Andrew Friedman Selected As MLB's Top GM Of '11 By Newsday's Ken Davidoff

Rays Exec VP/Baseball Operations ANDREW FRIEDMAN for the second consecutive year tops NEWSDAY's Ken Davidoff's annual list of the 10 best GMs in MLB for '11. The Rays have "made the playoffs three times in the past four years -- as many times as the Yankees and once more than Boston in that time span." And they spent "just a fraction of the money to do so." The Rays, "in short, continue to defy the odds, and while there's immense internal frustration over the team's stadium situation, there's no reason to think that Tampa Bay can't continue to torture the clubs that spend much more than they do." Davidoff lists Rangers GM JON DANIELS second, as due to Daniels' "dazzling array of moves," the Rangers seem "positioned to do damage in the American League for a long time." Davidoff noted in "ranking the GMs, we try to find a balance among 1) total body of work; 2) most recent performance and 3) tangential to number two, how the team is situated moving forward." Davidoff wrote this year he was "compelled to move a few people down significantly (or out altogether) because I had given them the benefit of the doubt for past moves that didn't work out, only to see the cycle of disappointing results continue in 2011." By contrast, some people "moved up dramatically because they laid seeds in past years that blossomed" (NEWSDAY.com, 11/15).