Ranking the NL East: General Managers

Jan 21, 2015; Washington, DC, USA; (left to right) Washington Nationals manager Matt Williams speaks as Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo and Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer listen during a press conference introducing Scherzer as a member of the Nationals at Nationals Park. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

District on Deck is continuing our look across the National East, position by position, to see how each team measures up against the rest of the division to see who might have an advantage going into the 2015 season. We’ve recently covered the outfields and third base.

Today, we’ll be turning our attention away from the baseball diamond and redirecting it to the front offices for a look at the men who put the puzzle pieces together – the General Managers.

The NL East has a good mix of characters at the position. There’s Atlanta, where John Hart is serving in that role without the title while the team searches for a replacement for Frank Wren. New York is being run by Sandy Alderson, a sabermetrics pioneer who mentored Billy Beane in Oakland, where he won a World Series.

In Miami and Philadelphia, you have a couple of guys who have been with their teams for over a decade, which both include World Series titles that they won in an assistant role prior to being promoted to fulltime General Manager. In Washington, on the other hand, you have Mike Rizzo, who has been with the team since just after the team relocated from Montreal.

Looking at General Managers is a bit more challenging of a task than ranking players. There aren’t a lot of measurables that can be used to evaluate performance. All you have is a team’s success, and even that can be subjective.

Of course, that’s what makes this all the more fun! So, how do we rank the GMs in the NL East? Here’s our look at the top five:

Next: Number 5