May 16, 2021; Denver, Colorado, USA; Colorado Rockies interim general manager Bill Schmidt before the game against the Cincinnati Reds at Coors Field. MLB Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Which team has the best front office in all of MLB?
There is nothing baseball fans like to complain about more than a team’s front office. From not spending enough on payroll to not signing or trading for a fan favorite to just “not doing enough”, front offices often bear the brunt of baseball fan criticism whether it is fair or not.
However, how much of that is actually fair criticism? Are the front offices that get flamed the most actually the worst? Which ones are actually the best despite what the insufferable internet trolls say? These are the questions we will endeavor to answer here.
Here is our completely not scientific and very subjective ranking of MLB front offices from worst to first. If we ranked your team on the lower end, yes…it is probably because we hate your team(s). If we ranked them highly, don’t worry…we probably still hate your team(s). We are also going to note each team’s general manager, but it is worth mentioning here that some teams have different decision-making structures with guys above that title being the actual decision-makers and we will note those as we go along here. Let’s get into the rankings.
MLB Power Rankings: Best and worst front offices
30. Rockies
General Manager: Bill Schmidt
The bottom of the list is tough here because how does one weigh front offices that are willfully fielding a bad team for financial/draft purposes vs. teams that can’t seem to do anything right even when they try. We are going with the Rockies here because they offer a nice variety of a bad roster, inept drafts, trades with terrible returns, miserly ownership, and little hope in sight for the future as the team fails to adapt to the modern game of baseball.
This is the same team that traded Nolan Arenado, a perennial MVP candidate, away for essentially nothing and then turned around and signed the ghost of Kris Bryant to a seven year, $182 million deal when no one thought he was going to get close to that. This is a systemic failure from top to bottom and every season the Rockies find new lows to reach.
29. Athletics
General Manager: David Forst
It is hard to see the Athletics fall this far because of the work that Billy Beane used to do with very, very limited resources to still put competitive teams on the field. However, Beane isn’t running the day-to-day operations anymore and Oakland’s ownership has begun a truly embarrassing process of forcing their way into a move to Las Vegas. The front office has torn the roster down to basically nothing, the stadium is essentially rotting away, and they are well on their way to posting the worst record in the entire league by a wide margin.
Arguably the worst part is that Oakland’s fire sale hasn’t actually yielded any real building blocks for the future with the notable exception of claiming Brent Rooker off of waivers as he has turned into a monster this season. When this team does move to Vegas, they are still likely to be bad for a long time without big, big changes.