How Would You Grade Andy MacPhail's Performance?

[ofahn]

Andy MacPhail's tenure as GM is over. How do you think he did?

Please grade (A to F) him on the following areas:

Trades
Free Agents Signings
Rule 4 (June) draft
International Signings
Player Development
Handling Peter Angelos

and explain why you gave each grade.

Do you believe the organization is BETTER or WORSE now that the day he took over?

[Jordan Tuwiner]

Trades: B-
Free Agents Signings: D
Rule 4 (June) draft: hard to grade him here, more on Joe Jordan and his budget than MacPhail
International Signings: again not sure if it's fair to grade MacPhail here; but obviously F
Player Development: don't think the player development problems fall on his shoulders, but D
Handling Peter Angelos: C

Explanations coming tomorrow.

Do you believe the organization is BETTER or WORSE now that the day he took over?: slightly better

[TuckerBlair89]

Andy MacPhail's tenure as GM is over. How do you think he did?

Please grade (A to F) him on the following areas:

Trades: B I actually think trading is AM's strong point. He made some good trades while here, (getting Jones, Andino, Scott) A few trades did not work out (Millwood)
Free Agents Signings: D. We would almost of been better off not signing anyone during his tenure.
Rule 4 (June) draft F. Regardless of who's fault it is, it still was terrible during his tenure. They only really struck gold on a bare minimum amount, which is not good at all...
International Signings F Again, not really his fault, but during his tenure it was non-existent.
Player Development F I can't put all the blame on AM here, but there were SERIOUS problems with development, and I have to think they should have seen this a little sooner.
Handling Peter Angelos B He is one tough guy to work with, so I give him credit for his time here. Never once did you hear about any clashes between them.

and explain why you gave each grade.

Do you believe the organization is BETTER or WORSE now that the day he took over?

[Matt P]

Trades: B. Most of his trades ended up being even deals but the Hardy trade was amazing and the Bedard trade was good.
FA signings: F. Did any of his FA signings have any impact?
Rule 4 draft: F. Lack of spending compared to other AL East clubs was pathetic.
International signings: D. Only reason it's not an F is because of Schoop and a couple of pitchers in the GCL.
Player development: F. Players come up and look nothing like they are advertised to be.
Handling Peter Angelos: Is this seriously something that we are going to grade a GM on?

I believe the O's are in a better situation than when he got here simply because of Buck Showalter.

[A_K]

International: Incomplete.
Trades: Incomplete.
FA signings: Incomplete.
Draft: Incomplete.
Development: Incomplete.

Can't render a grade on any of the first areas because I have no idea what he would have done if not for Angelos' constant meddling. It's the same reason I don't think it matters who they bring in as his replacement. As long as Angelos owns the team it's clear that no GM will be allowed to do his job, so it seems unfair to assess the quality of their performances.

Even in terms of team's development efforts, which would seem to be isolated from Angelos' cancerous touch, I've come around to thinking that he's nonetheless behind the organization's systematic rushing of prospects, resulting in their eventual failure-- ie. Matusz, Tillman-- as well as its refusal to allow semi-promising prospects to either succeed or fail, such as Reimold.

[LA Detective]

The fact that he didnt put strong emphasis on Defense and Fundamentals throughout the organization I give him a failing grade. Too many players he picked up had no business being what an Oriole should be. We did get some return in the trades but who knows who we could of got. It's hard to judge. Plus the fact we were always loosing and had decent players to trade could also be misleading. I also think he reacted way too slow. Like this year, it was obvious in mid June the players assembled weren't going to work. Moves should of been made then. He did commit to gettting as many arms as possible and with his departure left us with some hope and a possible strong future in that department. He did appear to be a very good human being.

[thezeroes]

In the short term D- Not enough Wins

In the long term, 2014 and beyond it is hard to tell. Do any of the players that were traded for develop enough to be legitimate MLB Players?? Tillman, Jones, Bell, Hunter, Davis,etc... With the jury still debating it would be impossible to give a grade. If these players are flipped for more players and they turn into the core of the club MacPhail needs to get some of the credit.

On his free agent signings I would give a C- simply because he did not mortgage the future by giving out contracts of more than three years.

On the international front I would give an unsatisfactory (U) His conservative nature had kept him from giving crazy signing bonuses to players that he felt were not properly scouted because of the very nature of the beast in the Latin American Countries. Bidding on players that may or may not be shown in the truthful light of day seemed to stick in his craw and therefore not deemed worthy of signing.

The Rule 4 draft is and always will be a crap shoot. You role the dice on players that you believe may help the club going forward in 4 to 5 years. Some work out some do not. His grade is incomplete (I)

In the development part of his tenure I think he was hampered by the inherited staffs that were in place and then with the changing philosophy of his managers during his tenure. Are the MiLB clubs in better hands then when he took over, I think they are but as with all MiLB players the fruits of their labors have not been seen at the MLB level hence his grade is incomplete (I)

[BuckMagic]

The fact that he didnt put strong emphasis on Defense and Fundamentals throughout the organization I give him a failing grade. Too many players he picked up had no business being what an Oriole should be. We did get some return in the trades but who knows who we could of got. It's hard to judge. Plus the fact we were always loosing and had decent players to trade could also be misleading. I also think he reacted way too slow. Like this year, it was obvious in mid June the players assembled weren't going to work. Moves should of been made then. He did commit to gettting as many arms as possible and with his departure left us with some hope and a possible strong future in that department. He did appear to be a very good human being.

He certainly brought in a ton of arms but when are they going to develop?!?!

It is absolutely amazing how every year there is a Michael Pineda, Alexei Ogando, Brett Anderson, Ricky Romero, Jaime Garcia....never the Orioles!

[BuckMagic]

Andy MacPhail's tenure as GM is over. How do you think he did?

Please grade (A to F) him on the following areas:

Trades
Free Agents Signings
Rule 4 (June) draft
International Signings
Player Development
Handling Peter Angelos

and explain why you gave each grade.

Do you believe the organization is BETTER or WORSE now that the day he took over?

It is tough to grade MacPhail on the draft and player development when he has little to no influence over it!! Would Matt Hobgood look terrible if someone other than MacPhail was GM? Would Xavier Avery progress faster if we had a different GM? Would we have drafted Hobgood if there was another GM?

I think, regardless of MacPhail being GM, the results would be the same.

[ofahn]

It is tough to grade MacPhail on the draft and player development when he has little to no influence over it!! Would Matt Hobgood look terrible if someone other than MacPhail was GM? Would Xavier Avery progress faster if we had a different GM? Would we have drafted Hobgood if there was another GM?

I think, regardless of MacPhail being GM, the results would be the same.

The GM is the guy that all of those departments report to. If the personnel there aren't doing their jobs it's the responsibility of the GM to determine there is a problem and then decide whether changes need to be made. I feel that MacPhail was too hands off in his management style and allowed the player development department to become a disorganized mess.

The Draft is ABSOLUTELY the responsibility of the GM. He hires or fires the scouting director and gets a budget from the owner. Jordan was not the problem. The budget was. MacPhail either never felt the team needed to DRAMATICALLY increase its draft budget or couldn't get Angelos to agree to a budget that would allow us to build a properly supplied farm system. If it's the latter then MacPhail should have threatened to resign if Angelos was not going to properly support a rebuilding program. After all, we're only talking about 20M from 2008 to 2011. A little less than what we spent on Mike Gonzales and Kevin Gregg.

[Rising O's]

Free Agents Signings D+ How many of his free agent signings were better than expected? How many were worse?

Rule 4 (June) draft A- They did a very good job of signing players they drafted in all rounds. Did they draft enough upside?

International Signings C Only recently has this area shown some improvement. Koji is really the only saving grace atm

Player Development C- I don't know if they've actually developed players, or the players they have at the ML level were just so talented that even the O's couldn't screw them up. Pitcher injuries and lack of bat development is very concerning.

Handling Peter Angelos C I still recall his "Peter has kept me from making mistakes" comment. History has shown PA knows very little about running an organization so why is his input necessary for an experienced GM like MacPhail?

Contract extensions. F Roberts deal was all about Peter A in my opinion and we're paying for it now. Still Andy was new at the time and that was his moment to stand up and say no to 4 years. I think he backed down though or simply lost the battle. I'll put Guthrie in here and Bedard as well.

Trades B- I'm tempted to give him an A- but other than Jones, none of his trades looks to have brought in any stars. I also have to lower the grade for not making the trades necessary or when doing so might have been in the team's long term interest. Aubrey Huff, Jeremey Guthrie, Ty Wigginton, Brian Roberts, etc. Too many excuses about trying to prevent September collapses. In the end who cares if you lose 95 or 105, your job as GM is to make the organization better for the long haul.

[Rising O's]

One more...

Organizational goal. D+ I'm not sure what it was. Between the draft, free agents, trades, etc there never seemed to be a goal other than being respectable or mediocre. The biggest disconnect was between Jordan, player development and the ML roster. We're a top 5 prospect system headed by Wieters, Matusz, Arrieta, Tillman but the pundits say we have little behind them. So instead of addressing that we begin to draft high school players in Avery, Hoes, Hobgood, Givens and that continued with Machado and Bundy, which resulted in an even bigger gap of talent in the pipeline. I think this was a major failing under MacPhail.

[Jordan Tuwiner]

One more...

Organizational goal. D+ I'm not sure what it was. Between the draft, free agents, trades, etc there never seemed to be a goal other than being respectable or mediocre. The biggest disconnect was between Jordan, player development and the ML roster. We're a top 5 prospect system headed by Wieters, Matusz, Arrieta, Tillman but the pundits say we have little behind them. So instead of addressing that we begin to draft high school players in Avery, Hoes, Hobgood, Givens and that continued with Machado and Bundy, which resulted in an even bigger gap of talent in the pipeline. I think this was a major failing under MacPhail.

Trading Uehara for Davis/Hunter was a clear indicator of just that.