Photo by Kevin Sabitus, Tampa Bay Rays
Sources I talked to on Thursday, said that Rays vice president of baseball development Peter Bendix is on the Mets radar as they continue the search to rebuild their front office.
Bendix, a Tufts University grad, has been in the Rays organization since joining them in 2009 as an intern. Bendix works with VP of baseball operations Erik Neander on the day-to-day functions of the Rays. Before his promotion to VP, Bendix was the director of baseball development for four years.
The 36-year-old took a sabermetrics class during his first season at Tufts and has continued his climb in the baseball world since. Known as a numbers guy, Bendix knows that it’s important to relate those numbers in a way players can cling to and that being successful in baseball goes beyond just those numbers.
“A lot of the skills I bring are synthesizing and explaining information. Not necessarily just stats. Stats help. But so does the expertise of people who have been doing it for 30 years. So does watching video. All of that information. It’s just trying to pick out which information is most helpful,” Bendix said to ABC Action News last year.
Another name to keep an eye on is Brewers senior VP and GM Matt Arnold. The 42-year-old has been with the Brewers for six seasons after spending the previous nine in the Rays organization.
The Mets had previously hope to get one of Theo Epstein, Billy Beane or David Stearns to run their baseball operations, but Epstein and Beane declined the job offer and the Brewers declined the Mets request to talk to Stearns for the second straight year.
