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2014-15 off-season, off-field personnel thread
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 14, 2015 7:50:35 GMT -5
Oh but Chris that would mean that MLB teams were getting the benefit of free labor which is illegal and MLB teams would neever break the law. I am suure that this is just rogue scouts doing this on their own cough cough.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 14, 2015 8:10:50 GMT -5
Oh but Chris that would mean that MLB teams were getting the benefit of free labor which is illegal and MLB teams would neever break the law. I am suure that this is just rogue scouts doing this on their own cough cough. Heh. I see it like an internship. Those are still legal... I think?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 14, 2015 8:52:02 GMT -5
Oh but Chris that would mean that MLB teams were getting the benefit of free labor which is illegal and MLB teams would neever break the law. I am suure that this is just rogue scouts doing this on their own cough cough. Heh. I see it like an internship. Those are still legal... I think? My understanding is that interns are legally required to be paid if they're doing work that is of value to the company they're interning for; but that law is either unenforced or unenforcible. Side note, unpaid internships are a plague upon society.
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Post by joshv02 on Jan 14, 2015 9:21:29 GMT -5
Heh. I see it like an internship. Those are still legal... I think? My understanding is that interns are legally required to be paid if they're doing work that is of value to the company they're interning for; but that law is either unenforced or unenforcible. Side note, unpaid internships are a plague upon society. (Depends on the state's definition in their wage-act; often, internships that receive educational benefits are excluded from state wage-acts.)
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 14, 2015 10:28:00 GMT -5
Heh. I see it like an internship. Those are still legal... I think? My understanding is that interns are legally required to be paid if they're doing work that is of value to the company they're interning for; but that law is either unenforced or unenforcible. Side note, unpaid internships are a plague upon society. Actually this has become a big issue. So called "glamour" industries have relied on free labor for years, touting them as a "foot in the door" to a competitive industry. But in fact these internships are often abused and just an excuse for an employer to receive free labor often with no real job prospects. In Hollywood there have been several cases where interns have successfully sued companies for back pay. Leena Dunham, who was using unpaid interns on her book tour, was forced by online outrage to start paying her interns. www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/how-all-intern-lawsuits-are-746945The department of Labor has issued 6 criteria for an internship. If these criteria are not met, the intern must be paid at least the prevailing minimum wage for their work. www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdfClearly an MLB team that employees a birddog scout who works for free is in violation of these criteria and under the law would have to pay such employees the prevailing minimum wage for the time that they worked. MLB and other sports should not think for a minute that they are not immune to the lawsuits and bad publicity that has hit the entertainment industry. You can bet that one of these days a similar class action suit will hit them too.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Jan 14, 2015 10:32:00 GMT -5
Oh but Chris that would mean that MLB teams were getting the benefit of free labor which is illegal and MLB teams would neever break the law. I am suure that this is just rogue scouts doing this on their own cough cough. Heh. I see it like an internship. Those are still legal... I think? The Red Sox did hire an area scout (full-time) in Northern Florida yesterday to work under Kotchman. His name is Stephen Hargett. As for Kotchman, I'll repost this SI.com profile, because it is a very good piece on him and describes how he (at 60) balances both scouting and GCL manager jobs: "The Hardest Working Man in Baseball"
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jan 14, 2015 10:49:13 GMT -5
funny tweet: Baseball Prospectus ?@baseballpro 34m34 minutes ago BP Job Postings: Cardinals Job Openings by BP Staff: St. Louis' baseball ops department is looking for an anal... bit.ly/1FVTfqp
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 14, 2015 13:14:13 GMT -5
FWIW, the internship thing was a joke referencing the recent controversy about it.
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 14, 2015 14:08:33 GMT -5
Heh. I see it like an internship. Those are still legal... I think? The Red Sox did hire an area scout (full-time) in Northern Florida yesterday to work under Kotchman. His name is Stephen Hargett. As for Kotchman, I'll repost this SI.com profile, because it is a very good piece on him and describes how he (at 60) balances both scouting and GCL manager jobs: "The Hardest Working Man in Baseball"Hargett has been working with Kotchman for many years so that makes sense. D.J. Stewart, who would be a candidate to be taken at #7 is in that territory.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jan 18, 2015 8:11:26 GMT -5
From FanGraph's Sunday notes by David Laurila. Brian Bannister‘s plans changed this past week. The former Mets and Royals righty was close to launching a company that would focus on player development, scouting, and analytics, incorporating sabermetrics and pitch data into the process.
Instead of becoming an entrepreneur, he became an employee. This past Tuesday, Bannister was hired as a professional scout/analyst by the Boston Red Sox. Surprisingly, they are the only team that has approached him about a front office role.
Bannister isn’t at liberty to divulge details about his new job, but he is free to discuss concepts and theories. Well-versed in sabermetrics and mechanics alike, Bannister is a perfect fit for an organization he describes as “open to anything that improves the decision-making process for their team.”
“My focus is entirely on simplifying and humanizing analytics in a way that players and coaches can apply it, immediately and effectively,” Bannister told me. “My background as a player helps out a lot with this, because it doesn’t matter if you make an analytical advancement if nobody can implement it, understand it, or are resistant to change.
“When I look at a sport like golf, 12-year-old kids are getting lessons in front of a Trackman. They know the exact distances and spins of their shot types with each club, and as a result are growing up developing muscle memory and swing characteristics that are optimized to their unique physical characteristics. In baseball, this process is much more complex, because we aren’t hitting a static ball to a static target. We have to understand how a pitcher’s movements affect the ball, how the movement on the ball affects the hitter’s reaction, and how the batted-ball-results average out over the course of a long season. To effectively map out this sequence of events, you need to have a thorough understanding of pitching mechanics, pitch data, and sabermetrics, because they all work together.”
Four years after throwing his last pitch, Bannister now works in a front office. According to GM Ben Cherington, Boston’s new hire will have “professional scouting coverage and will assist our analytics team with specific projects.”
It’s hard to believe there’s a better job for Brian Bannister. It’s even harder to believe that no other team had offered him an analytics-based opportunity.www.fangraphs.com/blogs/sunday-notes-spiritual-hamburger-new-boog-banny-in-boston-clint-frazier-more/
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Post by brianthetaoist on Jan 18, 2015 8:52:02 GMT -5
Sounds like a very good hire for the Sox, but it's too bad for the rest of us ... it seems like having Bannister do some publicly-available work for a while would've been interesting.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Jan 22, 2015 15:51:25 GMT -5
Per Baseball America, Pat Portugal, recently a Red Sox area scout in North Carolina, is the Oakland Athletics' new Northeast scouting supervisor. He was the signing scout for Madison Bumgarner when Portugal worked for the Giants.
Last week, the Red Sox announced the hiring of Todd Gold to cover the Carolinas, presumably as Portugal's replacement.
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 22, 2015 16:31:01 GMT -5
As I recall, Bannister would actually use tools like Pitch FX to help him during his career. If more people in baseball would see technology and sabermetrics as an additional way to get an edge as opposed to a threat to their livelihood, we'd all be better off.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 22, 2015 16:37:18 GMT -5
As I recall, Bannister would actually use tools like Pitch FX to help him during his career. If more people in baseball would see technology and sabermetrics as an additional way to get an edge as opposed to a threat to their livelihood, we'd all be better off. Agree 100%. Though, honestly, I think we've reached the tipping point there. Every single successful front office has embraced technology and statistical analysis at some level. The two who stubbornly have not, Philadelphia and Arizona, are laughingstocks. Getting players to adapt is a different challenge, but then again it has always been. It seemed like it took a generation to get using the video room to be universal.
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mobaz
Veteran
Posts: 2,757
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Post by mobaz on Jan 22, 2015 20:28:39 GMT -5
But Arizona plays "real baseball," which apparently involves throwing at people's heads for all perceived slights and losing a lot.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Mar 3, 2015 20:00:35 GMT -5
Today's release of the 2015 Red Sox media guide offers some insights into the changes in their amateur/area, professional/MLB and international scouting departments during the past off-season.
As mentioned upthread, the Red Sox lost some senior evaluators, including Galen Carr and Dave Finley (Dodgers), Dave Keller (Marlins) and SoCA area scout Tom Battista (Braves), in the late autumn.
There also were promotions announced in January, as Amiel Sawdaye went from director, amateur scouting, to VP/amateur and international scouting; Raquel Ferriera, from senior director, minor league operations, to VP/baseball administration; Mike Rikard, from national crosschecker to director, amateur scouting; Gus Quattlebaum, from assistant director, amateur scouting to assistant director, professional and international scouting; Steve Saunders, from coordinator/amateur and international to assistant director, amateur scouting.
In addition, Cherington's three top baseball operations lieutenants, Mike Hazen and Brian O'Halloran (assistant GMs) and Allard Baird (player personnel), were all bumped up from vice presidents to senior VPs.
Other changes that are initially apparent:
Amateur Scouting New hires: Paul Fryer (global crosschecker); Todd Gold (area scout, NC/SC); Stephen Hargett (area scout, NoFL), Josh Labandeira (NoCA) Promotions: Tom Kotchman (from area scout NoFL to Florida cross-checker -- while still managing the GCL Red Sox) Reassignments: Demond Smith (from area scout, NoCA and SoCA, to SoCA exclusively, filling the gap, perhaps, for Battista) Departures: Pat Portugal (NC/SC; now with the Athletics), in addition to Battista
Professional/MLB/Special Assignment Scouting New hires: Brian Bannister Promotions: Mark Wasinger (from special assignment scout to special assistant, player personnel); Dave Klipstein (from ML scout to special assignment scout) Departures: Carr, Keller
International Scouting New hires: Lenin Rodriguez (Venezuela); otherwise pretty much the same group as in 2014.
When Baseball America's 2015 Directory comes out there might be additional notes about pre-2014 Sox' scouts and minor ops personnel who have landed with other organizations.
EDIT: The BA 2015 Directory reveals no major changes from what's been reported here. Interesting aside: Rich Sauveur, the former PawSox pitching coach whose resignation started this thread, is not listed as a coach or roving instructor with any other MLB organization in 2015.
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