Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘A seat at the table’
The Marlins have given Paré the freedom and resources to expand, and the department’s growing size matches its voice within the larger baseball-operations picture.
“It’s evolved to be an important voice very quickly,” Paré said. “It’s almost more of a voice than I expected to have, coming into this.”
Hill “is very good about giving everybody a seat at the table. That’s the expression that he uses. They come to me with a lot questions, and I’m encouraged to give my opinion proactively as well.”
One illustration of Paré’s influence was the decision to move Christian Yelich, a Gold Glove left fielder, to center field.
When an injured Marcell Ozuna missed a few games last summer, manager Don Mattingly slid Yelich from left to center, where he had played plenty as a pro. The coaching staff liked what it saw. When Ozuna returned, he did so in left.
Yelich the center fielder passed the eye test from the bench, and the advanced statistics Paré interpreted backed up what Mattingly concluded.
“That is the type of decision we tend to make with a combined perspective,” Paré said, declining to specify which numbers said what.
He said coaches “want this information” and combine it with scouting reports and other sources to use “in the best way possible, and they’ve been tremendously open-minded and supportive.”
Mattingly, for his part, has spoken highly of Paré often. Teams over the past decade-plus have tended to shift toward analytics after wholesale front-office changes, a transition the Marlins haven’t really endured. The manager’s hiring last offseason coincided with the club’s emphasis on analytics that resulted in Paré joining the organization.
“We are just getting up to speed, I think, with the analytics within our organization,” Mattingly said last month. “It’s grown with Jason Paré. He gives us another dimension of … trying to put the right people in the right spots and make sure metrically we are paying attention. We do want to be able to evaluate our guys, and that’s part of it.”