Mark Armour and Dan Levitt have written a book: In Pursuit of Pennants, which examines how front offices have historically found innovative ways to build winning teams. In support of that, they are counting down the top-25 GMs of all time over at their blog. Since it’s slow season, I’m going to continue linking to the countdown as it’s great stuff we rarely read about in the normal course.
The 1970s and 80s Royals won a lot of baseball games. They were built primarily by Cedric Tallis, the Royals’ first GM and, eventually, his successors. But Tallis himself was let go before the Royals’ 1976 breakthrough.
He also was one of George Steinbrenner’s GMs during Steinbrenner’s craziest periods of ownership so, while there was a lot of success, there was also a lot of turmoil.
In other news, I bet most of you had no idea who Cedric Tallis was before reading the linked article. Which is why I’ve been linking these things.