Are Cashman and the guy in LA great GMs or does the money mean they can buy all the right players?
Billy Beane has cycled up and down with the Athletics. They wouldn’t write a book or a movie now. He is still employed. Is he a genius now like then?
John Mozeliak produced winners in St Louis, until he did not and got early retirement. Did he forget what made him successful?
Andy McPhail was the Boy Wonder after winning 2 championships, Never at a loss for a job but never ended a season with a big win.
Terry Ryan had a string of success, came out of retirement to have a total system failure. That bunch that was a total system failure was called Ryan’s core when the team won a division under Falvey.
Is Falvey competent? Maybe, maybe not. He probably came up sounding competent in the interview talking about pitching. He might be as competent as the developer of an internet site that has a system that regularly crashes in the middle of a note, The competency will be evaluates on the next wave of pitching. He certainly had a half dozen relievers get better while he was leader. Was it competence to trade them all will not be determinable right now. Is it competency when a lot of the arms start blowing out?
With the random thought out of the way, here is the random opinion.
Baseball is a game of adjustments, One of the hardest adjustments is to change what a team drafts or signs as amateurs. Baseball when Falvey took over was on the position player side was becoming 3 outcome baseball. Note that for all three outcomes defense isn’t part of the equation. The focus is offense. The money for position players always has been offense. They draft for offense, Problem was the shift by MLB in the ball they used. That shifted the metrics on the three outcomes, HR were not as easy to come by, Third row power became warning track power. Contact became important. When contact, ie ball in play, became important, thus the defense matters. The metrics on what works change in baseball. How quickly a FO adjusts is the competency. The other part of competency is trades. What is winning a trade? Losing a trade is hard to define. The Dodgers paid the cash but the Margot trade was a loss. Luis Arraez won batting titles, Lopez got Cy votes. Did either team really lose that trade? The DeScalfini trade, the Giants pretty much paid his salary. Topa was injured again, the prospects were still developing. Polanco played so well his option was not picked up. Has anybody won at that point? Assessing trades can take longer than many people’s attention spans will allow. That makes it hard to assess trades. That makes it hard to assess competency.
So what is the fan to do to assess competency of the FO? When the team loses over 90 games, finishes out of the playoff, loses in the playoffs, or otherwise does something the fan does not like there is only one thing for the fan to do. That is thump their chest, holler they know baseball and utter an expletive filled tirade about the competency of the front office.
How does the owner decide competency? 3 ways. Pocketbook is one. Make the owner money. Whim is number 2. It is called dysfunctional franchise. Way number 3 is unproven but maybe having the pictures or some documentation for leverage helps. Circling back to where I started. Cashman has every advantage and how many years has it been since a World Series win? Almost a whole generation? He must have leverage.