Baseball Operations Analyst

Department: Baseball Operations
Location: San Francisco, CA; Scottsdale, AZ
Status: Full-Time; Exempt

Position Summary:
The San Francisco Giants are seeking Analysts to join the Baseball Operations department. These individuals will be part of the R&D team with primary focuses to create decision-making tools and to provide research and analysis to support the Baseball Operations department. The ideal candidate will possess strong analytical skills, the ability to communicate effectively to non-technical people, and both passion and intellectual curiosity for the game of baseball.

Position Responsibilities:

• Research, design, and test predictive and statistical models using data and technology to support all aspects of Baseball Operations
• Collaborate with software engineering team to design and integrate decision-support systems and tools into baseball systems
• Perform statistical analysis and quantitative research to support various areas of Baseball Ops.
• Communicate analysis to Baseball Operations staff effectively.
• Maintain understanding of new public baseball research and emerging statistical tools, as well as all potential vendor data/technology options

Skills and Qualifications:

• Degree in a quantitative field, such as statistics, economics, engineering, computer science or applied math.
• Demonstrated work (professional or personal) using any of R, SQL, Python
• Experience in any of the following areas is a plus:
  • Machine learning
  • Computer vision
  • Spatiotemporal data
  • Statistical inference
• 1-2 years of sports experience and/or background in baseball or softball is a plus.
• Passion and curiosity for baseball analytics and problem-solving.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong work ethic with initiative and attention to detail.
• Contribute to team culture with a positive attitude.

To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume here

Deadline to apply is Tuesday, November 1, 2022
All employment applications are reviewed upon receipt.

Baseball Operations Associate Analyst

Department: Baseball Operations
Location: Minor League Affiliates (Sacramento, Richmond, Eugene, San Jose)
Status: Part-Time; Non-Exempt
Duration: January 2023 – October 2023

Position Summary:
This individual will travel with a minor league team and provide on-site analytics and technology support serving staff and players
while helping to implement key organizational initiatives. The ideal candidate will possess technical skills, the ability to communicate effectively to non-technical people, and both passion and intellectual curiosity for the game of baseball.

Position Responsibilities:

• Provide statistical analysis and quantitative research to support the affiliate coaching staff
• Execute advance preparation and game reporting
• Conduct research for ad-hoc requests from coaches & staff
• Utilize technology and information to assess player strengths and areas of development
• Educate coaches and players on relevant baseball analytics topics
• Support on-field needs, including but not limited to operating technologies like Trackman Portable, Blast, Rapsodo, Trackman

Skills and Qualifications:

• Understanding of current baseball analytics topics
• Experience with Excel and SQL, R, or Python
• Experience with current player development technology such as TrackMan, Rapsodo, Blast Motion bat sensors, or K-Vest
• Ability to work evenings, weekends, and holidays
• Ability to speak Spanish is a plus

To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume here

Deadline to apply is Tuesday, November 1, 2022
All employment applications are reviewed upon receipt.

Video Technology Associate (Affiliate)

Department: Player Development
Reports to: Minor League Video Technology Coordinator
Duration: February 2023 – September 2023
Status: Part-time seasonal position (requirement to travel and work non-traditional hours)

Position Summary:
Provide comprehensive on- and off-field video and technological support for coaches, players, and non-uniformed staff during Spring Training and during the minor league season at an assigned affiliate. Spring Training will be utilized as a month-long training period to grasp the Giants’ video and technological collection and organizational processes, as well as build relationships with the staff and players you will be working with. The minor league season will consist of working closely with a set of staff and players and providing as much support as necessary to help the players continue their development and the team perform.

Position Responsibilities:

• Set up, capture, post-process, and distribute quality video footage for all home and road games during the season
• Utilize BATS Video Software to chart, process, and store all collected video
• Prepare, display, and organize video footage for advance purposes of each upcoming opponent
• Operate Edgertronic (high-speed) camera technology manually and through a browser to collect targeted footage during game- and non-game activity
• Operate and troubleshoot other baseball-related technology such as TrackMan V3, Portable TrackMan, Hawkeye, Blast, and Oculus headsets throughout the season
• Heavy utilization of multiple baseball-adjacent applications (Dropbox, Google Drive, remote desktop softwares, video editing softwares, etc…) to edit, move, and store video and data for short-term and long-term usage
• Manage and properly care for the various video and technology equipment you will be responsible for using throughout the season (computers, iPads, VR headsets, cameras, etc..)
• Assist with various ad-hoc projects assigned by the coaching staffs and front office

Skills and Qualifications:

• Ability and desire to relocate and work non-traditional hours (nights, weekends, and holidays) throughout the season
• Extremely detail-oriented focus and mindset on all daily tasks
• Ability to comfortably communicate and work with all members of the organization (players, coaches, staff, and various affiliate front office/staff members)
• Aptitude and comfortability with basic networking and IT processes
• Previous baseball or softball playing and/or video and technology related experience is a plus
• Possession of a strong and obvious passion and curiosity for the game of baseball

To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume here

Deadline to apply is Tuesday, November 1, 2022
All employment applications are reviewed upon receipt.

Associate, Baseball Video Systems (San Francisco)

Department: Baseball Operations
Reports to: Manager, Baseball Video Systems
Duration: January 2023 – December 2023
Status: Internship

Position Summary:
This associate-level position will perform routine tasks around the video office, clubhouse, and playing field, while also providing support with basic administrative and system maintenance responsibilities. This role will be embedded in the major league clubhouse during home games and work alongside coaching staff, analysts, and video coordinators throughout the 2023 season, including spring training in Arizona. The ideal candidate will also possess demonstrated creative and storytelling abilities, and leverage these skills to regularly produce short-form video content.

In-Season Responsibilities:

• Systems checks and maintenance of organizational baseball video systems
• Staging and operation of video and tracking technologies for pre-game use
• Posting of daily channel listings and schedules for MLB, affiliate, and amateur game broadcasts
• Supporting management of MLB Dugout iPads
• Producing after-action video melts from previous games for consumption on mobile devices
• Producing lineup and roster information for clubhouse use
• Moving, packing, and unpacking of equipment to support team travel
• Other tasks as assigned by the video staff

Offseason responsibilities:

• Cataloging broadcast footage of winter league and other offseason baseball games
• Posting of daily channel listings and schedules for Winter League games
• Daily cutting up of winter league video for Giants organizational players and free agent follows
• Assisting with field level camera maintenance and installations
• Work with coaching staff on video content ideas

Skills and Qualifications:

• In-season availability to work non-traditional hours, including weekends and holidays
• Ability to communicate effectively to all members of Baseball Operations
• Experience using production-level video editing software (Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve) including knowledge

and use of 2D/3D animation and effects a plus

• Familiarity with networking and basic IT concepts a plus
• Basic experience working with programming a plus
• Passion for baseball, intellectual curiosity, baseball or softball playing experience and understanding of team dynamics is a plus
• Candidate must be available, in-person, for all San Francisco Giants home games

To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume here

Deadline to apply is Tuesday, November 1, 2022
All employment applications are reviewed upon receipt.

At the Giants, we believe we put our best work forward when our employees bring together ideas that are diverse in thought. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, medical condition or disability, genetic condition, marital status, domestic partnership status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status and any other protected class under federal, state or local law. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. In addition, we will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability or special need, we would like to know how we can better accommodate you.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the San Francisco Giants.

Dave Raymond has fond memories of June 13, 2012. Then in his final year as a broadcaster for the Houston Astros, the now TV play-by-play voice of the Texas Rangers got to call a historic pitching performance — and it wasn’t even his biggest thrill of the day. Prior to the game, he was in the presence of a legend.

Raymond had an inkling that the season would be his last with the Astros. He was in the final year of his contract, and an ownership transition was resulting in numerous changes throughout the organization. With his future up in the air, Raymond decided that he was going to “hit all the high notes,” making sure to enjoy aspects of his job that can sometimes be taken for granted. That’s how he met Willie Mays.

“In San Francisco, Willie was always down in the clubhouse, just available to chat,” recalled Raymond, who graduated from Stanford University before becoming a broadcaster. “I’d never wanted to bother him all those years, but I decided to make it a point to talk to him, whether that was for five minutes, 10 minutes, or whatever. So I went to the ballpark early, hoping to ask him some questions and hear a few stories. For instance, he’d hit his 500th home run at the Astrodome, and they’d brought him a cake afterwards.”

The hoped for five-to-10 minutes ended up being far longer. Mays held court for hours, to the point where Raymond had to tell the iconic Hall of Famer that he needed to head upstairs, as the game was about to start. As he was getting up to leave, he added that the Astros would be returning to San Francisco right after the All-Star break, and maybe they could talk again. Mays responded by saying, “Well, you’ve got to come over to my house then.” Read the rest of this entry »

After having arguably the best season of his professional career in 2021, Carlos Rodón signed a rather modest two-year, $44 million contract with the San Francisco Giants. For a large part of the 2021 season, it looked like he was headed toward a much more headline-grabbing dollar amount. After years of missed time, first due to shoulder problems and then a Tommy John surgery, Rodón shocked the baseball world by returning with a much hotter fastball than he’d previously ever had. Never reaching the heights the White Sox expected when they took him with the third overall pick of the 2014 draft, he was bordering on bust status before suddenly re-emerging as an All-Star. Literally — he made his first All-Star team in 2021.

But a few nasty surprises kept Rodón from getting the payday aces typically get. Given his injury record — he’d only been healthy enough to qualify for an ERA title once — there were inevitable concerns about his durability, an important consideration when you’re doling out nine-figure contracts. Those fears were realized in the second half of the season, as Rodón missed time due to shoulder fatigue and soreness. It wasn’t that he struggled; most teams would have been overjoyed with his 3.26 second-half FIP. What was highly concerning was the dramatic velocity loss he experienced, an extremely inauspicious sign for a pitcher: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something you probably already knew about me, or at least inferred: I love baseball. It would be hard and unsatisfying doing this job otherwise. Here’s something you might not have known, though: I don’t actually attend that many games. I watch tons of games on TV, and I spend tons of time analyzing individual snippets, but that doesn’t leave much time to go to the ballpark, grab a seat, and take in a game.

Last Thursday, I made some time. My mom is in town visiting, and the Giants were playing the Diamondbacks in a day game — Logan Webb against Zac Gallen, two excellent pitchers facing each other in a game that didn’t have a ton of playoff implications. My wife was able to squeeze in a bit of time away from work, so the three of us got cheap seats down the left field line, bought nachos and beer, and sat down for a relaxing afternoon.

The game writ large wasn’t particularly interesting. Webb didn’t have it; he didn’t strike out a single batter, and the Diamondbacks blooped and lined their way to five runs against him. Gallen was dealing; he went 7.1 strong innings with 12 strikeouts and nary a walk. Final score: 5–0, visitors. But baseball is amazing! In that boring, snooze-worthy game, I found four fascinating individual plays to talk about. So let’s talk about them, by themselves, without any need for a connection to the season as a whole.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tristan Peters covered a lot of miles in the days surrounding this year’s trade deadline. A 22-year-outfielder now in the San Francisco Giants system, Peters was playing for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, the High-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, when his madcap travels began.

“I was told that I was being promoted to Double-A Biloxi,” Peters told me before a recent game in Portland, Maine. “That was on Sunday, and on Monday I drove from Appleton, Wisconsin to Jackson, Mississippi to meet the team there. I did 11 of the 14 hours that day, stayed in Memphis, Tennessee overnight, then drove the last three hours on Tuesday.”

He wasn’t in Jackson very long. Playing cards in the clubhouse prior to what would have been his Double-A debut — Peters was penciled into the starting lineup as Biloxi’s leadoff hitter — he was informed that he was being traded to the Giants.

His new organization requested that he report to their Double-A club in Richmond, Virginia, so the next morning Peters climbed into his car and made another 14-hour drive. This time, he covered the entire distance in one day. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Harrison is one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. Drafted 85th overall in 2020 out of Concord, California’s De La Salle High School, the just-turned-21-year-old left-hander is No. 30 on our updated Top 100. Ranked ninth among hurlers, Harrison has dominated at two levels. Currently with the Richmond Flying Squirrels, the Double-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, he’s fanned 143 batters and allowed just 57 hits in 86-and-a-third innings this season. In a word, the young southpaw has been overpowering.

Harrison discussed his repertoire when Richmond played in Portland over the weekend.

———

David Laurila: To start, give me a self-scouting report.

Kyle Harrison: “My fastball averages around 94 [mph]. I spin it decently — not too high — but it’s from a low approach angle, so I think it looks like the ball has a little bit of rise. Then I’ll go to my slider. I’ll kind of grip that off the four-seam and really just try to rip it at the bottom of the zone. It’s a little more sweepy-ish than a regular slider. I’m trying to make it harder. I’m able to get it to 85 sometimes — that’s kind of where I want it to be — but those are the max-effort ones. It’s usually more 80-83.

“The changeup I’m playing around with now is a new grip. I’m kind of splitting the two seams there. It’s more of a one-seam, so I can get a little bit more tumble. I’ve been throwing it harder than I’d like. I’m trying to take a little velo off to get some better speed differential.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a spray chart of Manny Machado’s groundballs this year:

And here’s a heat map of all of the grounders he’s hit in his career:

Oh, hi there. Don’t worry, you haven’t inadvertently stepped into a list of every player’s batted ball tendencies. Part of writing is building a sense of mystery. I’m just setting you up for a payoff later on. Whoops, gave that one away too easily! In any case, let’s move on. Read the rest of this entry »

Another trade deadline has come and gone, and I must say, this one was more exciting than I expected. I didn’t see the Yankees, Astros, or Dodgers making huge splashes, given that all three are in a daunting position both for first place in their divisions and a first-round playoff bye. There were also relatively few short-term rental options available; Juan Soto, Frankie Montas, and Luis Castillo, among others, could always be traded, but with none of them free agents after this season, teams could also pull them back if they didn’t like the offers. Meanwhile, players like Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and Carlos Rodón stayed put, also to my surprise. By and large, though, we had a whirlwind of a 48-hour period leading up to the deadline.

So, who won and who lost? That’s a bit of a loaded question, because the definition of winning and losing varies depending on each franchise’s goals. A contending team improving, a rebuilding team getting worse but acquiring a stable of prospects, or an indolent team only re-signing its 37-year-old closer are all things that can be considered a win in one way or the other. But we’re here to do some hardcore ranking, so let’s look only at who improved themselves the most in 2022.

To keep this all science-y rather than a somewhat arbitrary exercise, I first projected the entire league’s rest of season in ZiPS and then repeated the exercise with all trades since July 19 unwound. Since some teams primarily got overall playoff boosts and some teams saw improvement mainly in terms of World Series gains, I took each team’s rank in both categories and then ranked everyone by the harmonic mean of those two ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting ahead of the trade deadline frenzy by acquiring Luis Castillo on Friday, the Mariners spent Tuesday adding some depth around the roster, picking up Curt Casali and Matthew Boyd from the Giants in exchange for a couple of minor leaguers, right-handed reliever Michael Stryffeler and catcher Andy Thomas. In a separate deal, they also grabbed Jake Lamb from the Dodgers for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

Last week, Justin Choi broke down the adjustments that have led to a breakout season from Seattle’s full-time catcher Cal Raleigh. His excellence this year has helped the Mariners to a cumulative 1.6 WAR from their backstops, the 12th-highest mark in the majors. Unfortunately, nearly all of that production and then some has come from Raleigh alone. Luis Torrens has been the primary backup and one of the worst players in the majors this season, accumulating -0.7 WAR across 42 games. A year after hitting 15 home runs and putting up a 101 wRC+, he has sunk to a pitiful .208/.262/.225 slash line (46 wRC+) without a single home run, which is awful even by the lower standards for catchers.

With Tom Murphy sidelined for the year with a shoulder injury and no other options in the organization, Torrens’ struggles have forced the Mariners to ride Raleigh pretty hard. Since being recalled from Triple-A on May 7 following Murphy’s injury, he has played in 65 of Seattle’s 76 games, starting 55 of them, and has gotten exactly one full day off since June 24, when he sat out the second game of a double-header on July 13.

Casali is currently on the IL after suffering a strained oblique in early July but is in the middle of a rehab assignment and should be activated soon. When healthy, he has been a perfectly serviceable backup backstop for the Rays, Reds, and Giants, accumulating positive WAR in every season of his career except for his rookie campaign back in 2014. Over the last two seasons in San Francisco, he’s put up a .218/.317/.357 slash line (89 wRC+) and 0.8 WAR. He strikes out a little too often but has some power and can take a walk, and he’s a capable defender behind the plate, earning positive framing marks over the last three seasons, though that skill has fallen off a bit this year, down to -2.9 runs in just over 300 innings behind the plate. His familiarity with Castillo from his time in Cincinnati was also a big factor in acquiring him. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets and Giants made a minor trade on Tuesday as the deadline approached, with first baseman/designated hitter Darin Ruf heading to New York in exchange for third baseman-ish/designated hitter J.D. Davis. Three minor league pitchers — Thomas Szapucki, Nick Zwack, and Carson Seymour — are joining Davis in San Francisco.

After thriving in a platoon role in 2020 and ’21, Ruf has struggled this year, hitting .216/.328/.378, though still with a robust .886 OPS against lefties. Davis has performed similarly, hitting .238/.324/.359, but without the beneficial platoon split. The two hitters involved in this trade are both right-handed DH-types who have broadly similar value on the surface, but there are differences in their two profiles that matter enough for teams on two very different 2022 trajectories to make this trade.

Ruf is the easier player to utilize, thanks to large platoon splits that Davis has not historically possessed. The Giants attempted to expand his role this season, giving him more starts against righties (34) than he had combined in 2020 and ’21 (24), and while his true platoon split is likely smaller than the 316 points of OPS it is this season, he’s definitely a player who needs to be used carefully when not possessing the handedness advantage. The Mets clearly value Ruf’s ability to be a top-notch accomplice to Daniel Vogelbach at DH, given that they’re sending some minor league extras along as sweetener.

Zwack is a 2021 draftee having a good first full season in the minors. A low-90s sinker isn’t going to wow anyone these days, but he’s had enough success in A-ball that he’s worth checking in on to see if he can surpass that Double-A wall that can stymie lower-grade pitching prospects. Szapucki is a better-known name, spending the last two seasons in Triple-A and with two unfortunately unforgettable appearances in the majors so far. I’m not convinced that he won’t have a future as a fifth starter in the majors. One has to remember that, unlike in the majors, minor league offense has exploded rather than evaporated, so Szapucki’s decent performance in the high minors makes him worth a flyer. Seymour doesn’t get a lot of press in the scouting world, and while he’s got solid velocity — certainly better than Zwack or Szapucki — he lacks consistent secondary pitches. His debut has been very good, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously; 23-year-olds ought to be pitching quite well against A-ball hitters. Read the rest of this entry »