Baseball decisions aren’t as easy to make as you think. Every team has a top executive who builds a roster, and hopes his moves pay off. Here are the best executives in the MLB.

Behind every team, every player, every trade, every free-agent signing, and every manager hiring is one man. He runs the front-office, puts together a team, and tries to acquire that one middle-reliever that no one has ever heard of. He is the mastermind of the front-office.

I say mastermind because the dynamic and the hierarchy in the modern-day front office has changed in recent years. There used to be a general manager who created the roster, and the owners and presidents who ran the business side of things.

Now, there are both General Managers(GM) and Presidents of Baseball Operations. The only difference is that most Presidents of Baseball Operations have a GM or assistant GM working under them. In this article, we will reference to the top decision makers in a front office as “executive”, regardless if they serve as general manager or President of Baseball Operations.

Most fans believe that structuring a roster and putting men on the field would be easy. However, it’s probably the toughest job in sports. Drafting talent, developing players, finding a coaching staff, making acquisitions, and doing it all within a fixed payroll are just some of the few challenges of running a team.

Many teams have a hard time finding the right baseball executive while others get lucky. There are many things to consider while deciding how good a top executive is. We must look at current success, World Series wins and playoff appearances, and what kind of payroll and budget they are working with. In this list, we will take all that into consideration and rank the best executives in the MLB.