Originally Posted by
nsacpi
I dunno. I think JS came along and benefited from all the great talent that Bobby Cox stockpiled. Some of his trades and signings were very good-Pendleton, Maddux, McGriff, Hudson, Sheffield. But he gave up Jason Schmidt who went on to have some dominant seasons. The fiasco involving the Millwood for Estrada trade was due to a big miscalculation on his part. He also traded away some pretty good young players for questionable returns, including Dye, Wainwright, Feliz, Andrus, Harrison, Saltalamacchia. One of his worst trades was LaRoche (a solid young power hitting first baseman) for Mike Gonzalez. A smart GM does not trade a solid young regular for a middle-of-the-road closer. That trade betrays a misunderstanding of the importance of a closer. Strangely enough he made a better trade that off-season to bring in another closer-Soriano for Horacio Ramirez.
On the whole I'd rate JS slightly above average. I rate the two guys who preceded him and succeeded him (Cox and Wren) much higher as GMs.