Front Offices in April: It’s More About Preparation Than Execution

Working in a baseball front office is a 365-days-a-year gig, but April is a relatively slow month if your focus is on roster construction. Opening weekend is a chance to take a breath after a very long, very repetitive month and a half of spring training. It’s also an opportunity to see how your squad looks, as barring something unexpected, it’s the team you are stuck with, at least for the next two months or so. There’s much to be done to prepare for the various storms ahead. Here are just some of the tasks teams have in store this month.

How Do We Look?

This is no time to over-react. One game is 0.6% of a club’s season. One three-game series? Less than 2%. Still, one time through the rotation and the bullpen can help answer a lot of questions. How do guys look? Are the changes we saw (or didn’t see) in spring training carrying over now that the games matter? How is a starter’s velocity in full starts? How does that ‘pen arm look in back-to-back outings? And, most importantly, are guys healthy? Whether it’s the result of performance, concerning underlying metrics, or just being a bit banged up, every team has plenty of questions to answer, and how concerned they need to be about the state of their roster becomes much clearer once the real action gets going.

Minor Depth Moves

No team is satisfied with its depth. Not one! There is virtually no trade market this time of year but there are still some second-level big league free agents and a handful of minor league free agents available. And with injuries sometimes forcing roster crunch decisions, teams also eagerly await the daily transaction email to see if a player who can help make them a little bit deeper suddenly appears on the waiver wire. At the same time, teams have to weigh the value of that improvement against the cost of a roster spot. They’re in tweak mode, but those tweaks can pay big dividends later in the season.

Get Ready for the Bigger Stuff

Every team in baseball is looking to bolster its rotation, or at least anticipating a time when they will be. The same can be said of the bullpen. Indeed, every team that thinks it will compete for a place in the postseason has that one position (or sometimes positions) where a player is just holding down the fort until the club finds someone better. Trade deadline check-in calls tend not to start until at least May, but now is when teams start putting together their target lists, based on both need and availability. Which clubs might not be in the playoffs, and which players might hit the trade market as a result? Who is entering free agency and might be had as a cheap rental? Who is entering a potentially costly arbitration year? Even while teams want to generally be realistic about their trade targets, it’s okay to add a few long-shots provided one can squint and see a possible availability, even if it’s remote. There are always surprises come July, but teams want to have these target lists in order so they can start monitoring each potential addition. How are those players doing? How are their underlying metrics? Have changes to their game caused the team to change how they’re advanced? Should the club contemplating a trade start thinking about makeup deep-dives?

In 2017, I headed up a project where a group of 15-20 starting pitcher targets were identified. We decided to write up every start, detailing their performance, quality of stuff, and approach. Those reports built a narrative that allowed the team to have a season-long diary of each target, and were essential in giving the club comfort about exactly what they were getting in Justin Verlander. Things move so quickly come July that teams need to be buttoned up on the hundreds of players who are discussed when spring turns into summer.

Check in With the Amateur Group

The draft is still three months away, but things on the amateur are starting to congeal. Major college programs are approaching 30 games in the books, high school baseball is getting into the flow, and most players who merit Day Two consideration or better have received multiple looks and have an initial round assigned to them. There will still be plenty of movement, just as there is still plenty of time for pop-up players to emerge, but teams with a pick high in the first round have begun to center their attention on a handful of players. They’re looking at schedules and figuring out when cross-checkers, assistant general managers, or the GM themselves can take a look at the top three to five candidates for their highest bonuses.

Having around 30 games also gives teams enough statistical information to find college players they need to gather more information on. What about this outfielder at San Diego State (Matt Rudick) who has only struck out twice in over 100 plate appearances? What about the center fielder at Campbell (Connor Denning) with the 1.300-plus OPS? What about that righty at Maine (Nick Sinacola) with 54 whiffs in 26 innings? The numbers suggest they are all interesting, so now it’s time to go look at the player and try to figure out if however they are doing it will work at the professional level.

Player Development, the Biggest Challenge For 2021

Player development is the biggest challenge for any organization, and the circumstances of 2021 have added additional wrinkles. Minor league spring training is getting underway across Florida and Arizona, and facilities are going to feel a bit empty with the lack of activity over on the big league side. One of the bigger issues teams face in terms of their player development group is them having a feeling of connection to the rest of the organization. Spread out at minor league affiliates and complexes both stateside and in the Dominican Republic, staff can feel isolated and forgotten about by decision-makers. Having minor league camp overlap with big league spring training provides an important cultural touchstone for the staff. The general manager can stroll over to address the group as a whole or simply wander the backfields, often laying eyes on some of the club’s top prospects for the first time while having more casual conversations with managers and coaches. Once the season starts, work at the major league level makes this kind of valuable face time more of a challenge. With the big league roster fairly fixed in April, I’d be interested to know how many GMs and AGMs are planning trips to the complexes during minor league camp to re-create the morale-producing interactions player dev staff is used to getting during a normal spring training.

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April isn’t exactly a time to relax, but it’s also rarely a time when decisions are made that require someone to login to eBIS and enter a transaction that will change the face of the ball club. It’s a busy month to be sure, but that bustle comes from preparing for when things get really crazy.