The Often Overlooked Front Office Position

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• theonlymaskman February 5, 2012 at 9:22 am

  The buck stops at the GM’s desk. He is responsible for setting the policy and the philosophy of drafting for the organization. The Scouting Director implements that policy. The GM sets the goals, objectives, and measurement of metrics to evaluate success. To say the GM has nothing to do with the draft is to be totally unaware of how organizations work. So I think the premise of this article falls far short from reality.
  • Bob L February 5, 2012 at 10:17 am

    True, Maskman the GM is the guy whose butt is on the line in terms of W/L’s, performance, putting a winning / selling product on the field but the success / failure of one’s philosophy (a combo of both the F/O and Ownership) hinges on the execution of that philosophy through all phases of baseball operations, most critical would be talent evaluation and player development/motivation/coaching skills. AND these are primarily delegated to others. So, the skills of one’s Lieutenants are KEY to determine how successfully players are first chosen, and then developed / moved through the Farm System.
  • jessep February 5, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    mask: I don’t disagree with you, but often times you hear a GM is a “good talent evaluator” based on the ammy draft and that is just simply not true.

    I am in event management, if I put on a great event, my boss at the end of the day will get the credit, that is the way life works. However, that doesn’t mean they are the ones who made the event great.

    The amateur draft is the main priority for the Director of Amateur Scouting. The GM is not the one making all of these decisions.

    It’s just simply not how the front office works. For anybody below to write a longer comment than my post to say otherwise is simply looking for an argument.

    The Director of Amateur Scouting is hired to gather the information and to make the best picks possible based on the team’s amateur draft budget and team concept.

    Omar Minaya, Steve Phillips and Sandy Alderson aren’t worrying about who to pick in the 10th round of the draft nor are they the ones who deserve credit for “finding them” if they turn out to be great players. That is not their job. Their job is to find the guy who can find those players.
• Mr North Jersey February 5, 2012 at 10:07 am

  Informative post but in the end fair or unfair like maskman said “The buck stops at the GM’s desk.” Always has. The success or failure ultimately will be focused in his direction cause he simply is the GM and he put the people in place who made the decisions to begin with.
• Metsie February 5, 2012 at 10:10 am

  “Case in point, if the GM was the one making the selections, then why isn’t he in the room the entire day of the draft? If the GM is the one making the selections then why do teams hire a Director of Amateur Scouting?”

  You seem to forget the fact modern communications preclude the need to actually be in the room!

  Not a single HC or GM is in the draft room for the NFL Draft either…They are in a remote location where they can debate and discuss whats left freely without tipping thier hand to the competition on what direction they may be going and who they might want!

  To answer your questions of WHY the director of scouting….

  Why is he in the room? A: Because his job is largely done by then, His Job being to collect and present the information that will be used by the front office to make a selection!
  Why does he get credit from the GM? A: Because he manages the STAFF that provided the information they used to make a selection!
  Is what he suggests ALWAYS followed? A: We would be fools to think so! Which defies the notion that he is making all the picks and all the decisions. I doubt highly he is even making the want list order by himself. That draft board is made in a meeting well before the draft even starts and only changes as players who were on that board get taken by other teams on draft day!
  Does the GM on EVERY TEAM make the final decision? At some point they do! Either because the DIR of Scouting was given autonomy by the GM (A Decision) or because deferred to his staff on who to take. That deferral is like it or not a FINAL DECISION, a RUBBER STAMP if you will on the decision of who to take!
  Does the Dir of Scouting deserve Credit? A: Of course they do! They are the ones providing the information used to make decisions. If a team picks good players you do have to credit the person who did the research you used to make your choice. Same goes for when you screw the pooch!
  Risk reward is mentioned, Well we know what the reward is supposed to be, that the player is everything and more the Scouts thought he was. The Risk? He gets hurt and/or they were dead wrong about him! The only other Risk that could exist is that the scouts saw he has some fatal flaw that might not be overcome, in which case isn’t it better to pick a guy who doesn’t have one of those? Regardless of his cieling? Sure a guy might have the ability to hit 60 HRs a year but if the risk to that is he is only going to have 60 hits PER year is that cieling really all that important to play to?
  Scouting is a very subjective science if you can call it a science at all! It is hardly a THEORETICAL exercise that has a right and wrong answer. It is a rating system based on observation and in some cases interaction with a player for the psychological aspects of his “MAKEUP”.
  Some teams put more weight into the psycological than the physical, Other use NUMBERS, and others still, use as tool rating system. The good drafters usually use some combination of all of them.
  Still these CEILINGS are all in the form of a METAPHOR not a fact. A typical scouting report will conclude, He is another John Olerud or Andre Dawson mostly be he looks like them at the plate or in the field but not truly based on his ability or skill exhibited!
  Scouting is not much more than an educated guess! And that guess is only as good as the education they made before they selected. For this reason the Director of Scouting IS important, just not the guy who determines in a final way what is taken and what is not!
  He may very well get the final choice in cases where two players are so close together when you pick, and the FO and his other minions can not come to a consensus on their own.
  But rest assured the GM is very definitly the final say in any personnel decision cause until he says otherwise, what everyone else thinks is nothing more than mere OPINION!
  It’s not an actual DECISION until the GM says it is the way they are going!
  Since he is the only one who can decide who exactly has won the opinion battle it is clearly him who makes the final choice! Even if he is sitting in his office in St Louis on Draft Day!
  They have this thing called phones and they play a very MAJOR role in how any business not just baseball is run these days!
  One final point about the Risk and reward here.
  Teams who most OFTEN fail in the draft fail because they arrogantly think too much of their coaching, select players they feel they can TURN INTO a great player and then FAIL to teach him what it was they were so confident he would learn from them. And this most often happens with college players who at that point have played quite a lot of baseball and their mechanics and habits are ingrained in them!
  High School players have done quite well in that regard but they bring with them the greater risk that they are going to take FAR LONGER to pay off and that longer leaves a bigger window for failure and injury that can hurt a promising kid from ever getting out of the MiLs.

  In the end if you look at the history of the 1st round selection you will see RARELY do more than 4 or 5 players picked (out of 30) make it to the All Star game. In fact more players taken AFTER the first will likely make the All Star team than from the first, Just because there are more players to draw from! It is a testament to how ACCURATE scouting actually is!
  The top 10 players in the 1st are usually well known by every team and the ones who scouted out the best, but only the first 10 teams to pick have a chance to get them. And we see that less than 40% of those top 10 picks ever make the All Star game!
  Scouting is VERY important there is no denying! But WHAT YOU SCOUT FOR is the key to pass or fail in the end. And I will agree with Jessup on the point that you can’t blame a GM for making decisions made based on faulty research no more than you can deny the credit to a scouting director for providing the GOOD research that helps a GM to make GREAT picks!
  But to say it’s just ONE LOWLY DIRECTOR making all the decisions is naieve and uninformed!
  No Matter how many quotes you can come up with patting directors on the back in the end it is the GM who decides if he trusts his advice or not!
  Which means the GM has final say, INCLUDING the decision to fire and hire a new director if the picks he suggested do not pan out for the team!
• Des February 5, 2012 at 11:21 am

  This gets back to the work done by Tony Bernazard during the Omar Minaya reign. Many commentators here on MMO say Omar was a good scout but wasn’t so good negotiating contracts. Maybe the credit for scouting should more correctly be given to Tony B. In the clubhouse he was a horse’s derriere but he had a keen eye for talent. Also, the knock on Omar for the Luis Castillo four year contract is just data mining with the future events that took place after the signing. Omar did the right thing but was defamed (just as Luis was).

  Why is it that fans along the eastern seaboard from Philly to the Big Apple to Boston always seem to need to hate a player, a manager, or a member of the front office? Anyway, have a great day, one and all. Let’s see what Eli can do to lift local spirits.
  • t agee February 5, 2012 at 12:34 pm

    Des I disagree with your assertion about Castillo being a good sign that just didn’t work out.

    The basic argument in favor of the signing is “well who else were we suppossed to get to play 2B?”

    That’s no reason to commit to the wrong guy for four years.

    Castillo was 32 years old and needed knee surgery on both knees the off season he signed with us. 2B is the ultimate young players position because of the exteme need for athleticism at that spot and the fact that one’s bat just won’t play anywhere else once that range moves them off 2B. In the entire history of baseball their have only been a few guys that were net positives at 2b in their mid 30′s, plus the idea of opening up the entire right side of the infield with Castillo and Delgado is just idiotic.

    The only possible rational idea behind signing Luis was to have him hit 2nd, afford Reyes pitches to steal or hit and run with him at bat. other than turning the double play and making contact and a reasonably good OB he was useless. no one could even move up two bases on a single and that’s all he ever got.

    flawed idea for so many reasons but as usual it comes back to never having anyone else.

    The thing to do if you were looking out for the long term health of the franchise was to let him go to Houston, take the supplemental round pick and address one of the numerous constant glaring weaknesses in the 25 for down the road so your not painted into a corner where you convince yourself that a 32 year old who needs surgery on both knees is going to be a net plus for you at 2B for the next four years.
    • Des February 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm

      The only other choice at the time was Kaz, who had previously flunked his New York test. Both Houston and the White Sox wanted Luis too. So three front office’s agree he was a good choice. His numbers were good. He was still stealing bases. Omar wasn’t going to risk going with kids at a center infield position. It didn’t work out. So many choices didn’t.
      • Joey D. February 6, 2012 at 12:25 am

        It wasn’t that signing Castillo wasn’t a bad idea since he could still play second. I thought it was a good move myself. But making a commitment for four years virtually guaranteeing him the position no matter how much his skill declined and there were kids on the way up to take his place- that was the mistake.
• t agee February 5, 2012 at 12:15 pm

  Nice writeup Jessep, I thought it was Russ Bove that ran the 2005 draft though. Bowen? You sure?

  Anyway very good points about the draft. One anecdote that sort of illustrates your point occurred in last years draft. Pittsburgh had the first pick and the choice they faced was Cole or Renden. Renden had been playing with a shoulder injury and that put a little doubt on him but he was still clearly the best rated position player in the draft and almost certainly going to offensively challenged Seattle if not the Pirates at #1.

  Low and behold he slides all the way down to #6 where the Nats grab him. When asked about the pick Mike Rizzo says that they felt really good about him, that they had “done a lot of work on him” both scouting and medical wise and in fact their Vice president of player personal (Roy Clark) had drafted him out of HS when he was with the Braves 3 years before and they had a great relationship with Renden’s family already.

  Now iIask you what GM could possibly have the time to devote to scouting, checking medicals and building relationships with families of potential draftees that don’t even figure to be around when it’s your turn to pick?

  What is common is for the GM to hire the Director of scouting and that can present a problem such as drafting for need and speed instead of top quality and the best pick for the long term health of the franchise.

  No one can say with any certainty what goes on in the war room on draft day but inferences can be drawn from selections taken. For instance in 2007 we took 4 college relief pitchers in the first 3 rounds (Kunz, Rustich, Niessen, Clyne) Was that draft influenced by current day needs at the major league level? I think it’s very fair to say that it was. We did have two extra supplemental round picks, and an extra 2nd and 3rd rounder obtained by losing relief pitchers Roberto Hernandez and Chad Bradford and we certainly had numerous other holes to fill. Would a HS catcher like Travis D’Anaurd or a HS OFer like Mike Stanton or a HS 1B like Freddie Freeman have been a better long term pick or even college starters like Brett Cecil, Jordan Zimmerman or Cory Luebek .

  Sure it’s easy to look back and say who you wished we had taken but a lot of the draft is a crapshoot and is heavily dependent on properly developing the prospect after the draft but as for draft day itself philosophy should be examined and it’s clear to me that the intent of that draft was influenced by current needs at the Major League level.

  Perhaps seperating the draft from the GM duties entirely would be a wise move since the vast majority of draftees don’t influence a GM’s bottom line. Since Harazin was hired we’ve had 5 different GM’s over a 20 year period.

  Sure Pelfrey, Niese, Parnell, Thole, Murphy, Joe Smith, Duda, Kunz, Gee and Davis, did in fact make it up here during Minaya’s tenure but other than Thole they were all college players and really other than Davis, and to some extent Murphy, Smith and Gee really weren’t even ready for the Majors when they arrived. They were far more zoomed than groomed and that may have done more harm then good and not all of them would have even come up to the Majors in just about anyone else’s system to begin with but that’s more of a development issue than a draft day one but I do believe there is some influence exerted by the GM on who could potentially help us sooner rather than later and that not only means your likely to get less when they do come up, but less all afterwards as well.

  Severing the draft from a GM’s duties wouldn’t prevent a GM like Steve Phillips for example from spending as many 1st and 2nd round draft choices as possible in order to get something (anything) right now but it might provide an infusion of more impactful talent down the road than we have been drafting since Phillips took over.

  Among the players we have actually drafted out of HS and not signed since the mid 80′s are Rafeal Palmeiro, Matt Williams, Olerud, Wettland, Scott Erikson, Todd Jones, Grudzielanik, Darin Erstadt, Aaron Rowand, Garrett Atkins, Jeremy Guthrie, and David De Jesus. Those guys would have gone a long way toward eliminating the need for the importation of guys like Vaughn, Alomar, Coleman, Burnitz, Appier, Weathers, Bonilla, Castillo, Perez, Murray, Cameron, Cedeno and Bay.

  We would have gotten far better play, for a hell of a lot less money which would have allowed a more judicious use of free agency and we would have been able to recycle some of those guys into useful prospects rather than getting nothing and undoubtably picked up some more solutions with the 15 1st or 2nd round picks we forfeited as well.

  Obviously the draft budget has to be there and ultimately it’s the work your scouting dept does and the importance placed upon it by ownership that determines how successful your going to be 5-15 years down the road unless your able to sign 10 type A free agents every 3 years and that’s no guarantee of good times ahead either.

  There is no good reason why the Mets shouldn’t be selecting the best players in the draft, signing them and developing them properly and that starts with the budget and the hiring of the best scouting dept in the majors and elite prospect development.

  Anything else is an insult to the fans.
• Vinny B February 5, 2012 at 1:09 pm

  “Second, as Nick Pugliese pointed out on Saturday, the most successful draft during Minaya’s tenure was in 2005. We know that now in 2012, so it took about 7 years to draw that type of conclusion.”

  I think the 2008 draft and 2010 draft were better than the 2005 draft.
  • XtreemIcon February 5, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    I can buy 2008, but let’s wait till some of 2010 plays in the majors. But it does appear that the most likely to be impact Mets have come from those two drafts.

    Also, Nick used WAR to measure the success of the drafts. Obviously can’t use that for 2010.
• t agee February 5, 2012 at 2:38 pm

  Hard to say about those drafts yet. As it stands right now Ike has been the best 1B selected even though 5 others were picked beforehand so that’s a positive.

  The way things look right now it’s between him and Hosmer who is 3 years younger and went before we picked anyway.

  Havens and Holt weren’t bad picks and one or even both might step up yet although being college kids they do have less time before they start leaving a bit of their prime in the minors if they ever make it up here at all.

  Javier Rodriguez doesn’t look like he’ll make it but as a HS kid with tons of ability I don’t mind one bit because a guy like him that does make it, makes it big and outweighs by a lot any of the “safer’ choices that are more one dimensional.

  Kirk may come on and do something up here and personally speaking the fences being moved in will benefit him 10 times more than everyone else put together. it will help him stay in CF which was iffy and increase his power quite a bit. As a college kid he’s starting to eat into his prime a little right now though so hopefully his labrum heals real quick, he can get healthy, in shape and back on track.

  Ratliff is just a damn shame. .317/.371/.562 LH corner OF as a 23 year old in AA. Lost 2011 after having his eye socket broken by a foul ball in the dugout. Could have been one of Omar’s signature picks and may be OK after 3 surgeries but with the eye…….

  Dock Doyle college catcher showed a glimpse of life in a handful of games as a 25 year old in A+. Not expecting anything from him but who knows.

  Satin, one dimensional and old for his level at each step along the minors. upside is utility/PH

  Cohoon, Campbell, Moore, McHugh all college pitchers on track to be organizational filler.

  Allen HS kid looking the same.

  One thing about the 2008 draft that should be noted is that if it weren’t for equal parts need and sentementality on the part of the Braves in regard to Tom Glavine, and good health on his part we wouldn’t have even had the picks we selected Ike and Holt with. I wouldn’t count on getting two first round picks for losing a 40 year old as a plan but nontheless good job by Omar in offering arb to Glavine, I would bet anything that was a difficult sell to the Wilpon’s.

  One thing about the 2008 draft as well is context. Among the players/prospects our NL East opponents pulled out of the draft are:

  Washington – Crow (1st did not sign, drafted Storen the following year with the extra pick) Danny Espinosa (3rd round) Tom Milone (10th went in Gio trade) Steve Lombardozzi (19th)

  Atlanta – Gave up their first rounder for 1 year of Billy Wagner. Craig Kimbrell (3rd round) Oberhelzer (7th) and Clemens (8th) were both included in the Michael Bourne deal.

  Phillie – Anthony Gose (2nd round in Oswalt trade) Jason Knapp (2nd rnd Lee trade) Vance Worley (3rd round) Pettibone (3rd) and May (4th) looking outstanding in A+ both HS kids and Stutes (11th college) looking good at AAA.

  Marlins took mostly HS kids so it’s too early to tell but their picks don’t look too exciting.

  Hard to evaluate this draft right now but it’s pretty fair to say that it helped everyone except the marlins so far and the best players to come out of it and will be helping all 4 teams to various extents over the next decade and really helped our competitors pick up Gio, Bourne, Lee as well as Kimbrell, Espinosa, Lombardozzi, Storen and Worley so far with many more guys to find out about on all 5 teams down the road.

  2010 is impossible to review yet but with so many college players taken early there really isn’t time for injuries and stagnation. The clock is ticking on Forsythe, Vaughn, Den Deker, Pugh and Geodell but on the bright side Harvey and Morris have insane upsides and Harvey seems on the brink of displaying it in Queens pretty soon.