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

8. Cardinals

General Manager: Michael Girsch

The Cardinals seem to always field a good team under president of baseball operations John Mozeliak. To make improvements to the roster, Mozeliak has generally added players via trades and, if they were deemed worthy, given extensions once they were in the fold. The trade for Paul Goldschmidt and the complete fleecing of the bottom-ranked Rockies for Nolan Arenado come to mind here. St. Louis will spend a bit, but they are never among the top payrolls and rely instead on a steady pipeline of homegrown talent and savvy trades to get things done.

That has been good enough for the most part, but flaws in their execution have been exposed in 2023 as the Cardinals have gotten off to a terrible start to the season with loads of drama surrounding Willson Contreras and questions about Oliver Marmol’s viability as a manager being among the storylines this season. The reality is that the Cardinals got old and reliant on a few key pieces that are either gone (Yadier Molina) or aren’t up to the task anymore. There is some talent in the Cardinals’ farm system, but they need to hit on some of these pitchers soon as the pitching staff is in a bad spot. At the very least, they need to trade some prospects for some help in the rotation because things as they stand aren’t sustainable.

7. Phillies

General Manager: Sam Fuld

Dave Dombrowski is the man behind the curtain for the Phillies and he is quite good at his job when he is given a lot of resources including trading away any and all prospects for immediate big league help. Dombroski is a win-now baseball executive and over the course of his career, he has been able to accomplish a lot, although he generally leaves organizations as soon as their playoff windows close as he does not excel in rebuilding environments whatsoever.

There is something refreshing about a guy like Dombrowski who is unabashed in his pursuit of star players with name recognition. The Phillies nearly won a World Series title last year and Dombrowski proceeded to bring in Trea Turner to add to that roster. The issue here is that while the aggression is nice in the short-term, it isn’t sustainable as the Phillies are not particularly good at developing players. Andrew Painter looks like he will be a stud if he is healthy, but the rest of the system isn’t all that exciting. The Phillies’ money will solve some of those problems, but at some point the Phillies stars will age out and when that day comes, we have decidedly less confidence that Dombrowski will be able to piece things together.

6. Yankees

General Manager: Brian Cashman

Brian Cashman is a polarizing figure both amongst Yankees fans and league wide and, frankly, we get it. Followers of the Yankees were used to George Steinbrenner’s ‘win at any cost’ approach to roster building and nowadays, the Yankees have a more restrained approach to player acquisition as owner Hal Steinbrenner is much less willing to spend wildly like his dad was. Moreover, Cashman has had some notable misses on moves (Jacoby Ellsbury and DJ LeMahieu come to mind) which is less than ideal.

However, the Yankees under Cashman have remained among the bigger spenders in the entire league each season, field a competitive team every year, develop homegrown talent reasonably well, and will lock in talent on long deals like the one Aaron Judge signed his past offseason. The Yankees’ front office is far from perfect, but generally speaking they do a good job at balancing being aggressive with keeping an eye to the future in a market that can often unreasonably expect World Series titles every single year.

5. Padres

General Manager: A.J. Preller

AJ Preller is another guy who has historically never found a trade that he didn’t like and is among the most aggressive GMs on this list on a number of fronts. San Diego is just a fun story about a team that has shown that you don’t have to be from a top-3 media market to spend big in free agency and be aggressive in trading for stars like Juan Soto.

Preller’s approach has had some warts, though, as the Padres’ player development arm hasn’t been as good as you would think. Despite having an All-World farm system for the first few years under this front office, San Diego ended up having to trade away a lot of those guys to help the big-league club when the youth movement outside of guys like Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jake Cronenworth didn’t develop and improve like many thought they would. San Diego still did a good job in getting value back for those prospects by staying aggressive, but we would prefer fewer misses on guys that were considered top-end amateur talents.