Department: Player Personnel
Reports To: Director, Player Personnel
Status: Exempt
Dates: Must be available to start by January 1, 2022.
Primary Objective: Responsible for providing support and assistance to the Director of Player Personnel in all facets of player evaluation. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, the Padres’ managerial search came to a surprising end when they signed Bob Melvin to a three-year deal. Even though the A’s had picked up his contract option for the 2022 season, the team allowed him to interview for the vacant position in San Diego, and he ended up moving on to greener (or browner) pastures. One of the most respected and successful managers in baseball, Padres general manager A.J. Preller got the man at the top of his list.
With Melvin at the helm, the Padres are hoping to take another step forward after an ugly late-season collapse caused them to miss the playoffs, which led to previous manager Jayce Tingler’s dismissal. His successor inherits a roster full of young talent, an organization committed to using its resources to build a winning franchise, and a front office that’s been aggressive in supplementing the homegrown core. But while San Diego still has some glaring questions on its roster even with Melvin in place, the A’s are facing a far murkier future.
Over the past decade, the A’s have won 806 games with Melvin as manager, fifth most in the American League over that period, and earlier this summer, he surpassed Tony La Russa to become the winningest manager in Oakland history. That also includes six trips to the postseason, tied with the Astros and trailing only the Yankees for most in the AL in the last 10 years. Even though Oakland hasn’t advanced past the divisional round in any of those appearances, it has been among the most successful organizations in baseball during the past decade.
Athletics executive vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane recognized the level of success Melvin enjoyed despite some difficult circumstances in Oakland.
“Bob, arguably, has been the most successful manager we’ve had here, especially when you consider the challenges that he’s had. He’s had a roster that has turned over multiple times since he’s been here. He has one of the lower payrolls to deal with. From a professional and personal relationship, his tenure speaks for itself.”
Melvin obviously had no control over the amount of payroll space the team was working with or the unsettled stadium situation in Oakland that has cast an air of uncertainty over the future of the franchise, but his success is impressive nonetheless. The six postseason appearances certainly stand out, but he also oversaw a three-year rebuild from 2015 to ’17, losing 274 games in those three seasons. Essentially, he guided two separate talent cores to two separate three-year postseason runs during his tenure as the A’s manager.
“Doing the little things right” is an overused cliché in baseball. In its yearning for sacrifice bunts, productive outs, and pitching to contact, it’s one that doesn’t typically go well with the analytical thinking common to this website. But there’s still no better characterization for what Martín Maldonado did in the fifth inning of Game 5 than that very cliché. He did the little things right; in fact, what he did was rather ingenious.
In the early portion of Sunday night’s back-and-forth affair, the Astros erased a four-run deficit but found themselves behind yet again after Freddie Freeman went yard in the bottom of the third. Just two innings later, though, they would take the lead for good. Their half of the fifth went like this: A single by Carlos Correa, a strikeout of Yordan Alvarez, a single by Yuli Gurriel, and then a groundout by Kyle Tucker. With two outs, that left runners on second and third for Alex Bregman, who had been moved down in the order as a result of recent struggles. A.J. Minter and the Braves wanted no part of him nonetheless, not with Maldonado on deck; he seemed like the best matchup by far.
Even in retrospect, the Braves would clearly make the same move again. Maldonado is a career .212/.290/.348 hitter, and over 426 plate appearances with the Astros this season, all three legs of the slash were even worse than that: .172/.272/.300. This postseason, he’s been invisible offensively: .114/.184/.114. Put simply, he is not a threat at the plate. But in the highest-leverage moment of a World Series elimination game, he came through. With the bases now loaded after the intentional free pass, Maldonado walked. Read the rest of this entry »
Colt Keith exceeded even his own expectations this season. A fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft out of a Biloxi, Mississippi high school, the left-handed hitting Detroit Tigers prospect began his first professional campaign in the Florida Complex League, and he finished it in High-A with the West Michigan Whitecaps. Promoted to the higher-than-expected level less than three weeks after his 20th birthday, Keith had slashed a precocious .320/.436/.422 in 181 plate appearances with Low-A Lakeland.
His profile is compelling. When our 2021 Tigers Top Prospect list came out in March, Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein called Keith “one of the more intriguing two-way players in the 2020 draft,” adding that he was “seen by many teams as unsignable after the first three rounds.” Eight months after those words were written, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound infielder is no less intriguing, and more promising than ever.
Keith discussed his draft experience, and his eye-opening performance, shortly before the conclusion of the minor-league season.
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David Laurila: How did you end up signing with the Tigers rather than playing college ball at Arizona State?
Colt Keith: “I didn’t really want to go to school. That was my thing; it’s why I was willing to take less [money to sign]. After about the second or third round, I figured I wasn’t going to get picked, because teams thought I was going to go to school. But then the Tigers gave my agent a call and offered enough, so we decided to take it.”
Laurila: Why didn’t you want to go the college route?
Keith: “We looked at the positives of both sides, and the negatives of both sides, and I liked the opportunity to start my pro career at a young age. I felt like I was ready to go, that I could compete and didn’t need those three years of college to get prepared for it. On top of that, I’m not a big school guy. Getting a degree… I mean, going to school for three years just didn’t sound like a lot of fun to me.”
Laurila: That said, teams apparently thought otherwise… Read the rest of this entry »
Please note, this posting contains three positions.
Reports To: Assistant GM, Analytics
Job Summary
This position is responsible for creating and analyzing baseball datasets through the use of advanced statistical techniques, with the goal of building and maintaining interpretable predictive models and player valuation frameworks to aid in the decision-making of Baseball Operations executives. Read the rest of this entry »
Please note, this posting contains three positions.
Reports To: Director, Professional Scouting
Job Summary
This individual will support the efforts of the Professional Scouting department by conducting extensive evaluations of professional players in the United States and abroad. The analyst will utilize multiple information sources, relying heavily on video analysis while also working closely with the Baseball Analytics department. This is a full-time position that is based out of Baltimore, Maryland. Read the rest of this entry »
“Fortune favors the brave(s).”
Matt Damon uses something like this phrase to punctuate an ill-conceived cryptocurrency commercial that has been running during the World Series, the copy for which includes more polysyllabic words (that aren’t “Domino’s” or “America”) than most ads. To this point, the commercial had provided an eerie narration of the Series itself. Atlanta had been the team improvising (Dylan Lee opening Game 4) and experimenting (Ozzie Albies hitting right-on-right), sometimes out of necessity (Game 5 starter Tucker Davidson), and it was Atlanta that entered Sunday night with a commanding 3-1 series lead before leaping out to a 4-0 lead in Game 5. But with their backs against the wall, the iron-jawed Astros withstood a first-inning grand slam and battled back to win 9-5, sending the series back to Houston.
The game began with tremendous good fortune for Atlanta. In the first, Albies was treated to a shift-aided, room service double play ball off the bat of Carlos Correa that erased a Michael Brantley walk and ushered Davidson past what was likely a jittery inning of work. In the bottom half of the frame, the topspin of a chopper off the bat of Jorge Soler made the ball’s hop shallow, allowing it to slip underneath the glove of Alex Bregman, who expected the hop to be bigger. That gave the Braves a meaningful extra out to work with, and instead of an Albies groundout ending the would-be five-pitch inning for Houston starter Framber Valdez, Austin Riley and Eddie Rosario were able to prolong the first with a single and walk before Adam Duvall delivered a huge blow in the form of a wall-scraping, opposite-field grand slam. Read the rest of this entry »
Edouard Julien has a unique profile, and potentially a bright future. A native of Quebec City who attended Auburn University, the 22-year-old Minnesota Twins prospect is coming off a season where he drew 110 free passes, the most of any player in the minors. Moreover, he augmented his patient approach with power and speed. In 514 plate appearances split between Low-A Fort Myers and High-A Cedar Rapids, Julien went deep 18 times and swiped 34 bases in 39 tries. His slash line was an OBP-heavy .266/.434/.480.
His English-language skills were on the light side when he began taking classes at Auburn. An International Business major, Julien was regularly referring to a French-English dictionary throughout his first semester. By and large, he learned English as a college freshman.
“Where I’m from, we only speak French,” explained Julien, whose hometown is more than 150 miles (and 250 kilometers) northeast of Montreal. “I knew a little bit of English — we took classes — but it’s like people in the United States who take Spanish classes; they learn, but then they forget because they don’t practice it. I played for [travel ball] teams in Georgia, and for the Junior National team where it’s only English, so I knew some, but I wasn’t very good. I’ll say that.”
Julien now speaks three languages — French, English, and Spanish — and contrary to what was once said about the legendary Moe Berg, he can hit in all of them. That he did so less-impressively than usual in his sophomore season impacted his appeal to MLB scouts. Julien backslid statistically after a stellar freshman year, and as a result fell to the 18th round of the 2019 draft.
The fact that he was draft-eligible is another story. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes, you have to let Dylan Lee pitch. Lee wasn’t supposed to be part of Atlanta’s plans for the playoffs. He wasn’t supposed to be part of Atlanta’s plans for the year, period: the Marlins released him just before the start of this season, and the Braves picked him up and stashed him in Triple-A for depth. He was added to the NLCS roster to replace Huascar Ynoa (Lee was on the NLDS roster but didn’t pitch), then tabbed to start tonight’s game as an opener.
Sometimes, you have to give Kyle Wright bulk innings. After Lee let three of the first four Astros reach base, Wright came into the game, no doubt earlier than Brian Snitker had intended. He wriggled out of the jam with only a single run in, getting Carlos Correa on a grounder before striking Kyle Tucker out to end the threat.
Like Lee, Wright wasn’t part of Atlanta’s playoff plans. He wasn’t on the NLDS or NLCS roster, and he threw only six innings in the big leagues this year. With Ynoa out, the Braves wanted someone to get them bulk innings, and Wright made 24 starts in the minors this season; he figured to be a mop-up guy who could handle bulk innings in case of emergency.
Like Lee, Wright struggled to tame a deep Houston lineup. He’s a sinker-first, sinker-second pitcher, and the Astros eat minor league sinker-ballers for lunch. The Astros swung at 17 sinkers; they missed exactly once. Of the 22 Astros he faced, eight reached base. Jose Altuve socked a home run. Houston had at least two runners on base in four of the first five innings.
Read the rest of this entry »
Only two pitchers have ever thrown a postseason no-hitter: the Yankees’ Don Larsen with his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, and the Phillies’ Roy Halladay in the 2010 Division Series opener. On some level, the Braves’ Ian Anderson was vying to be the third; in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night, he held the Astros hitless through five innings. But even from the start, anybody who has watched this postseason — where starters have averaged a hair over four innings per game — and understands the impact of the year-over-year workload increases that these pitchers are shouldering following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season could have told you that he wouldn’t get a chance to finish the job. That was doubly true on a raw and rainy night in Georgia and with a rested bullpen behind him. Backed by just two runs, Anderson and four relievers carried the no-hitter into the eighth and settled for a two-hit shutout, giving the Braves a 2–1 World Series lead.
Houston’s first hit finally came via a chip shot — 39 degrees, 70.7 mph — into left field by pinch-hitter Aledmys Díaz, the first batter faced by reliever Tyler Matzek. It fell in just in front of left fielder Eddie Rosario; according to Statcast, the catch probability for the play was 85%, but with shortstop Dansby Swanson running toward him and the cost of missing the ball being the tying run in scoring position, Rosario chose not to lay out.
It proved to be the right move. In fact, just about every major move the Braves made in Game 3 proved to be the right one, particularly manager Brian Snitker’s decision to trust his bullpen, no-hitter or not.