Isn’t Brian Cashman the Best GM in Baseball?
New York magazine is publishing their annual series titled “Reasons to Love New York,” and as of this writing, there are 47 reasons. Why there would need to be any reasons beyond the cronut, Shake Shack, and 24-hour dim sum (or Korean barbecue, take your pick) is not the focus of this discussion. Rather, we’ll discuss reason #26, authored by Will Leitch: Because Sandy Alderson is the Best G.M. in Baseball.
I can hear Izzy’s head exploding right now, followed by the sound of keys mashing right down into the motherboard of his laptop.
Upon seeing the headline, I thought, “oh my, Will Leitch has confused Sandy Alderson with Brian Cashman.” Then I read the story and realized that no, Leitch indeed anointed Sandy Alderson as “the best general manager in baseball.”
Then I thought, “well wait — Leitch is the godfather of snark and sarcasm on the internet, so perhaps this article exhibits his trademark sense of humor.” No. Wrong again. He really DOES believe Sandy Alderson is the best GM in baseball. Or at least, he believes that a post with such a headline will generate a ton of clicks. That IS, after all, the job of today’s online journalist.
By way of my own “click bait” headline, I ask: is Alderson even the best MLB GM in New York? Not because I think Alderson is bad — in fact, I think he’s the ideal fit for current Mets situation — but because Brian Cashman is so good.
Since Cashman took over the GM role in February 1998, the Yankees won 7 AL pennants and 5 World Championships. The team made the playoffs in all but two of those 16 years, and finished first 12 times. If winning is not the way to judge a baseball general manager, then perhaps I overestimate Cashman’s abilities.
Oh, I know what some of you are saying: “but the Yankees also had the highest payroll in baseball most of those years!” True dat. Curious, are you also in the camp that defends the Wilpons with the argument, “you can’t buy a championship, look at the (insert team here that won with a low payroll / lost with a high payroll”? And/or, do you support the other Mets excuse, that “it’s not about how much money you spend, but HOW you spend it”?
Well, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, can you?
For those that DO believe money equals winning, and that’s why the Yankees win so much, you still have to give Cashman credit for a) staying in one job this long; and b) delivering a playoff contender every single year. But you may discount Cashman’s performance because he has more financial resources than many third-world nations. So, I ask you: who is the best GM in baseball, and why?
Fire away in the comments.
Today’s Mets Item
With Christmas so close, I’m going to suggest several Mets gift ideas:
For those who still read, and/or own a bookshelf: Total Mets: The Definitive Encyclopedia of the New York Mets’ First Half-Century
The easy gift for anyone: New York Mets Coffee Mug
This one seems apropos: New York Mets Piggy Bank
(oh yes I did!)
Without Cashman, the Yankees still would have had plenty of years when they dominated, but the seasons where they just barely made it might have gone differently.
As for the article that inspired this, Leitch is a lazy moron, repeating the narrative that Alderson has given the Mets an elite farm system, without bothering to check the Mets’ actual ranking — between #10-#15 by most sources. Oh, and Wheeler’s not our opening day starter. Does this dude get paid to babble on the internet? What separates him from all of us half-assed posters? Where’s my check? Frustrating.
I agree with your conclusion. In a perfect world, teams maintain a high caliber farm system that delivers quality players regularly, which allows the team to be competitive almost every year (barring an injury-laden disaster that is virtually unavoidable). However, the world is far from perfect, and there is more than one way to skin a cat. The Yankee system delivered an incredible core in the 90s that led to 4 titles in 5 seasons. Since then, it has been a bust, but they still have managed to win a WS in 2009, been in the playoffs almost every year, and in a “disaster” year of injury and underperformance like 2013 they put up a winning record. That sure looks to me like sustained winning. Now, they have risk and could collapse sooner or later, or they could continue to spend their way out. Just like the teams that “commit” to the system can draft guys that don’t pan out, like many teams have proven (see Pittsburgh Pirates/KC Royals 20 year plans). No way guarantees success or guarantees failure.
As for if he’s better than Sandy Alderson, that’s totally relative – and open to opinion.
I don’t disagree that money can make a difference in a club’s ability to compete, but it’s far from a sure thing.
No, Izzy, I asked you to put some rationale where your pout is.
I’m not offended, just confused by your accusations. I wasn’t offering either analysis or cliches in my comment to tommyball. Just noting, accurately, that spending, relative to the rest of the league, doesn’t necessarily get you into the playoffs, or even to .500. I’ll provide more detail if you want – do you, really? – but it isn’t clear from your mangled sentences what you’re looking for.
Anyway, do we actually disagree on my comment? I know you hate Alderson, but I never gathered that had anything to do with his spending constraints.
[I’m perfectly willing to take this offline, btw. I’ll gladly trade emalis to spare the rest of the community our “debate”].
Given that Joe is predicting 75 and Izzy’s disgust at everything the Mets do, I think an over/under of 72 wins is fair. It’s a race to 90 losses to make Izzy happy and burst into the masochist playoffs.
Once I get a break from the dayjob over Christmas I’ll put a chart together to gauge Izzy’s progress. I’ve also got a bunch of choice Izzy quotes to accompany it.
I coughed and vomited a little at the idea of Alderson being the best GM in baseball. But maybe Loserson will become a Winnerson in 2014. I hope so.
I swear the acceleration of timelines will be the ruin of everything.
In any case, his piece was useless. Alderson hasn’t earned anyone’s high praise any more than I believe he’s earned derision. For the first time, things are possibly — I said possibly — moving in a positive direction. Should the Mets improve in 2014 and compete in 2015 (or sooner), the credit goes to Sandy. Good for him.
As for Cashman, regardless of how put off some may be by his spending, he’s consistently fields good teams, and that does take more than money to accomplish.
Real life is different, and Alderson isn’t best anything yet. Not in New York.
Izzy’s twisted Boomer ethos of “You are all losers!” doesn’t resonate with me either, though.
Alderson is the best GM in basebal only l in a narrow, sabermetric view, where on-field results don’t matter but following the statistical orthodoxy DOES matter because it is the only way to achieve success on the baseball field (remember, no team ever won a World Series or surpassed 100 wins before 2002). Like Reaganomics. It’s a statistical idea, and thus it Must Be Followed, even if it doesn’t work in the real world.
In our own non-click-bait universe, nobody can call Alderson the best anything. He overspent on Granderson and Colon. Even given the fact that he’s holding the Wilpon/Madoff bag and being funded only by the Amway pyramid and the last few remaining corporate suite sales… he’s not even doing a good job with the money that he DOES have.
I do fully buy the notion that the Mets have no money. The Mets have money, and the will need to spend money in order to have more money for future payrolls. The question in 2014 is where they set the baseline. I as much as anyone fully expect them to field a playoff contender on opening day 2014. In my eyes, at the beginning of the offseason and now, this can be done with $100 mil in 2014 payroll, in a manner that would not saddle the team with unreasonable future salary commitments or cost too many prospects. I think the Mets would prefer to do this at $85-$90 mil, and will leave holes on the roster if need be. They are very reluctant to commit more because they have very little “coming off the books” next season…basically Chris Young. Every other arb eligible or contacted player but Wright will get a raise, or be purged. This insures that the overall payroll will go up next year before they address filling needs. It will take a while to stagger some contracts so each year they have 20 to 25% of the payroll “freed up”. My position is given the damage to the brand, it is worth spending the extra $10 to $15 mil, raise the baseline, and gamble on the team winning 85 to 90 games in 2014. If this is accomplished, even if they don’t make the playoffs, the attitude of the fanbase can be reversed by seeing investment in personnel, Harvey returning, and hopefully more prospects contributing or closer to contributing. Cheaping out now, and delivering another 70-something wins, IMHO, will cost then significantly more in lost revenues than the additional $10 to $15 mil in payroll it costs beyond the budget to fill the rest of the holes. If it were my money, and my team, this is the direction I would go, but my caveat would be that it needs to be the right players to invest. I suspect this is how Alderson may be playing the balance of this offseason, or I certainly hope it is.