Cincinnati GM Walt Jocketty won the 2010 Sporting News Executive of the Year Award after leading the Reds to their first winning season in a decade and their first playoff berth since 1995. Jocketty, who took over the Reds in 2008, is now a three-time winner of the award. He also won in 2000 and 2004 as Cardinals GM.
Jocketty outbid a number of teams for Aroldis Chapman, acquired Scott Rolen and Orlando Cabrera and showed faith in Mike Leake as Joey Votto and Jay Bruce played at an elite level.
Rangers GM Jon Daniels, Giants GM Brian Sabean and Twins GM Bill Smith are some of the execs who also had a legitimate chance of winning the award this year. Dan O'Dowd (Rockies, '09), Andrew Friedman (Rays, '08), Sabean (Giants, '03), Doug Melvin (Rangers, '96) and Andy MacPhail (Twins, '91) are among the current GMs/presidents of baseball operations who have won the award.
cool
He deserves it. It will be fun to watch the Reds to see how they develop the young talented farm into a stable major league contender.
Well earned
No mention of Ned Colletti? He traded for Octavio Dotel for cryin’ out loud.
Could have swore Jack Z locked this up in March…
Lol. The prognosticators missed on that one. If they only knew at the time what we know now….
Good one!
I never thought I’d be saying this, but Sabean really deserved this this season. Huff, Burrell, Ross, Fontenot, Torres, Uribe, and Lopez were all acquired for almost nothing both financially and in terms of players given up in trades. The only real mistake he made in the off-season was bringing Molina back and he managed to undo that mistake to get Posey behind the plate and also snagged a serviceable reliever and decent prospect in return.
I think if the voting had been done after the series he may have gotten it. That said, he’s still got some blemishes on his record and the Giants were still somewhat offensively challenged so I can see the rationale for going with someone else. Never thought I’d be defending Sabean but he probably had more to do with the Giants success than Jocketty had to do with the Reds success.
Wow, Giants got scammed! I guess they’ll just have to settle for World Series rings. Bummer.
Sorry, you do have a point. I just couldn’t resist! :p
Sabean also made a terrible move of signing the injured Mark DeRosa for way over market value…and I agree, I never thought I’d say this, but Sabean earned this award for clawing and scratching his way out of the frickin’ cavern that he dug himself into with years of being inept. The Rowand and Zito and Renteria and DeRosa retarded-ass moves essentially left them with $40m of wasted payroll, yet he plucked Uribe, Burrell, Huff, and Ross off the market for basically nothing. Which allowed Bochy to tell his overpaid divas that they need to get off the field. If you’ve ever managed people before, you know that Bochy deserves Manager of the Year for having those difficult conversations repeatedly. And this coming from a dude who’s been calling for Sabean’s head for 12 years and Bochy’s for 3. Seriously, these two guys did something this year that was just plain impossible.
The Reds did a great job this year, so it’s great to see their “architect” get some love [yeah, I know he didn’t do it alone, but still…]. :))
Good for him, he deserved it. Frank Wren has done a hell of a job turning the Braves around too, he deserves some recognition but Jocketty definitely deserves this.
That’s because he hasn’t made great Executive Moves. His best move was Renteria for Jurrjens and Gorkys Hernandez, second best was Omar Infante and LHP Will Ohman for RHP Jose Ascanio. The McLouth trade hasn’t worked, the Vazquez trade was a wash, the Escobar trade was brutal, and he gave up the only good piece in the Escobar trade (Tim Collins) for two scrubs (Farnsworth and Ankiel). He is a decent GM, but his trades haven’t been the best. He gets a pass by many because of the budget Liberty Media chooses to work with, but still his moves aren’t the best. I’m a Braves fan through and through, but I question some of the moves that Wren has made. Sometimes I feel he makes moves just for the sake of making a move. Wrens top moves: Jurrjens, Hinske, Wagner, and Infante and that’s about it as far as I’m concerned.
90 loss team to playoffs in two years.
I agree the Braves weren’t bad for long, but look at what has happened to this team since Wren took over… he received a depleted farm system after the Tex trade. The starting rotation in 2008 was… wait for it… 1. Jair Jurrjens 2. Kyle Davies 3. Jorge Campillo 4. Charlie Morton 5. James Parr. THAT was the Braves starting rotation just 2 years ago. Now, we are looking at a rotation of JJ, Hanson, Hudson, Lowe, Minor, Beachy, with Medlen coming back from TJ and Teheran waiting in the wings. I still agree that Wren did not deserve this when you look at his competition around the league, but to act as though the job which Frank Wren has accomplished was an easy one (especially considering the Braves have financial restrictions due to Corporate ownership) is to not understand history very well.
Kyle Davies wasn’t with the Braves in 2008. He was traded to the Royals for Octavio Dotel at the 2007 deadline.
The Braves farm system wasn’t depleted after the Mark Teixeira trade. You mention that rotation in 2008, that was because injuries depleted the rotation. Scouting and development led to the current prospects you mentioned and the Braves have always done a good job at that (just look at the Teixeira trade). The biggest problem the Braves have had over the years is that they never rebuilt the team, they just tried to plug in veterans here and there. They should have taken a page from smaller market teams and rebuilt the team, it’s not as if they don’t have the prospects. I would give Frank Wren a C+, not bad, but then again not that good.
good call Jake on the Kyle Davies thing… who was the fifth starter that year? And I agree that our rotation looked like that due to significant injuries to the rotation… that’s why Wren rebuilt it with durable veterans. He is also responsible for Javy Vazquez coming to ATL in the first place, so I’d give him credit for that Brandon. I also think Brooks Conrad was a great pick-up by us, as well as finding Brandon Beachy off the scrapheap. He also didn’t want Glavine back with us (nobody picked him up) and he is a GM who is very proactive, getting us Farnsworthless and Ankiel, who both actually won a game or two for the Braves while they were with us, something that constituted a trip to the playoffs. While not all of his moves are splendid, and some are downright stupid (at least to us fans), I think that you could do a whole lot worse than Wren, considering his restrictions as GM. I’d give him at least a B, maybe a B+. Without his moves, this team would not have made the playoffs and would have probably finished much further back than they did of the Phillies… I also give him credit for holding on to our top prospects, not overpaying. Would yall want Jake Peavy, or Tommy Hanson?
YEAH! RED PRIDE
Cardinal Pride! Wohoo!!
Oh wait, we fired that guy didn’t we and hired a dude whose paying Kyle Lohse $12 million a year didn’t we? Ahhhh, nuts.
Daniels got jobbed..
Did as well as Jocketty but did it while having zero money and going through the disaster that is bankruptcy
I really think Alex Anthopoulos deserves some recognition. I won’t get deep into his moves, I’ll leave that up to the Jays fans on this site, but he has done some great things in Toronto. Definitely showing us how the “new age” GM operates. Also, Jed Hoyer has done a fine job in San Diego…
I’m sure he’ll win a Silver Gyro or something.
Hoyer really hasn’t done much in San Diego. He signed Jon Garland and traded for Miguel Tejada, but after that all the credit belongs to Kevin Towers. He’s the one who built the strong bullpen and really the whole team.
Why no mention of Mark Shapiro in the former winner’s part? He won the award both in 2005 and 2007….and is still the President of Baseball Operations for the Indians (just not the GM anymore).
Or did you just mean to write GMs/”vice” presidents of baseball operations?
In any case, I agree with the Jocketty pick. While people say “look what Daniels did with no money”….I say look what Jocketty did with LESS money. Rangers spent more this year than the Reds. So while I’m sure it was tough for Daniels to do things with the bankrupcy hearings going on, he WAS able to expand the payroll (which was IMO totally the wrong move by Selig and MLB).
The Reds payroll for 2010 was just over $76 million. The Rangers was just under $65 million.
The Rangers made the World Series and featured a total of 10 players which were added to the team after the end of the 2009 season. That’s a 40% of the World Series roster that was added to a team in one year which saw them improve from 2nd in their division to the World Series. The 10 additions were Cliff Lee, Colby Lewis, Vladimir Guerrero, Darren Oliver, Bengie Molina, Matt Treanor, Jorge Cantu, Jeff Francoeur, Andres Blanco and Mark Lowe (you could argue that Alexi Ogando should be added to the list too).
Jockety added the following guys to his roster after the end of the 2009 season: Orlando Cabrera, Aroldis Chapman, and Jonny Gomes. I might have missed one or two (not counting the guys re-signed like Corky Miller), but that list doesn’t compare.
I’ll give Jocketty credit that his team’s record did improve more than the Rangers, but I’m not sure it was because of his performance this year. If you expand past this year, you also bring Daniels additions of Hamilton, Cruz, Feliz, Andrus, etc. in to play.
I think the bottom line is that Daniels made far more changes, with around 15% less payroll, to a team that made it further in the playoffs. I think he was clearly more deserving of this award, even without considering the bankruptcy aspect.
Sabean should’ve won.
Blame the 24 GM Panel (you know, guys who do the same job?) … they are the ones that voted for Walt