Ranking all 30 MLB teams’ front offices from worst to first

16. Orioles

General Manager: Mike Elias

The squabbles amongst the Angelos family regarding the team’s ownership provide important context for the Orioles’ current situation, but GM Mike Elias appears to have done really well to navigate a bottom of the scale payroll and the ownership drama. The team has one of the best young cores in all of baseball with Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson and with more help on the way in the farm system.

To rank higher, Elias is going to have to get the freedom to make real free agent signings to bolster the roster and be real participants in international free agency instead of just hoping they continue to draft well, but progress is being made to be sure. At present, they just don’t have much room for error and unless Elias can transform the Orioles into a Rays-type operation, he is gonna need some more resources to make it happen.

15. Cubs

General Manager: Carter Hawkins

Tearing down the Cubs roster over the last couple of years to cut payroll hasn’t felt great, but Jed Hoyer (who is the real decision-maker here) has done pretty well to make the roster look more like a quick reset instead of a complete teardown. They gave an extension to Ian Happ, signed Dansby Swanson to a long-term deal, and have some real young talent both on the big league roster as well as in the minor leagues.

The pitching staff is a weak point at the moment and it is legitimately unclear if ownership is going to let the team spend enough to be consistent contenders again, but there are enough signs that Hoyer may be up to the task to keep them in the middle of the pack for now.

14. Giants

General Manager: Pete Putila

This is Farhan Zaidi’s team and you can add him to the list of guys who are running out of time to turn things around. On the one hand, the baseball operations side of things seems to run well as the Giants do seem to get a lot out of the pieces that they do have on the field, and extending Logan Webb was a big win. The front office also does seem to be willing to spend real money to improve the roster.

The problem is that while they have had some success on some short-term deals (Kevin Gausman and Joc Pederson come to mind), but Zaidi has not been able to attract big name free agents to San Francisco despite a willingness to pay up (with the notable exception of Carlos Correa whose physical quashed that deal). Plus, the Giants’ farm system is not in a great state at the moment. If Zaidi can’t make the most of this season and the upcoming trade deadline, San Francisco’s front office could fall down this list in a hurry.

13. White Sox

General Manager: Rick Hahn

The White Sox are one of the bigger disappointments in the league this year as they are closer to the bottom of a pretty tame AL Central than they are to the top. On the surface, though, this is a roster that has some real talent on it and the White Sox were on the come-up before this disastrous start to the 2023 season thanks to largely good work by Rick Hahn and the rest of the front office. The Tony La Russa experiment at manager was a true disaster to be sure, but all indications are that that call came from owner Jerry Reinsdorf despite pushback from the front office.

While we aren’t going to dock them too much for that because TLR was out of the front office’s hands, not having a front office that is able to save meddlesome and ill-informed owners like Reinsdorf from themselves is a problem in itself. The White Sox will probably be fine, but there is less cause for optimism than there was a year or two ago.