In an unusual burst of front-office activity in the past year, major league clubs hired a dozen new general managers and hired or promoted three general managers to positions as heads of their baseball operations.
Some of those newly positioned people have had early success in turning their teams’ fortunes around while others are still struggling to achieve that status.
It should be noted, however, that the best off-season acquisition was made by an assistant general manager, Tony LaCava of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Last Nov. 27, six days before the Blue Jays named Ross Atkins their new general manager, LaCava signed free-agent pitcher J.A. Happ to a 3-year, $36 million contract. The 33-year-old left-hander has turned into a big bargain, enjoying the performance of his career with a 17-3 record, best in the majors.
The Blue Jays left negotiations to LaCava because Alex Anthoupolos had resigned as general manager a month earlier, rejecting a contract extension and an invitation to stay under the new club president, Mark Shapiro.
Several years earlier LaCava had rejected an opportunity to become the Baltimore general manager, preferring to stay with the Blue Jays and continue to live in Pittsburgh. Now he was responsible for doing the general manager’s job with an interim title. Besides Happ, the Blue Jays had targeted their own free-agent pitcher, Marco Estrada, and LaCava signed him, too.
“We made a qualifying offer to him,” LaCava said of the 33-year-old Estrada, “and the day before he was able to talk to other teams we were able to do a two-year ($26 million) deal with Marco, who ended up being an all-star.
“With Jay, we were aggressive early on. We had had him in the past” – 2012-13 – “and were familiar with him. His time in Toronto was disrupted. He was hit by a batted ball off his head. It wasn’t so much his head. When he landed he twisted his knee and that wound up taking time to heal. We felt he never hit his stride with us. We knew what was in there.”
When Atkins arrived as general manager, the Blue Jays had their off-season plan well underway.
“It started with what our goals were in the off-season,” LaCava said by telephone last Friday. “We were bringing back the best offense in baseball. We had traded a lot of prospects in trying to put that team together last year. We got Tulowitzki and David Price and the others. Alex did a nice job with brining in players.”
Before this season, LaCava added, “we didn’t want to give up any prospects to bring pitching in and we wanted to hold onto our draft picks. We felt we could do that holding onto Marco and getting Jay and go with shorter term deals and try to get the guys we liked and let the offense do what they did the year before.”
As of game time Saturday, the Blue Jays were in the same place they were when last season ended, leading the American League East. Boston, on the other hand, was in a very different place. With Dave Dombrowski and Mike Hazen in charge of the front office as president of baseball operations and general manager, respectively, the Red Sox were in second place half a game behind the Blue Jays, compared to last place and 15 games behind at the end of last season.
Of the teams that made front-office changes, the Red Sox had made the greatest improvement, just a shade ahead of the Cleveland Indians, who hadn’t made a change as much as an addition. They promoted Chris Antonetti from general manager to president of baseball operations and named Mike Chernoff general manager.
When teams change managers or general managers, they expect to improve. They can’t expect instant success; new general managers need time to turn around a poor team. But a team doesn’t expect to get worse under a new general manager. That, however, is what has happened with the Angels of Anaheim.
Billy Eppler, who had been assistant general manager with the New York Yankees, replaced Jerry Dipoto, who left his role as general manager in a power struggled with long-time manager Mike Scioscia.
The Angels finished last season with a .525 winning percentage and only a game behind Houston for the second A.L. wild-card spot. As of the weekend they had a .418 winning percentage (51-71), were 20 games under .500 for the first time since 1999 and were in last place in the A.L. West, 16 ½ games from the second wild-card spot.
Eppler did not return a telephone call to discuss his first-year problems.
Dipoto, meanwhile, went to Seattle, where the Mariners have a .537 winning percentage compared with .469 with which they finished last season. At the start of play Saturday the Mariners were two games from the A.L.’s second wild-card spot.
I asked Dipoto if the new general manager gets the credit when a team shows such improvement.
“I would say some of the credit is probably fair but not an overwhelming amount,” said Dipoto, one of two former major league pitchers who are general managers (Dave Stewart the other). “We’re here to put pieces together. If you do it right and you build a team environment and create a culture in the clubhouse, it goes to the players first, then to the managing staff for creating and nurturing that environment. It goes to the front office and scouting and development groups for making sure it’s consistent day to day.”
When he left the Angels, Dipoto was a popular candidate for other jobs. Why the Mariners?
“You try to balance the team built on talent and character,” he said. “Talent shockingly enough is a little easier to identify. Character you figure out when the doors close. This opportunity for me, the talent was evident with Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz and Felix Hernandez and Kyle Seager. There was a great core of players to build around.
“The job that Scott Service and the major league staff have done to create a culture, the job our players have done to adapt and to embrace a new culture has resulted in a positive season to this point. I’m proud of them. I don’t think any one of us is more responsible than another. We all do our part.”
Detroit’s dismissal of Dombrowski last August was unexpected and surprising. The owner, Mike Ilitch, was 86 years old at the time, and the speculation was he wanted a chance to win the World Series and had given Dombrowski enough time.
Ilitch replaced the highly regarded Dombrowski with his assistant, Al Avila, and now, at the age of 87, is watching Dombrowski’s Red Sox in better post-season shape than his Tigers even though the Tigers’ current winning percentage of .525 is far better than their season-ending .460.
Dombrowski has fared even better with the Red Sox, whose .562 winning percentage is well ahead of last season’s .481. The improvement prompted a question: How long does it take a new general manager to turn around a losing team?
“I can’t answer that” Dombrowski said. “Every circumstance is different. It depends on what job you take, what direction your organization is going, what you’ve inherited, what moves you can make based on contractual situations, financial restrictions, rules. There’s just so much involved.”
Did his have an advantage being named general manager in August rather than in the off-season?
“It was an advantage for me,” Dombrowski said. “You get a first-hand pulse on some of your players, the front office. To me it was a lot of help for me to be there. I don’t know how I could’ve got prepared at that point. Having the ability to have a regular off-season, knowing who the personnel was, knowing what the needs were on a first-hand basis.”
In recent years the title of president of baseball operations has superseded general manager. I asked Dombrowski to explain the general manager’s role when a club also has a president of baseball operations. I told him one official told me in that case the general manager is, in effect, an assistant general manager since the president of baseball operations is the top man.
“When we established president of baseball operations,” Dombrowski said in a telephone interview, “it was important for me—and I think most organizations are like this— to have the finaI say on hiring and trades. They were my responsibility. But Mike Hazen has more authority to act than a traditional assistant general manager.
“Clubs are set up differently. We made a trade with Arizona and I never spoke to Tony. I spoke to Dave. I don’t know what he had to do.”
Tony La Russa is the Arizona Diamondbacks’ chief baseball officer. Dave Stewart is their general manager.
“We’ve made trades where Mike has worked it all the way through,” Dombrowski said. “He has kept me informed and I say great; go ahead and make it.”
Given the cost, the signing of David Price, the free-agent pitcher, was Dombrowski’s responsibility. The price: $217 million for 7 years. At an average of $31 million a year, Price has an 11-8 record and 4.19 earned run average. At an average of $25 million a year, Hapop and Estrada have a combined 24-8 record and a 3.12 e.r.a. Not bad for an assistant general manager.
I had wanted to talk to one or two new young general managers who don’t work under a president of baseball operations, but Matt Klentak of Philadelphia and David Stearns of Milwaukee didn’t return telephone calls.
