Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 30, 2005
Joe Moving Up

It looks like Joe Garagiola will be moving to Major League Baseball.

Diamondbacks General Partner Jeff Moorad, traveling with the team, said Friday the club was not in position to confirm or deny that Garagiola has already been hired by MLB, along with Mike Port, vice president of the Boston Red Sox.

Garagiola is said to be moving into a senior vice president position, which was created when Sandy Alderson left MLB earlier this season to help run the San Diego Padres. Garagiola's move, widely speculated for weeks, was reported by several sources Friday.

Given the way the Padres are playing, I bet Alderson wishes he had stayed. :-)

I find Garagiola a very interesting study as a general manager. He's been with the DBacks since the beginning. He got them to a World Championship as fast as any expansion team. He has a talent for taking a veteran player that seems to be going nowhere and getting some good out of him. Who would have thought a 29 year old Luis Gonzalez had his best seasons in front of him? Or that Steve Finley, 34 and coming off the worst season of his career would still be playing today? He was smart enough to bring in Johnson and Schilling, two pitchers great enough to handle a hitter's haven in Bank One Ballpark.

Not everything worked, of course. The trade for Sexson was a disaster. But the DBacks recovered quickly and are once again in contention for the NL West. He turned Randy Johnson into two good young pitchers and picked up the G-Men to solidify the offense.

He's had a very good run as a GM (especially compared to his counterpart in Tampa Bay). I hope he does as well with major league baseball.


Posted by David Pinto at 12:23 PM | Management | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Did the Diamondbacks experience financial mismanagement? I know ownership shares have been diluted several times. If so, is the GM partly responsible, or does blame rest on the owners or another party? Also, to what extent is Moorad, not Garagiola, responsible for the present condition of the team? Either way, with both having backgrounds as agents, the Diamondbacks are a case study for the leadership provided by those with that background. Although I don't follow the front offices and ownerships of MLB closely, my sense is that the Diamondbacks' story is more interesting than most. The former frustrated participation as a minority owner of Arturo Moreno is another wrinkle.

Posted by: Anton at July 30, 2005 02:32 PM
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