Candidate #4

Candidate #4 with Kaz Ishii

The more information that comes out about some of the other potential GM candidates, the more I find myself liking Dayton Moore as the choice. Every candidate is going to have certain positives and negatives, but more and more potential candidates are coming up with questionable records than I personally expected going into this search. Here is the first of three of the last "no-name" candidates. These three will prove to be, in my humble opinion, the most controversial and complex personalities and pedigrees discussed so far.

(4) Kim Ng, Assistant GM and VP of the Los Angeles Dodgers

The career path Kim Ng has followed really makes for a great story and her credentials are extremely impressive - graduate of University of Chicago (BA in Public Policy), work with arbitration and contract negotiations with the White Sox, Assistant GM and VP of the Yankees and now Dodgers, and Director of Waivers and Player Records. I think she'll make a very good GM someday. I just don't think that day is today. She lacks the background in scouting that is often a prerequisite for getting a high profile general manager job. Truthfully, her negotiation skills and work on some big name arbitration hearings (Eric Gagne's comes to mind) might be strong enough to outweigh her weak scouting background especially if she is hired along with an accomplished scouting director.

One other thing about Kim Ng bugged me and it is through no fault of her own. Read what Dan Evans had to say upon hiring her as Assistant GM/VP:

"I was going to hire Kim or leave the job open," former Dodgers GM Dan Evans said. "She's used to winning. She's the only one in our office who went to the World Series the past four years and didn't have to buy a ticket."

Her credentials speak for themselves. She was more than qualified to get the job she currently holds with the Dodgers. But, come on! This might be some of the most asinine logic I have ever heard. I mention it not only because I enjoy getting angry at things I have no control over, but also because I like mentioning things that make me angry and relating them back to the Phils. I think many Phils fans are clamoring for Brian Cashman solely based on the Yankee pedigree - he is a Yankee so he must be a winner. Obviously, the Yankees must know what they are doing to some degree. They have had tremendous success over the past decade and the men and women in charge are clearly doing what has to be considered at least a good job running a major league organization. However it is a huge jump to say that a person is qualified for a job just because they are associated with a winning organization. Does that make every employee of the Yankees deserving of a promotion elsewhere? "She's used to winning" is just not enough for me. I would need to know what she specifically contributed to said winning in order to pass any kind of objective judgment on her individual overall job performance. Obviously Dan Evans is no idiot and I am sure he did plenty of research on Kim Ng before hiring her. That overly simplistic quote scares me because it wouldn't be too big of a shock to hear the same thing said in a couple of weeks by David Montgomery about the candidate he decides on.