Barry Bonds being hired as the new hitting coach in Miami evokes memories of Ted Williams managing the Washington Senators (who became the Texas Rangers by the end of his tenure). The self-proclaimed “Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived” wasn’t nearly as accomplished in the dugout as he was in the batter’s box. In four seasons (1969-1972) Williams’ teams went a cumulative 273-364.

The comparison is apples-to-oranges — hitting coach and manager are two different animals — but parallels exist. The Senators were a woebegone franchise, and in many respects, the Marlins are the modern day Senators.

And then there are the protagonists.

Along with Babe Ruth, Bonds and Williams are the most prolific hitters in baseball history. They have also been famously irascible, particularly with the media. Bonds will presumably shelve his surliness — it won’t fly in his new role, not in today’s game — but a bigger obstacle looms.

As a manager, Williams had trouble reconciling himself to the fact that his hitters were so imperfect. Why did they all too often struggle to understand facets of the craft that came naturally to him? Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Bridich has been entrusted to build a championship team in baseballs’s most extreme park-factor environment. The 38-year-old Harvard graduate is the general manager of the Colorado Rockies, who play their home games in spacious, hitter-friendly-to-the-nines Coors Field.

Part of the Rockies front office since 2004, Bridich was the club’s director of player development prior to assuming his current role in October 2014.

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Bridich on what has changed since he became GM: “There are certainly changes in the composition of the roster. Most noticeably, we have a different person playing shortstop. There’s been a focus, the past 13 months or so, on adding powerful, high-impact, high-upside arms. Ideally those are guys with some sort of readiness to compete at the major league level.

“You look at guys like Jairo Diaz, and the guys we got from Toronto (Miguel Castro, Jeff Hoffman, Jesus Tinoco), in particular. Also, the guys we added to the roster, Antonio Senzatela and Carlos Estevez, to protect them from the Rule 5. There’s been a focus on that.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Hottovy’s position within the Chicago Cubs organization isn’t high profile. It is, however, important to the team’s success. The 34-year-old former pitcher is the club’s Coordinator of Advance Scouting, with a focus on run prevention.

A graduate of Wichita State University, Hottovy played 10 professional seasons after being selected in the fourth round of the 2004 draft by Boston. His big league playing career consisted of 17 relief appearances for the Red Sox and the Kansas City Royals in 2011-2102. Hottovy was hired into his current position last December.

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Hottovy on his current position: “I was in spring training with the Cubs in 2014, playing, and blew out my shoulder. I had a feeling I was done, but I spent the summer rehabbing, anyway. Along the way, I took the online Sabermetrics 101 course from Boston University. I was a finance major with an economics minor at Wichita State, so I have a numbers background. I wanted to refresh my statistics knowledge, and the sabermetrics course, which is obviously about baseball, helped with that.

“I started talking to teams. I told Theo (Epstein) and (Director of Video and Advance Scouting) Kyle Evans what I was interested in, and once we signed Joe Maddon, we discussed how the whole dynamic may work. They were in and we kind of ran with it. Nate Halm, who’s been here for a few years, took on the hitting side of our process. I think we’ve formed a really good rapport with the coaching staff and players.

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Four players propelled baseballs over the left field roof at old Tiger Stadium. Frank Howard, Harmon Killebrew and Mark McGwire did so in visiting uniforms. Cecil Fielder was the lone Detroit Tiger to achieve the feat.

Mammoth power was required to reach that rarefied air. The left field fence was 340 feet from home plate, and the roof above the second deck was 94 feet high. Those dimensions were in effect from 1938-1999, a time period that encompassed nearly 10,000 games.

Fielder donned the Olde English D from 1990-1996, and he loved home cooking. The jumbo-sized slugger averaged 35 dingers in his time as a Tiger, and he was especially productive at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. In 514 career games at Tiger Stadium, he had a .514 slugging percentage (how’s that for symmetry?).

“It was my place,” Fielder told me recently. “Great backdrop, great fan base. That ballpark was tailor made for me.”

Tiger Stadium was a relatively cozy 325 feet to right field, but it was no bandbox for right-handed hitters. Along with being 340 to left, it was a hefty 440 to straightaway center. That didn’t matter to Fielder, who could clear fences at Yellowstone, and in any direction. Read the rest of this entry »

The Milwaukee Brewers have had nine winning seasons during David Stearns’ lifetime. Over that span, they’ve won 90 or more games just four times. Their last World Series appearance was in 1982, three years before the 30-year-old Harvard graduate was born. He has his work cut out for him.

Stearns stepped into one of baseball’s most challenging jobs when he took over as Milwaukee’s general manager at season’s end. The Brewers play in MLB’s smallest market, and they compete in its toughest division. On the heels of a competitive 2014 campaign, they went into this past season with high hopes, only to limp to the finish line with a record of 68-94.

A native of New York, Stearns spent the past the three seasons in Houston, where he was the Astros’ assistant general manager.

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Stearns on his influences: “I think I bring a perspective from all of the different teams I’ve worked for. I’ve had the benefit of working for a number of different leaders, a number of different general managers. That started with Dave Littlefield when I was an intern in Pittsburgh and then Omar Minaya with the Mets. I spent time in the commissioner’s office working for Dan Halem and a number of very smart people. From there I went to Cleveland and worked for Mark Shapiro, Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff. And lastly, in Houston I worked for Jeff Luhnow.

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A few days ago, the Braves traded Cameron Maybin to the Tigers for a pair of promising-but-unproven pitchers. Predictably, the deal elicited mostly angst from Atlanta fans. Not Andrelton-level angst, but enough that yet a few more foam tomahawks hit the bottoms of wastebaskets. Put another way, the camel hasn’t collapsed, but his back is starting to sag something awful.

Youth movement in full swing, veterans are packing up almost as fast as the bandwagon is emptying. NBC Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra worded the exodus as such: “The last major league position player left in Atlanta, please turn out the lights.”

As for my own take on the Braves’ new world, let’s just say I’m highly intrigued. Regardless of how you define their strategy – retooling, tanking, whatever – these moves aren’t being made frivolously. Financial considerations aside, no small number of scouting and data-driven projections are driving the decisions. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cincinnati Reds front office underwent a makeover a few weeks ago. Dick Williams, a 44-year-old former investment banker, was appointed the club’s general manager. Walt Jocketty, who is heading into the final year of his contract, moved from GM to President of Baseball Operations.

Williams, who had been the assistant GM, will continue to work under Jocketty until the latter steps down at the end of the 2016 season. Not a lot is expected to change over the next 10-11 months, but it will be interesting to see how differently the Reds operate once Williams is handed the decision-making reins. Jocketty has a business background of own, but he’s also 64 years old and cut his teeth on scouting. By today’s standards, he’s very much an old school executive. Professionally speaking, Williams was weaned on analytics.

Williams talked about his philosophies during last week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton.

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On working with and learning from Walt Jocketty: “It’s hard to work for a guy for eight years and not learn from him as you go. Walt has been an executive of the year for a couple of different teams. He’s been here for 20-plus years and has a ring. I’ve learned a lot from Walt.

“I got into baseball a little later in life. I was in my mid 30s. I had close to a 15-year business career in investment banking and private equity. My background isn’t totally unique in baseball front offices, but it’s somewhat unique, and it’s shaped a lot of who I am and how I think about problems.

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John Coppolella has a plan. He also has a goal, which is to help return the Atlanta Braves to prominence. Last week, the 37-year-old general manager – along with president of baseball operations John Hart – made a bold move toward that end. Andrelton Simmons, a gifted and popular shortstop, was traded to Anaheim in exchange for Erick Aybar and a pair of pitching prospects.

The deal wasn’t particularly popular, but that’s not Coppolella’s biggest concern. The Braves are coming off a pair of losing campaigns, and they’ll be moving into a new stadium for the 2017 season. The fan base expects a winner, and that is what Coppolella and Company are working to build.

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Coppolella on trading Andrelton Simmons: “It was a talent-based deal for us. Using scouting and analytics we simply felt the talent level we were getting back in this deal was too good to pass up. We have high hopes, in the short- and long-term, for all three of the players we acquired.

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Matt Klentak is more analytical than Ruben Amaro. Unless you’re a stark traditionalist, that’s a big positive for Phillies fans. Philadelphia’s new general manager – a 36-year-old Dartmouth College graduate with a degree in economics – is committed to bringing one of baseball’s least saber-friendly teams out of the dark ages.

Klentak’s approach is information-driven. He came back to the word “information” again and again when we spoke at this week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton.

“Philosophically, I am very much of the mind to use all of the information to make every decision that we make,” Klentak told me. “I’m not a huge fan of operating under any sort of absolutes, but I want to make sure that we’re managing all of the information as well as we can.

“In order to use and manage all of the information, we have to have that information in the first place. We’re going to make sure – particularly this offseason, as we’re rolling things out – that we are bringing in the best data, and the best people to analyze the data, that we can. We’ll incorporate all of that into our decision-making process.” Read the rest of this entry »

Jerry Dipoto has a plan. Importantly, he also has the autonomy to implement it. Free from the shackles of Anaheim, he’s now able to do his own thing, with his own people, in Seattle. That’s good news for Mariners’ fans.

Dipoto is doing more than simply replacing Jack Zduriencik as Seattle’s general manager. He’s enacting philosophical change. The erstwhile Angels GM is a former player with a scouting background, but he’s also one of the most analytically inclined front office executives in the game. The Mariners will be many things under Dipoto’s leadership; backwards isn’t one of them.

Dipoto shared his vision for the team during this week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton.

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DiPoto on the organization’s change of philosophy: “The philosophy I’m bringing over here is pretty different. I respect Jack Zduriencik – he’s had a wonderful baseball career and I’m sure he’ll continue to have one – but we’ll do things differently than he did. We see things through a different lens. I’m not going to tell you exactly how, because then it’s no longer an advantage, but it is significantly different. Regarding [the Angels], it would be fair to say that this is a different environment for me.”

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