D-Backs’ new wave: Hazen, Sawdaye, Porter
The new wave of Diamondbacks decision-makers comes with new twists and opinions on the best way to operate.
MIKE HAZEN
Position: General Manager. Age: 41.
Mike Hazen laughed, assuming the question was part of a practical joke. He figured Orlando Hudson, the Diamondbacks’ former-second basemanturned-special assistant, had something to do with it.
Once upon a time, Hazen was a fresh-from-the-Ivy-League outfielder in the San Diego Padres organization who, in his first year as a pro, dominated the rookie-level Pioneer League, hitting .307 with a .919 OPS. Also in the Pioneer League that year: Hudson.
Hazen didn’t believe a question about his playing days was truly sincere, and he refused to even go along with the idea that a shoulder injury might have had anything to do with ending his career.
“Did O-Dog put you up to this?” Hazen said. “No, I was not good. I wasn’t good. I had a nice run of three months of playing out of my mind, and then it came crashing down to Earth. That is 100 percent the only truth to the whole situation. And I realized at that point my destiny was not as a player, it was to try to do something else with my career. That has led me here.”
“Here” is Salt River Fields, where he is wrapping up his first spring training as the Diamondbacks’ general manager. Hazen is a graduate of Princeton. He is a product of the Theo Epstein regime in Boston. He has the pedigree, the look and the sound of a modern baseball executive.
He has built a front office comprised of executives whom he believes not only complement each other but address his weaknesses. His top lieutenants were longtime cohorts with the Red Sox. His manager, Torey Lovullo, goes back even further, to their days with the Cleveland Indians in the early 2000s.
That’s where Hazen’s front office career began, some six months after he was released by the Padres at the end of spring training in 2000. Back then, few teams were hiring interns in front offices, and if they were they had already settled on theirs for the season. Hazen went home and called around, looking to somehow stay in the game.
With help from Princeton baseball coach Scott Bradley, Hazen got in touch with baseball writer Peter Gammons, and the two put him in contact with then-Indians GM Mark Shapiro.
“Peter just said, ‘Hey, look, I like to write about the Cape Cod League players, but I don’t have any time to really go down there and see these guys other than a handful of games,’” Hazen said. “‘If you want to just go down there and send me scouting reports, I’ll read them.’ So I did.”
At the end of the season, Hazen sent his reports along to Shapiro, who had him come to Cleveland to interview for an internship. He got the job.
Hazen spent five years with the Indians, working in scouting and player development, before joining the Red Sox in 2006. In 11 seasons there, he worked his way up to the GM position, the de facto second-in-command to Dave Dombrowski. This opportunity with the Diamondbacks is his first calling the shots.
“There’s all types of ways to make decisions in this game and there’s no right or wrong way; we just want to do it as well as we can,” he said.
AMIEL SAWDAYE
Position: Assistant General Manager. Age: 39.
Amiel Sawdaye stood out during his years with the Red Sox for the way he helped modernize their front office, embracing new ways of thinking without snubbing the old guard.
He also stood out in the boxing ring.
A staple of the Fenway Park executive offices from the Theo Epstein days were sets of boxing gloves and headgear, which tended to come out after particularly gruesome losses. Sawdaye, who stands about 5-8 and is slight of build, laughed off the notion that he was any good, but he didn’t deny his willingness to lace ‘em up.
“It was our way of letting off steam after a bad loss or a threegame losing streak,” Sawdaye said. “I wasn’t afraid to get in the ring, you can say that.”
Raised in Baltimore by parents of Middle Eastern decent, Sawdaye grew up an Orioles fan. His dad took him and his brother to Camden Yards, where the boys would explain to their father, a soccer fan, what was happening on the field.
After graduating in 1999 from University of Maryland with a degree in information systems, Sawdaye went to work for General Electric. He was a project manager for a now defunct ecommerce business. It was a good job, but Sawdaye’s heart wasn’t in it.
He’d always loved baseball, so he sent his resume around and called a bunch of teams. He happened to get the right person on the phone with the Red Sox, who passed him along to someone in scouting. They were looking for an intern in amateur scouting. He started in June 2002, five months before Epstein was hired as GM.
As he worked behind the scenes to revamp the Red Sox scouting processes, he steadily progressed, first to assistant, then to assistant director and eventually to scouting director, a position he held from 2010-14. He oversaw the Red Sox’s impactful 2011 draft that included the selections of Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Blake Swihart, among others.
Sawdaye says his time in Boston, during which the Red Sox won three World Series, taught him the importance of culture in a front office. He said Epstein believed good ideas could come from anywhere, and he created an atmosphere in which everyone was encouraged to participate.
“I think by doing that he was able to get a lot of people to want to come work there,” Sawdaye said. “Really good people, smart, like-minded in some ways, but not afraid to have opinions. He valued that.”
After Mike Hazen left for the Diamondbacks, Sawdaye was considered to be his successor as second-in-command to Dave Dombrowski with the Red Sox. But he wound up joining Hazen in Arizona, where he’ll oversee amateur and international scouting while also being involved with the major league club.
“I think he has sort of an entrepreneurial-type mindset as a builder,” Hazen said of Sawdaye, “and as he puts people together in terms of managing a staff and overseeing departments. He has the desire to innovate in a lot of ways.”
JARED PORTER
Position: Assistant General Manager. Age: 37.
As a player development intern with the Boston Red Sox in 2004, Jared Porter’s days consisted of watching at least one game - and often two - in sweat-inducing Florida heat. He’d usually change clothes – or do a load of laundry – in between. He’d throw flips to hitters in the cage before games. He’d sit with scouts and pick their brains during them.
Porter can’t imagine where he’d be without that summer.
“I was young,” he said. “But I learned so much. I wouldn’t trade that internship for anything. If I didn’t have that internship, there’s no way I’d be where I am.”
As one of Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen’s top assistants, Porter oversees the club’s professional scouting department. Well-liked by scouts, he is known for his impressive recall of players and his ability to identify undervalued assets.
Porter grew up in Minnesota, moved to the Boston area during high school and was a standout hockey and baseball player who captained both teams at Bowdoin College in Maine.
A Twins and Red Sox fan, he found himself drawn to analyzing baseball. When he saw Theo Epstein and others rise to general manager positions in the early 2000s, he realized he might not have to play professional baseball to work in it.
Porter moved from intern to assistant in player development, then shifted into pro scouting in 2008, climbing to director in 2012. He thinks the time he spent watching the Gulf Coast League and the Florida State League in 2004, followed by his season working out of Fenway Park, gave him a baseline of what players look like at various stops, helping solidify a sort of scouting foundation.
“He has a great way about him with scouts in the ability to ask the right questions and gather information, which is a critical piece to being a very good scout at the professional level and the major league level,” Hazen said. “I think that becomes such an integral part of how we make decisions and he does such a good job of that.”
Porter says he’s a believer in blending the scouting with the analytics, calling it “one of the most important things in baseball to be able to do.”
Porter left the Red Sox in 2015 to join the Cubs, just in time to collect another World Series ring, the fourth of his career.
Though both of those clubs are big-market teams with significant resources, he doesn’t think the differences between them and the Diamondbacks are all that drastic. He pointed out that several players who were critical to the Cubs’ success might have been undervalued at the time they were acquired, including Jake Arrieta, Anthony Rizzo and Dexter Fowler.
“It’s still so critical to a championship team,” Porter said. “I think for us, maybe we aren’t able to always play in the huge number (dollar) guys at times, but that’s maybe the only difference. We’re still going to try to find undervalued players.”