General Managers
By It’s pretty obvious that the Forbes list of best general managers in sports is seriously flawed; the first entry from Major League Baseball is Billy Beane at 26. Either baseball GMs are an incredibly inept lot compared to their brethren in football, basketball, and hockey, or the methodology is flawed. The error seems to be the focus on winning percentage (indeed, winning percentage was double weighted). Since there’s a narrower range of winning percentages in baseball than in any of the other sports, baseball GMs get excluded from the top (and the bottom, presumably). It seems like this would have been a simple problem to note and correct for…
…UPDATE (SL): I can’t judge McHale, although if I understand correctly all NBA fans think he’s awful, but allow me to say that any list that ranks Doug “Let’s trade Doug Gilmour and Jamie Macoun for 5 guys who aren’t nearly as good as Jamie Macoun” Risebrough over Darryl “Miikka Kiprusoff for a draft pick, Kristian Huselius for a 6th defenseman, etc.” Sutter has to be the worst. methodology. ever. Did John Lott design this thing? Although at least Peter Bavasi didn’t make the list.