Dodgers, Astros are scouting leaders
BALTIMORE – Baseball’s hyperactive transformation has played out at least partially in the public eye, be it a lopsided defensive shift or an exotic breaking pitch thrown in a 3-0 count.
For the next several weeks, change will occur in a far more private fashion, be it a call from the general manager, or a summons to the corner office, where a loyal employee will be informed their services are no longer needed.
Certainly, this ritual is nothing new. Contracts for scouts and many baseball operations types typically expire at the end of October. This hiring-and-firing season, however, has an entirely unique feel, one that reflects the state of the major leagues: The Dodgers and Astros are lapping the field, and everyone else is trying to catch up.
For now, that game is about brain power and personnel and revamping processes to meet the modern demands of procuring and developing the game’s greatest players.
The Phillies, Mets, White Sox, Rays and Mariners have already made changes atop their pro, amateur and Dominican scouting or player development departments. For other franchises, the cuts run much deeper.
“Right now, we’re 46-97 and we’ve got a long way to go to get better,” firstyear Orioles GM Mike Elias said Tuesday, hours before his club’s 98th loss. “And we need to do things differently to get better. It’s contract season in base
ball, and we’re doing as best we can to move deliberately and in a timely fashion through all the different decisions we have throughout a very large, multifaceted department.”
For Elias and Giants GM Farhan Zaidi, that means wholesale changes as they try to craft replicas of the monsters they helped create in Houston and Los Angeles. That Elias and Zaidi would work in near lockstep is not surprising. Both are rookie GMs hired last November, long after many significant baseball ops moves were made. Both were second-in-command in the construction of two of the most dominant and – key word here – sustainable baseball powerhouses. Elias rode shotgun with GM Jeff Luhnow as the Astros went from three-time 100-game losers to 2017 World Series champs and soon, threetime division champs. Zaidi teamed with club president Andrew Friedman in October 2014 to construct a big-market behemoth in L.A., as the Dodgers are heavily favored to reach their third World Series in a row while boasting a consensus top-10 farm system.
That’s an almost impossible feat, since the best teams draft last. This year, the Dodgers will pull off the rare feat of boasting Baseball America’s minor league player of the year – shortstop Gavin Lux – during a season they’re reigning pennant winners. That hasn’t happened since the Braves had a young Andruw Jones in 1996.
Lux was drafted 20th overall in 2016 and catcher Will Smith – now a starter
for the seven-time division champs – was chosen 12 slots later. Walker Buehler, their likely No. 1 playoff starter, was picked 24th overall in 2015.
Almost any team could have had these guys. Surely the Dodgers’ ability to game the system and churn out young – and, most important, cost-effective – talent will drive other franchises to ask, “Why can’t we be more like them?”
“This is a period where there are a lot of changes and a lot of different areas of investment for teams than there were five or 10 years ago,” says Elias. “When we were in Houston we were among the teams probably out ahead of the curve
in terms of recognizing the trends and positioning ourselves for them. Los Angeles is probably right up there in that regard. They’re two of the best organizations in baseball right now. Everyone’s looking to them as model franchises and trying to follow suit. It’s just the way the business works.”
Yet copycatting isn’t so simple; while the Astros turned deliberate misery into a fine art, franchises in Toronto, Chicago and Pittsburgh are finding it more challenging to turn the tanker around when they’re ready to compete.
Duplicating the Dodgers’ and Astros’ outcomes is even more challenging, be it popping a steady stream of Buehlers and Luxes and Alex Bregmans on draft day or turning up under-performing gems like Max Muncy, Chris Taylor or Collin McHugh.
“The thing is, that’s not going to work for everybody. Not everybody can have great drafts every year,” says veteran Dodgers starter Rich Hill. “There’s only so many diamonds in the rough out there. Now, it depends on whether you have the scouts that can pick those guys out. Obviously, that’s a huge tip of the cap to the scouting department here with the Dodgers and the Houston Astros. They’ve done incredibly well at drafting and developing and finding undervalued guys from other organizations, because they see them and say, ‘Well, you know what, we have the coaches that can develop that talent.’ ”
That requires a total commitment, be it investments in tech, brain power or those who can relay the former to the group, the players, that matters most.
Elias knows this better than almost anybody. He says the Orioles plan to fill all of the positions lost in this purge, “if not more. It may not be the same title, the same location, but we’re going to be growing as a department and in player development, specifically, I expect an increased headcount. There will be positions that never existed before.”
In an industry where “adapt or die” is an almost universal credo, it’s impossible to avoid bloodletting.
“No one likes doing this stuff,” says Elias, “but we have a job to do, we’re going to be accountable for the results of it and we’re doing a lot of new things around here. This is the most competitive environment in baseball. And we have no choice but to try and keep up.”