Pat Gillick Rules

Maybe Pat Gillick is the best executive in the history of baseball. The dude just shows up at baseball franchises around North America, builds playoff teams (usually including Jamie Moyer) and then tips his hat and rides off into the sunset. With the Phillies’ World Series victory this season, his resume as a GM now includes three World Series titles and 11 LCS appearances.

Beyond his success at building winners, however, what makes Gillick so cool is that he doesn’t hang around long enough to let his creations go stale. As he will not be returning to the Phillies for a fourth season in 2009, his past three tenures as a general manager will have lasted for three, four and three years apiece, with a total of six postseason appearances coming during those 12 years.

Pat Gillick is the Ricky Gervais of baseball executives.

Gillick took over as GM of the Blue Jays in 1978 and endured one of the worst half-decades in the history of organized sport, posting five consecutive losing seasons with a record of 294-459 during that span.

Beginning in 1983, however, Gillick would go on a run of 11 consecutive winning seasons between the Jays and Orioles, posting just two losing records since (’94 Blue Jays and ’98 O’s).

Gillick’s perennial contenders would reach the postseason in four out of five seasons between 1989 and 1993, including two World Series titles, primarily by supplementing homegrown talent such as John Olerud, Pat Hentgen, David Wells, Jimmy Key, Tony Fernandez, and Duane Ward with solid trades, acquiring Roberto Alomar, Joe Carter, Kelly Gruber, Juan Guzman, Devon White, and, briefly, Rickey Henderson.

After leaving Toronto following the strike-shortened 1994 season, Gillick signed a three-year deal with the Orioles in late 1995, bringing in former Jays Wells, Alomar and Key, as well as Eddie Murray, Randy Meyers and a peaking B.J. Surhoff and leading the O’s to ALCS appearances in ’96 and ’97.

The Orioles would fall apart in 1998, finishing at 79-83 and beginning their current run of 11 consecutive losing seasons. His contract in Baltimore expired, Gillick jumped ship on Peter Angelos and the O’s, landing with the Mariners in the winter before the 2000 season. He would make a splash immediately upon his arrival in Seattle, trading Ken Griffey Jr. to the Reds for Brett Tomko, Mike Cameron, and two nobodies less than three months after taking power.

The move would prove apt, as Cameron alone has outproduced the now-anemic Griffey in the time since the deal, with the latter having posted just two seasons with 500+ at-bats. The Mariners made ALCS appearances in 2000 and 2001, and Gillick would finish his four-year tenure in the Emerald City with a record of 393-255, or an average of 34.5 games over .500.

Inheriting a Phillies team with an 86-win core of Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell and Brett Myers following the 2004 season, Gillick went to work mixing and matching players in order to pick up the additional victories required for a postseason berth.

During second-place campaigns of 2005-‘06, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels were promoted to the big leagues, Gillick-fave Jamie Moyer was acquired in a trade for chicken scratch, and Thome and Abreu were shipped off as cost-cutting measures.

Supplementing their core with spare parts such as Jason Werth, Matt Stairs, Greg Dobbs, Joe Blanton, and J.C. Romero, as well as a suddenly no-longer-hated Brad Lidge, the Phillies captured the NL East in ’07 and ’08 with 89 and 92 wins, respectively.

With Gillick handing off his GM post in Philadelphia to Ruben Amaro, once again goes out on top. Gillick has said that he is not sure whether or not he is retired, another classy move that your Roger Clemens, KISS, and Brett Favres would do well to take note of.