner position unlike any before him. He wasn’t given the job to look out for the best interests of the game. Rather, he was put in there to make the most money possible for the game’s owners. And that he did. Has there ever been anyone who’s brought as much money into the game as Bud?
ERIC: Money. If that’s the best thing about Bud Selig, then he’s got issues. The reality of baseball as a business has a curious relationship with the Hall of Fame. I don’t recall any plaque that mentions money, revenues, licensing, concessions, or gate receipts. Lots of mentions of winning championships and personal achievements. Some pioneer and executive plaques talk about improvements of the experience for fans or innovations that made the game stronger.
And Selig has some of those innovations. During his tenure, MLB Advanced Media grew and thrived. It now leads all sports in providing a more immersive, interactive online connection with the game. A big plus for baseball overall. Though it’s hard for me to imagine that an octogenarian used-car salesman had much of a hand in creating something steeped in contemporary technology.
But very few of his accomplishments came without a dark side to them. And that dark side was always about one thing…grabbing more money from players, from fans, from taxpayers, from any pocket in sight.
Take the boom in new ballparks. Baseball rebuilt its entire infrastructure during the Bud era. And in municipality after municipality, the commissioner rode into town and talked about how the team would have to move if there wasn’t a new ballpark paid for mostly if not entirely by the city and regional taxpayers. To create leverage for this ruse, Selig had to badmouth his own product and make empty threats about contracting teams. If I ever hear the word “disparity” from him again, I might go postal. All this just before and after expanding the league! If so many viable markets were queued up to embrace a team on the move, why haven’t we seen more interest in relocation or further expansion? The move to Washington made sense, but what huge market has had a hankering for baseball since? To sell these stadia he also made claims about community financial benefits that economists have found dubious.
A nasty undercurrent of dishonesty and dissembling pervaded much of what Selig said in public. His stern position on steroids after years of ignoring them and lapping up the beaucoup bucks from fans who dig homers. Crying poverty while baseball busted the billion-dollar revenue mark and signed players to big contracts. Claiming people loved interleague games when attendance figures suggested otherwise.
Selig also had terrible taste in friends, and his favoritism has led to on-field issues. Jeffrey Loria is among the very worst owners in sports today, and it was Bud who welcomed him to the fold. Loria ran the once proud Expos into the ground before the smoke-and-mirrors deal that gave him the Marlins. In Miami he pulled the same routine until the city capitulated to a stadium deal, despite county voters first rejecting it. Now he runs the team at a profit by sucking off revenue sharing money and chronically underfunding team payroll. All this while acting like a tyrant, churning through managers, and behaving like a petty tyrant.
Then there was Frank McCourt. His purchase of one of the Dodgers, one of baseball’s crown-jewel franchises, in 2004 was almost entirely debt-leveraged. He proved an utter embarrassment to the game and the team in both his very public divorce proceedings, which laid bare how he mismanaged the team, and the over-extravagant lifestyle he led. All this despite the team raising ticket prices each year of his reign to service its debt. There was also a scandal in which a close friend was paid about a quarter of the funds of the McCourt Foundation to be its executive officer. (McCourt himself was required to pay back $100,000 dollars of that money.)
And then there’s the Wilpons. Bud allowed them to carry a debt load much higher than the league’s ownership rules allow. This meant he was supporting beneficiaries of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Bernie was a good friend of the Wilpons, so wink-wink. The Mets, a successful franchise situated in the nation’s largest metro area, had to shed payroll like crazy and are still hamstrung by the Wilpons’ debt issues.
Meanwhile, thanks to the anti-trust exemption, Bud and his cronies have denied Mark Cuban a chance to buy in. He’s been highly successful in other sports, but, you know, he calls a spade a spade, and owners shouldn’t make waves. Just ask model citizens McCourt, Loria, and Wilpon.
Let’s not forget that Selig was one of the hardline owners associated with the 1986–1988 collusion cases. He was at it again in the 2002–2003 collusion case, and probably in the blackballing of Barry Bonds.
The question isn’t whether Bud Selig was good for baseball. On the whole he likely was. But does he rise to the level of a Hall of Famer? No one is Ghandi in the back rooms of baseball, but Selig seemed like either a snake oil salesman or a mere tool of the owners. In the former case, I’m not buying. In the latter case, why would I buy? In any case, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the money argument.
MILLER: I think we’re just going to have to disagree here. Selig was the first baseball Commissioner whose job is was to make the owners money. Did he hold cities hostage? Maybe. But baseball makes them money. Did he build on the backs of the players? Hardly, they’re making millions. Did he hurt the fan? Attendance says he didn’t.
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So, the reality here is that our researches are ongoing, but we’ve narrowed down to these four coaches. We are beginning the process now of looking for any statistical evidence of their effectiveness. That is, easy-to-spot stuff, you know, big flashing red neon lights. Then we have to assess whether they meet the criteria of pioneer, because they sure ain’t execs. But this is actually going to take us a while for reasons we’ll describe at a later date. Which means that we can only elect through our 24th pioneer/executive until we finish the coaches. Which leads us to our status update….
Because of the data we need to dig up for the coaches, we are going to take a little break from electing into this wing. For the next several weeks, we hope to entertain and edify you, dear reader, with another kind of status update. This time it’s our annual look at how much active players and managers helped (or hurt) their case for the Hall of Miller and Eric. We’ll go position by position (with pitchers broken into lefty starters, righty starters, and relievers). After that, it’ll be Hall of Fame ballot time, and soon after that, VC results analysis. But we’ll be back cranking on these folks shortly after all that.
Orioles fans, this is your time. This week, we’ll present three of the four GMs who brought you the awesome O’s of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. The ones who made the Orioles into a team rivaled by only the Dodgers for the best organization in baseball by creating “The Oriole Way.” We’re talking today about Lee MacPhail, Harry Dalton, and Frank Cashen. All three had long, successful careers after Charm City: MacPhail resurrected the Yankees then became AL President; Dalton brought Harvey’s Wallbangers to the only World Series in Brewers history; Cashen turned the laughing-stock Mets into the dominant team of the late 1980s. These are guys with long, impressive resumes.
Behind the scenes, we are working very hard to bring you more info about important GMs. There are probably 100 or so team builders eligible through 2016 with substantial careers. We’ve completed 20, and about 15 strong candidates. The number of strong candidates out there is probably about 30. In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing information on well-known GMs including the great Ed Barrow as well as Sandy Alderson, the Tigers’ Jim Campbell, the Giants’ Chub Feeney, and the Indians’ John Hart. We’ve also got a couple of not so well thought of GMs in the offing, the White Sox’ Ed Short and Toronto’s Gord Ash. Meantime, in the background, we’ll be working on the following to round out our initial burst of great team builders:
If there’s anyone that you think we’re leaving out, please drop their names into the comments below!
Without further ado, let’s visit Birdsland.
| NAME | RECORD | PCT. | VS EXP | OCT | OCT VS EXP | WS APP | WS APP VS EXP | WS WINS | WS WINS VS EXP | MGR PYTH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
Dalton and MacPhail get a lot of credit for improving their squads. They were well above expectations. Cashen’s first job was maintaining those great early 1970s Orioles teams, and it’s hard to do better than 109 wins. Of course, a big stumbling block for MacPhail is the lack of October baseball on his resume. A mitigating factor in that, however, is that both the O’s and the Yankees went to the World Series soon after he left due to the talent he had assembled. Most of Dalton’s post-season resume, in fact, can be seen as an extension of MacPhail’s work. Even Frank Robinson. MacPhail set the trade up and left it in Dalton’s lap to say yay/nay to. Harry chose….wisely.
Now let’s look at how the GMs themselves did at constructing competitive clubs. BASE: Talent in WAR that a GM inherited
| NAME | BASE | GM | CONT GOAL | avg%GOAL | med%GOAL | WS GOAL | avg%GOAL | med%GOAL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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% |
| 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% |
| 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% |
MacPhail’s major shortcoming is his inability to get his turnaround teams into October quickly enough to get the credit. In both Baltimore and New York, his slow, patient progress failed to yield a winner for him in a timely manner, but in both cases his acquisitions fueled dynasties. The long times spent in the desert by his teams shows up primarily in how far from World Series contention his teams were on average. In fact, no team of his had enough WAR to be viewed as a team of typical World Series strength.
Dalton has unusually large gaps between the average and median percentages for meeting our contention and World Series goals. This is a direct result of those great Oriole teams mentioned above. He made great moves for those teams, and they already had about 40 WAR of value baked in from players acquired before his ascension to the GM chair. The result is a tremendous amount of surplus value from 1969 through 1971. That does skew things a bit when we look at averages. The median cuts out some of the noise to give us a little more reasonable look. That said, Dalton also made some good moves around the margins with Milwaukee, taking a young and highly talented team, and pushing them over the top.
Cashen’s record looks like Dalton’s in this record if we mentally adjust for the puffiness of those late-60s Orioles squads. Cashen had to deal with the decline of both the Robinsons, Dave McNally, and a few other key contributors. He had effectively addressed these issues by 1975 before he departed, leaving Hank Peters the goods to build a strong team from in the ultra-competitive AL East of the time. In New York, the rebuild took time. Cashen, as we’ll soon see, drafted better than few others and made strong trades at the right time so that by 1984, the Mets had returned from the depths of baseball horror to the legitimate contention. In other words, he took Lee MacPhail and Harry Dalton’s playbook and applied it in New York to excellent result.
OK, let’s see what these guys actually did to build their teams.
| NAME | AM FA | PUR | FA | AM DFT | R5 DFT | ML DFT | EX DFT | TR | WV | TOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| NAME | SOLD | REL | R5 DFT | ML DFT | EX DFT | TR | WV | TOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
Cashen was all about the draft and the trade. Dalton chose from a wider menu of options, especially free agency. MacPhail, with much of his career before the draft, made outstanding use of the amateur free agent market, as we’ll see below, but overall used most of the player-acquisition channels.
| NAME | AM FA | PUR | FA | AM DFT | R5 DFT | ML DFT | EX DFT | TR | WV | TOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| NAME | SOLD | REL | R5 DFT | ML DFT | EX DFT | TR | WV | TOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
Cashew’s drafting was really good. Here’s a quick list of the WAR each good GM got from the draft divided by how many drafts he participated in:
Cashen is the second best drafter among GMs with long draft histories. And he got there with the Mets, right? Wrong. Even though Cashen’s teams routinely picked among the last several teams each year thanks to their excellent records, he actually picked 91 WAR of value from Eddie Murray, Mike Flanagan, and Rich Dauer. Then with the Mets came Strawberry, Gooden, Dykstra, Magadan, McDowell, Jeffries, Aguilera, Hundley, and even one of the Bobby Joneses.
MacPhail on the other hand, split his career between the pre-draft era and the draft era. His amateur free agents were pretty darned good: Jim Palmer, Mark Belanger, Dave McNally, Davey Johnson, Merv Rettenmund, Andy Etchebarren, and Eddie Wyatt. For the Yanks he drafted Munson and Guidry, but maybe his best drafting moment was in the old first-year draft of the early 1960s. Like the Rule 5 Draft, it was designed to keep teams from hoarding good young players. He swiped Paul Blair in this draft.
Dalton, as we mentioned took a little from every pot. Sign Dave Nilsson as an amateur free agent. Buy Gorman Thomas and Teddy Higuera away from their teams (the latter from a Mexican league squad). Draft Bobby Grich, Al Bumbry, Bill Wegman, Dan Plesac, B.J. Surhoff, Darryl Hamilton, Doug Decencies, Cal Eldred, Jeff Cirillo, Greg Vaughn, Chris Bosio, or Carney Lansford here, sign a Bobby Grich (with another team), or trade for a Frank Robinson, Don Buford, Mike Cuellar, or, most famously, Nolan Ryan there.
Of course, what’s most fun is to look at their trade record because that’s where they compete against their fellow GMs. All three were shrewd traders. Because of how we assess trades (by calculating departing value as all WAR after a player left until he either returned to the team or was granted free agency), it’s very hard for GMs to come out even over the long haul in swaps. Well, both Harry Dalton 285/284 and Lee MacPhail 195/166 did better than even, and Frank Cashen wasn’t all that far away 270/304. They join Larry MacPhail and Swapper Phil Seghi (a bad GM) as the only traders we’ve seen who finished in the black. Let’s take a look at their best and worst deals, any that fall into the range of being +10/-10 WAR for them.
Cashen
You’ll see below that Cashen was aggressive in putting together key pieces during 1983 and 1984 because he knew that his young talent was about to arrive in force. Then by the last couple years of the decade, his magic touch had worn off and a certain desperation appeared to set in. Three of his worst trades occurred from 1988 onward, and his stupidest deal by far was one of them. Let’s be honest, Cashen did a great job, but dealing away a really good prime-aged centerfielder for a second baseman that you then convert to a centerfielder is the very definition of stupid. The Viola trade, on the other hand, was an attempt to win now, and you have to applaud that Cashen knew his core was aging out and wanted to get into the playoffs one last time before the window shut.
Trades Won
Trades Lost
Dalton
Much of Dalton’s fame rests on two all-time famous heists: The Nolan Ryan trade and the Frank Robinson trade. The Ryan deal was truly lopsided. Even if Ryan hadn’t been in the trade at all, the swap would have gone mildly toward California because Leroy Stanton himself outproduced Fregosi. A note: I feel bad for Fregosi who as a really wonderful player and was about one or two more good years away from a HoME plaque. So history is absolutely right about that one.
But the Robinson trade turns out to be a tad more nuanced than the pundits tell us. Robinson famously captured the AL triple crown and the MVP as he pushed the O’s into the World Series. His addition surely did make the difference, propelling a young team into October a couple years ahead of schedule. The base of talent in Baltimore was considerable, though. Peak Brooks Robinson, mid-career Luis Aparicio, young Boog Powell, the Baby Birds rotation, and ace relievers Moe Drabowsky, Eddie Fisher, and Stu Miller all had good years. These backed by emerging young stars such as Paul Blair, Davey Johnson, and Curt Blefary, all of whom were under 24. The O’s slipped to sixth in 1967, rose to second in 1968, then finally all the talent arrived and aligned at once, and they went on one of history’s greatest runs from 1969 to 1974 with Robinson around through 1971. They won the AL East by 19, 15, and 12 games from 1969 through 1971. Robinson at that point was no longer putting them over anything. Even had he been replaced by an average right fielder, the team would have won the East. Then he was gone, but the team carried on. It finished in 3rd, five games back in 1972 then won the East in 1973 by 8 games and by 2 in 1974. Robinson obviously was awesome, averaging 6 WAR a year during his tenure in Baltimore, and Dalton absolutely won the trade. The thing that history forgets is that the trade ultimately wasn’t as imbalanced as it appeared. Dick Simpson and Jack Baldschun were nothing but Milt Pappas was a very good pitcher. He went on to chalk up 22 WAR through 1973. He was no Frank Robinson. Obviously. His value was more widely dispersed over time; he was not an impact player like Robinson. But to say the deal was decidedly lopsided misses the point that Pappas was a very good pitcher after the swap.
Instead I see this as a great win-now deal, probably one of the best moves of its kind (in the era before free agency). The O’s dealt the future from a deep stable of young studs, coughing up a good arm in his prime for a guy who’d just turned 30 but filled a specific need in the lineup. Branch Rickey, for one, would have balked at a deal like that given his predilection for being on the selling end in trades of the sort. But Dalton pulled the trigger, paid a fairly steep price, and was repaid with four pennants in short order. The World Series appearances are why the deal is retrospectively seen as lopsided. Even though 1966 is probably the only year where Robby’s presence was absolutely necessary to win the pennant. Flags fly forever, and we have to give Dalton and Robinson their due for 1966. But had the O’s not reached the World Series so often in the late 1960s, or had they not won immediately in 1966, would we remember the deal as a steal? Or merely as a good baseball trade.
Trades Won
Trades Lost
MacPhail2
MacPhail made numerous trades, but typically, he was adding at the margins. Fred Stanley for George Pena or Willie Kirkland for Fuzzy Smith or an aging Harvey Haddix for someone called Richard Yencha (I think Streisand was in that film). He made the seven big trades you see below and made out a little above par overall. There’s a couple others that are close to 10 win margins in his favor as well, including Pat Dobson for stuff, and Dick Hall and Dick Williams for other stuff. MacPhail did not seem to suffer from late-career trade issues like Frank Cashen, Clark Griffith, and some others. Then again, he left the Yankees well before he needed to so he could run the American League.
Trades Won
Trades Lost
So that’s three more very interesting GM candidates. Keep watching for more. I know these ain’t sexy, but we think they may be adding something to the study of team builders, and we hope you agree.
the Hall of Miller and Eric 