More on GM Stats

El Gran Color Naranja of OMG sounds a note of concern about misclassification of transactions when WS are assigned. He points out that a negative WS deal might be a positive for the team because it makes sense for the team in those circumstances. For example, if Castilla earns 15 WS for the Padres next year while Brian Lawrence is berated by Frank Robinson into a measley 4 WS, it would go as a -11 for Bowden. But what if Dutch Zimmerman has a break out year and earns 23 WS, his path to glory no longer blocked by Vinny? Overall, the deal is a good one for the Nats then.

Two responses: In the system described above, some GM will get credit for every WS earned by a player. In this case Bowden would get the credit for Dutch's 23 because he drafted and signed him, so Bowden's bottom line would be a net positive for him. But he should get dinged a bit for not getting "value" for Castilla.

But what if some prior GM had signed Zimmerman, but Bowden made the move that got him more playing time? I think the way to answer this is to split the credit some way, probably diminishing the share of the prior GM over time (this would go for bad deals too -- Bodes trading away BJ Ryan and Paul Konerko from the Reds in 1999 should hurt him less and less as the years go by, and the credit go to their current GMs). I don't know exactly how you'd do this, but some fixed percentage based on years probably is not too hard to administer.