Ushering In a New Breed of Baseball GM

For years, the overdrawn dichotomy between new-school statistical analysis and old-school player scouting was the subject of too much spilled ink. The release of Michael Lewis’s controversial “Moneyball” and its advocacy for Athletics GM Billy Beane inspired the strident rejoinders fired off by scouting-dependent press outfits like Baseball America, innumerable beatwriters, and screeds like “Built to Win,” the mercifully short, dull book co-authored by Braves GM John Schuerholz. Consistent with that kind of work, the old school’s agitprop wing in the Fourth Estate pointed to winning major league general managers to prove its case: the Twins’ Terry Ryan, the Cardinals’ Walt Jocketty, and held above them all because of his club’s success, the patron saint of the old school, Schuerholz, who stepped down as the Braves’ GM yesterday.For years, Ryan’s Twins were the best example of how to build a winner on a thin dime while not resorting to any of those wild-eyed ideas described in “Moneyball.” Those ready to sing Ryan’s praises were also generally ready to tear Beane down for failing to reach the World Series; they were strangely silent on the similar failures of their hastily-saluted pony. The Cardinals’ Jocketty was similar to Ryan only in that he was also inevitably described as a quintessential baseball man, albeit one equipped with the more daring killer instinct to make the right trades at the deadline. In part, that was a reflection on a generally weak player development program; the Cardinals depended on free agents and trades for the most part, and absent a Twins-like commitment to the future, they could afford Jocketty’s willingness to gamble. His efforts were capped by last year’s surprising World Series win.For Schuerholz, as much as he was propped up as a posterboy for the old school, his now-burnished reputation has profited greatly from his wisdom in ditching a Royals franchise he’d help run into the ground by 1990 for a prospect-laden Braves organization that had been built up by his predecessor (and the club’s active manager) Bobby Cox, aided by the player development team that featured scout Bill Clark. That doesn’t make Schuerholz a bad GM as much as one with the sense to see the writing on the wall, then as now. In 1990, he’d made mistakes in Kansas City, and the Royals weren’t going to contend. What better time to transfer allegiances? And where better than Atlanta, with its already-exceptional commitment to player development and scouting? To be fair, Schuerholz made great deals and canny pickups that helped fuel the Braves’ ongoing success, but there’s something to be said for the man’s sense of knowing when to get out of the chair, and after two straight seasons shut out of the postseason in Atlanta, that time is now.Now all three of those paragons of old-ways virtue have left the stage. Schuerholz’s exit seems to have been made under his own power to move on to a higher-level sinecure, although rumors of new club owner Liberty Media’s tightening purse strings and recognition that three of the four teams in the LCS round reached that perch while spending more than $25 million less than this year’s Braves may well have played a part. Ryan and Jocketty left in somewhat less corporate/bloodless variations on getting axed. Ryan’s exit seemed to boil down to an explanation that the job had worn him down, and with so many of the Twins’ key players nearing free agency, and with the future looking grim, there’s reason to be sympathetic. Jocketty’s departure seems more like a variant on Schuerholz’s concerns — the Cardinals were spending money, yet not keeping pace in the weak National League Central, and increasingly, Jocketty’s friction with younger, analysis-oriented staffers was seen as unproductive.That conflict — a real one, as opposed to a broadly-drawn sports page dichotomy — reflected the real points of pressure in the game today. It hasn’t gone unnoticed among the people paying the bills that the Indians, Diamondbacks, and Rockies all made the league championship series with relatively modest budgets (and sensible budget management), core talent grown, and developed within their own organizations, and with differing levels of commitment to using performance analysis to enhance — not drive — their decision-making. Being a proudly scaly, unsuccessful, and expensive dinosaur is suddenly very much out of fashion. Whether it’s a former analysis-friendly Red Sox staffer runningtheDiamondbacks (Josh Byrnes), or a man who used an explanation of park effects to get his job (Colorado’s Dan O’Dowd), or the sabermetrically and scouting-savvy GM in Cleveland, Mark Shapiro, it’s become clear that a willingness to do things new and old — while also saving a buck — is the way to go when picking the guys wearing the suits.The question as to what the immediate future might hold might best be defined by the men tabbed to replace these front office legends. In Atlanta, Schuerholz’s job is being filled by former assistant GM Frank Wren, the chief exec for the Orioles in the one year between Pat Gillick’s hasty self-excusal in 1998 and that franchise’s journey into utter hopelessness under Syd Thrift’s watch. In Minnesota, the Twins have also promoted from within, naming Assistant GM Bill Smith to take Terry Ryan’s place. Smith had spent Ryan’s entire 13-year tenure as GM as his assistant, the next step up in a front office career with the organization that began in 1986. In St. Louis, no one has been selected yet, although it’s expected to be someone willing to at least acknowledge an in-house analysis-minded sidekick like player development chieftain Jeff Luhnow. Taken with the decisions of the Astros to resurrect Ed Wade and the Pirates to tab Indians scout Neal Huntington, you could describe this slate of next generation GMs as a new wave of apparatchiks, because none of them were on anyone’s hot list of up-and-coming execs, either from the scouting or the stats side of the divide.Some might take that as a setback, and others might overstate matters and consider it the death rattle of the game’s old guard. In reality, it represents a much more up-to-date pragmatism — survival depends on success, and whether you rely on scouting, analysis, or have the good sense to use both, the best way to keep the job is to deliver. Jocketty, Ryan, and Schuerholz all haven’t of late, however much they were once lionized. Their successors will remember that.Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseball prospectus.com.

Ushering In a New Breed of Baseball GM

Ushering In a New Breed of Baseball GM

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