We've spent the last few months discussing Neal Huntington's tenure as GM of the Pirates. Opinions of his performance have varied so I thought it would be interesting to quantify where he ranks in relation to the other twenty-nine general managers.

Additionally offseason news has been slow at best to this point, so I thought it would at least provide opportunity for discussion. Whether sufficient interest exists to rank the GMs 1-30 I'm not sure. But we'll take a stab and see how it goes.

I liked the format we used last year to rank Pirates prospects. I'm providing a list of the 30 GMs, you vote for your #1. Once that's settled we'll move on to #2 and so on. If a race proves particularly close, say if GM A gets 19 votes for #1 and GM B gets 17 we'll have a run off between those two. We'll see how long this lasts.

Obviously there are some front offices such as the Cubs that have a president who's clearly very involved in baseball operations. Since it's difficult to discern how responsibilities shake out I'm simply utilizing Baseball Reference's list of current GMs (they list Andrew Friedman for the Rays it should be noted, even though his official title is Executive VP of Baseball Operations). I'll leave it up to you to decide if you want to vote for the GM or the Front Office team in such a case.

Also there are also some GMs such as Jeff Luhnow who are new to the job. So there's not much to go on. I'm approaching the vote as simply 'if you were Bob Nutting and these were the available GM candidates who would you pick.' So if you based on the existing evidence you believe Luhnow would make the best GM, you'd vote for him. Obviously that involves some projection at this point.

THE CANDIDATES

Kevin Towers - Diamondbacks

Frank Wren - Braves

Jed Hoyer - Cubs

Walt Jocketty - Reds

Dan O'Dowd - Rockies

Michael Hill - Marlins

Jeff Luhnow - Astros

Ned Colletti - Dodgers

Doug Melvin - Brewers

Sandy Alderson - Mets

Ruban Amaro, Jr. - Phillies

Neal Huntington - Pirates

John Mozeliak - Cardinals

Josh Byrnes - Padres

Brian Sabean - Giants

Mike Rizzo - Nationals

Dan Duquette - Orioles

Ben Cherington - Red Sox

Rick Hahn - White Sox

Chris Antonetti - Indians

Dave Dombrowski - Tigers

Dayton Moore - Royals

Jerry DiPoto - Angels

Terry Ryan - Twins

Brian Cashman - Yankees

Billy Beane - A's

Jack Zduriencik - Mariners

Andrew Friedman - Rays

Jon Daniels - Rangers

Alex Anthopoulos - Blue Jays