A few days ago I wrote about the GM’s, ranking them, and the risk with giving them power to spend millions for contracts that lasted longer than their own.    Today, Tyler Kepner writes about the Cleveland Indians and one of the GM’s mentioned in that post, Mark Shaprio.

Kepner’s piece opens up Shaprio’s thinking about watching two former Indians compete in last years World Series, though neither still played with the Indians.  It talks about the business cycle, and what that means.  Mark Shapiro will be promoted to the President of the team at the end of this season,  The organization thinks he has a pretty good handle on long-term planning.  And perhaps he does.  But there are other teams that manage to trade away their names for the very same reasons that Shapiro mentions and yet never reach the downturn that the Indians have.

One can be a great GM if one understands how to managing the cyclical nature of baseball.  Or one can be a great GM if you are able to surround yourself with amazing talent evaluators and you yourself can prioritize.  But only the best GM’s can do both.  The Twins ex GM Terry Ryan might have been that guy.  Shapiro though is just the former.

Just for the record doing both isn’t the easiest thing.  That’s why so few teams can manage continued success without a large amount of economic resources.  That is the challenge though- planning the business and planning the talent.