A former lawyer and marine, he quietly might have been the most important baseball executive of the last twenty-five years. Front offices using sabermetrics? He introduced Billy Beane to Bill James’ work. Building a championship team simply by out-spending everyone else? Alderson might be indirectly responsible for the Yankees. Ever see umpires huddling up to discuss a call? Alderson encouraged them to do that when he worked for the commissioner’s office. Questec, the system MLB uses to grade an umpire’s strike zone, was also brought in by Alderson. His current job is cleaning up corruption in the Dominican Republic’s amateur player system, because Sandy Alderson is a man who Gets Things Done. In the future, there will be hoverboards; there will also be several interesting books written about Alderson’s influence over the game of baseball. He is an agent of change.
– Patrick Flood, PatrickFloodBlog.com.
Flood makes a pretty convincing case for Alderson, who appears to be the fan favorite, the media favorite, and, at this point, the odds-on favorite to get the job.
Don’t count out a late push from Jimmy McMillan, though.
Tedquarters 
The one thing that Patrick mentions here, that I think sometimes gets lost among fans is that Alderson was a frontrunner in how the game has changed into what it is now. As he mentions, he was Beanes mentor and one of the first to look at the advanced stats which are a huge part of the game one.
Many seem to talk about Alderson as the “old school, more established guy” which he is, but I dont think his way of doing things is as old school as people think. People question wether a guy who hasnt been a GM since the mid 90’s can adapt to “todays game”, but I think Since Sandy was one of the pioneers that started the change in the game in the first place, we shouldnt be afraid of this so much.
And according to Back to the Future, hover boards will be widely available sometime within the next 5 years.
“His current job is cleaning up corruption in the Dominican Republic’s amateur player system, because Sandy Alderson is a man who Gets Things Done. In the future, there will be hoverboards; there will also be several interesting books written about Alderson’s influence over the game of baseball. He is an agent of change.”
If, indeed, Alderson Gets Things Done, why don’t we put him on more important things, like the aforementioned HOVERBOARDS! Like Chris M says above, they’ve got about five years before I’m going to ask for my money back.
Look guys, we all agree on the hoverboard thing.