2014-15 off-season, off-field personnel thread

A potential "non-move:"

Special assignment scout Galen Carr, rumored (by Cafardo) to be interviewing for a top post with the Padres under new GM A. J. Preller, may be shut out of that opportunity with the flurry of hires the Padres have recently made, including luring Logan White away from the Dodgers to be their senior advisor to the GM/director of pro scouting. Other Padres hires (per BA) include Don Welke (vp/scouting) and Sam Geaney (director, player development).   BA.

EDIT:  Galen Carr, although not headed to San Diego, has apparently been hired by the Dodgers in an unspecified capacity, per Alex Speier on 11/7. Carr has been a special assignment scout (2012-14), Major League scout (2007-11), professional scout (2006), advance scouting coordinator (2003-05) and administrator (2001-02), and intern (1999-2000). Colby College grad and Burlington, Vermont, resident.  Speier: Carr "was considered one of the top evaluators in the Red Sox organization."


Aside:

I wonder if R. J. Harrison, Long Beach native and longtime Rays' scouting director, is going to join Friedman in Los Angeles. If so, could be another critical defection from TBR front office, although their system is now being described as "depleted."  DRaysBay/SB Nation.

Gammons last week alluded to Cherington losing three top evaluators, two to the Dodgers and one to the Marlins, this offseason. (Plus Tom Batista, returning to the Braves.)

Tonight, Cafardo tweets that Dave Finley is joining Galen Carr in leaving for the Dodger organization. He most recently was director, player personnel, and IIRC is one of the few remaining ex-Marlin baseball ops people (like David Chadd, Murray Cook, Rob Leary, etc.) who came to the Red Sox at the start of 2002 when JWH joined forces with Werner and Otten. With the Marlins, he was credited as the signing scout for #1 pick Adrian Gonzalez. He came here as West Coast cross-checker, then became national x-checker and was special assistant to Theo Epstein in 2010-11. I had him pegged as one of the Sox' baseball ops executives who might leave for the Cubs, but he's going to work for Friedman.

I have not yet seen which evaluator has left to work for Jeffrey Loria

It will be interesting to see who Cherington adds/promotes in their places.


EDIT:  Rookie mistake: Realizing that I am repeating info that's already been in the main offseason thread, I concede that this might be a redundant thread and as such can be deleted by the moderators if they wish.  


EDIT 2: Dave Finley's title with the Dodgers is vice president, international and amateur scouting; Galen Carr is director, player personnel.

Thanks.

The Globe this morning reported that pro scout David Keller is the guy who is leaving to work for the Marlins.  As for replacements, I would expect that news of some of the hires/promotions will leak out before the Red Sox formally announce their minor league field staffs and scouting and player development hires/promotions, which usually happens in separate press releases during the December-January timeframe.

Speier article from today explaining all moves so far.
Summarizing:

Amiel Sawdaye: VP with focus on domestic and international scouting
Mike Rikard: Director of amateur scouting
Gus Quattlebaum: Assistant director of international and professional scouting
Steve Sanders: Assistant director of amateur scouting
Brian Abraham: Assistant director of player development
Adrian Lorenzo: Major league staff assistant

Notables:

Sox hired Paul Fryer to join a spot in their evaluation team. Was LAD global crosschecker (responsible for Urias, Puig)
Abraham was one of the Sox bullpen catchers the last two years
Lorenzo was an intern and translator for Castillo/Cespedes

Globe today confirms that Bob Tewksbury will return to the Red Sox organization as sports psychology coach, after serving in that role for the MLBPA last year.

www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2014/12/10/red-sox-land-cole-hamels-may-costly/spwCnCmEwirWcjZZu5L6eP/story.html

Meanwhile, former Red Sox pitcher, coach and scout Al Nipper has been dismissed as pitching coach of the Tigers' Toledo Mud Hens affiliate. Nipper was the Sox' pro scout/pitching evaluator when he left for the Tigers as minor league pitching coordinator in 2012-13, before being assigned to Toledo last season.

www.mlive.com/tigers/index.ssf/2014/12/detroit_tigers_announce_minor-.html

Baseball America (through Alex Speier) announces retirement of Greenville hitting coach U. L. Washington, 61, the former Royals, Pirates and Expos SS, who has been in the organization since 2002. Washington, according to the Portland Press-Herald, was instrumental in convincing Mookie Betts to lower his leg kick when both were with the Drive in early 2013. Betts' meteoric rise followed from there.

www.pressherald.com/2014/05/18/betts__on-base_streak_ends_/

EDIT:  Washington was at Salem, not Greenville, in 2014.

This sux:

Angels, Red Sox discontinue pension plans for non-uniformed personnel


www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-angels-red-sox-pension-plans-20141218-story.html

They are doing what most businesses have done, or are doing. They are replacing the pensions with improved 401K plans. The advantage to the employee is that 401K plans are portable and pensions are not. The advantage to the company is that they don't have any future pension liabilities (in these cases, they are maintaining the existing pensions, but won't give them to future employees).

Companies began replacing pensions with 401Ks back in the 1980s. It generally has not worked out for the employees nearly as well as pensions did. Many 401K plans had fees so high that they ate up much of the gains. Some funds investment decisions were not very good. Market volatility also affected results. Success with a 401K plan really requires the employee to pay attention, and to make decisions about investment funds, and many people simply do not have the knowledge, or market understanding, to make such decisions wisely. Much has been written about this because the result is putting a greater strain on Social Security.

Originally Social Security was to be one leg of a three-legged stool of retirement. The other two legs were to be pensions and savings. Once upon a time almost every corporation offered pensions. However, when companies replaced pensions with 401K plans, they eliminated one of the retirement stool's legs. Because employees have to contribute to 401Ks, that became the combined pension and savings leg - which meant the results from 401Ks effectively had to equal what pensions and savings would equal. For the most part, that hasn't happened. When 401Ks failed to produce the expected results another leg effectively was eliminated, leaving for millions just one leg - Social Security. 

A big problem with 401K plans where the company contribution is in its own stock is that many companies go out of business and if the employees have not converted that company stock in their 401K plans to cash, or to a mutual fund, they can suffer big losses. And many have. 

And that's why Social Security benefits eventually are going to have to be improved, or there are going to be millions of elderly people in desperate conditions.

Chris, I know this isn't the place to have this debate, but I can't let that US News article go unchallenged. The article way over simplifies. Much of what it says is true, but it is only part of the story. He ignores, or glosses over, the real problems with 401Ks.

First of all, there is no such thing as "a" 401K. They all are different, and they can be customized by every employee at least to some extent. The fact that there are so many variables makes the results extremely variable. Properly managing one's 401K takes a level of financial sophistication that many people do not have, and are not likely to acquire.

The fact that money can be taken out basically defeats their real purpose. So much money can be taken out of 401Ks (usually for college tuition) that there may not be anywhere near the amounts left necessary for retirement.

It is laughable (and maybe a bit morbid) for him to write that money will be left for heirs.

I won't go further with the problems with 401Ks because I covered some of them earlier.

It would have been better had company pensions been made portable, and if pension programs had been developed for people without them. A 401K should have been only a supplement.

The real reasons why we have 401Ks is not so much that they benefit workers, but that they are financially beneficial to companies and are a phenomenal source of revenue for Wall Street. Because of 401Ks, mutual and other investment funds now own a majority of publicly-traded stocks. They drive the market and they also have had a huge impact on corporations, forcing them to focus mostly on short-term gains, at the expense of the longer term. They have been a force in the accelerated concentration of businesses, at the expense of millions of workers whose jobs have been wiped out.

BTW, it would be relatively easy, and make a whole lot of sense, for MLB to set up a pension system that covers all non-uniform personnel, with each team contributing to it, along with some contribution from other revenues. Since it is a closed enterprise inside of which people move around constantly, it seems ridiculous for each team to have pensions that don't vest unless the employee stays with the team for a specific number of years. A MLB-wide system could eliminate such problems and provide much more security. And if run properly it might be less expensive.

Short-Season Lowell announces (via milb.com) that Joe Oliver will return as manager in 2015.  Pitching coach Walter Miranda moves up to Greenville; he will be replaced in Lowell by Lance Carter, who joins the organization in 2015.  Iggy Suarez will be the hitting coach, replacing Noah Hall.

Wonder if there will be a chain reaction of pitching coach promotions, at least above the GCL level, with Sauveur quitting Pawtucket at the end of 2014.  EDIT: And with the tweeting of Bob Kipper's promotion to Pawtucket today, that seems to be happening.

Link

Alumni News: Billy Gardner Jr., son of the former Red Sox player, coach and minor league skipper, and a member of the Sox' minor league managerial staff under Dan Duquette and Kent Qualls, has been reappointed manager of Triple-A Syracuse by the parent Nationals.   The Nats also rehired Brian Daubach as skipper of Double-A Harrisburg.

Portland announces officially that Billy McMillon will be back as manager, with Joppie as batting coach and pitching coach Kevin Walker moving up from Salem.

Link