Baseball Basics for Brits Volume 4. 'The Front Office': Owners, General Managers and Field Managers In this volume of Baseball Basics for Brits we will be looking at the roles and responsibilities of various people within an MLB's ownership and management structure. Any professional sports team, whether a overview of a typical structure. Premiership football club or an MLB franchise, requires people to fill certain roles. Such The people who run an MLB organization are similarities are helpful in understanding the collectively referred to as the Front Office. In structure of an MLB organization, but there are general, the Front Office will include: some important differences to consider as well. ● An owner - or group of owners (with a Firstly, let's look at a traditional British sporting principal owner among them) structure. In football, the standard set-up has a ● A President and vice president(s) Chairman and a board of directors (generally ● A General Manager, who will have an referred to as 'the board'), a Chief Executive, a assistant and often a 'special adviser' or manager (who has full responsibility for the two footballing side of the business), and then an ● Various directors who will be assistant manager, first team coach and so on. responsible for different parts of 'Baseball Operations', such as Player The major exception to this is in cases where a Personnel, Scouting, Minor League club also employs a Director of Football (you Operations, Player Development etc, see similar positions in Rugby and Cricket). ● A Field Manager (normally just referred Typically they will be the individual that to as the Manager), Bench Coach, First oversees the footballing side of the business base coach, Third base coach, Hitting (from the first team squad down to the coach, Pitching coach and a Bullpen Academy) and most importantly it will be their coach, job to assemble the squad of players. ● Various groups relating to non-baseball activities, such as broadcasting, An MLB organization will basically follow this marketing, media etc. latter structure, where the manager doesn't sign the players. Different teams will occasionally For our purposes, we will be looking at the have different titles for the same job, and the sections relating to the Owner, General odd unique position does exist, but from this Manager and Field Manager in further detail. starting point we can piece together an Volume 4, Version 2 1 www.baseballgb.co.uk The Owners While a GM is there to make the decisions, he The owner of a baseball team's main role is, relies on feedback from various members of the obviously enough, to own the team. Sometimes Front Office, not least his assistant GM. one man leads the way with his money (and his Teams may also have one or more 'special mouth), while teams are more commonly advisers' to the GM (the Astros' GM Ed Wade owned by a group of investors, one of whom is currently has six, for instance). Frankly, in the Principal Owner who gets the majority of some cases these are just token roles given to the publicity (good and bad). people with strong links to the organization. One such group is New England Sports The GMs meet up for four days at the start of Ventures, who not only own the Boston Red December each year in an event referred to as Sox but also Liverpool FC. Several MLB teams the 'Winter Meetings'. Various matters are owned by large corporations who see the relating to MLB will be discussed by the GMs, team as one part of their business portfolio; the but the intense media coverage of the event Atlanta Braves for example are owned by focuses on the trade talks that take place. Often Liberty Media. the Winter Meetings end up being a disappointment for fans, as the staggering level Why do these people get involved? Well, MLB of rumours are rarely matched by news of franchises generate a massive amount of actual deals being agreed. The meetings are revenue and being an owner of one of only useful in terms of laying ground work for future thirty MLB teams carries quite a social status. transactions though. And hopefully some of them are simply big baseball fans who, having built a sizeable In recent years, it's become fashionable to fortune, are living out a long-held dream by separate General Managers into different being part of the sport. categories relating to the way they evaluate players. General Managers The General Manager (GM) is the most As some will have it, on one side of the fence important person in the Front Office, ahead are those who rely on the traditional method of even of the 'Field' Manager. While the Field a scouting network that forms opinions on Manager is responsible for what happens during players by watching them play, and on the other a game, the General Manager has overall are the GMs who instead rely on statistics. responsibility for the entire organization. This polarized view gained currency thanks to It is the General Manager who builds the roster the best-selling book Moneyball (and the and makes transaction decisions (trades, free reaction to it), which among other things agent signings, calling up prospects from the explained the way the Oakland Athletics have Minor Leagues etc). The Field Manager may embraced statistical analysis and challenged be asked for his opinion on a potential target, conventional wisdom to 'overachieve' on a but ultimately his job is to do the best with the relatively small budget. players he is given. As the main protagonist in the book, the A's The position of GM is a genuine 24 hour a day, Billy Beane has arguably become the most seven days a week job. They are the people well-known GM in MLB, closely followed by who will ultimately carry the can if their team the Boston Red Sox's GM Theo Epstein. doesn't come up to expectations. Of course, the Epstein, Beane and Moneyball gained plenty of pressure and responsibility that comes with the attention in the sports pages of British job is exactly why people in the industry strive newspapers in the period after Liverpool FC for years to land one of those thirty privileged was bought by Boston's ownership group. Much positions. of this attention focused on how the principles Volume 4, Version 2 2 www.baseballgb.co.uk of Moneyball might be applied in football. is known as the 'heart of the order'. The 8 and 9 spots will be given to your In reality, all GMs and organizations rely on a weakest hitters, with the 9 role almost combination of the two methods of evaluating exclusively used by the pitcher in the players, although each will favour one over the National League. If a team is going other to varying degrees. through a lean scoring run, the manager will often try to spark them into life by Field Managers making some changes to the batting Officially called the 'Field' Manager, they are in order on a given day. charge of the players assembled by the GM. As 4. Which pitcher will start? As in all sports, the manager is the public leader of mentioned in BBfB Volume 02: Rosters, the team, the main communicator with the Press each team in MLB operates a five-man and the man who will be judged on the team's starting rotation. Normally this will win-loss record come the end of the season. determine which of the team's five Supported by his coaching staff, the manager starters will be pitching that day. If a will perform all the usual roles you would pitcher is injured or completely out of expect (keeping egos in check, boosting form, he will be moved off the 25-man confidence/giving the team a rollicking when roster by the GM and be replaced by needed etc) while having a list of tasks specific another. Particularly near the end of the to his job. season, the manger may decide to alter the order of the rotation to bring forward Prior to the game, the manager decides on the his best pitcher on 'short rest'. starting line-up. This will involve taking various decisions: Once the starters are agreed upon, the manager 1. Which nine players will form the has the other 16 (or 15 in the AL) players on the starting batting line-up? This will 25-man roster at his disposal to call on during depend on the fitness and form of the the game. In practice, the other four starting players he has to choose from. His pitchers are unlikely to be used unless the game decision on one or two batters may also goes deep into extra innings, but there are still be swayed by their historical plenty of pieces to utilize for in-game performances against the opponent's substitutions. The manager will make the final starting pitcher. decision on these tactical changes after 2. Which fielding positions will they consultation with his pitching coach and bench play? In most cases, this will be coach. straightforward. The regular players will have their normal starting position On the batting side, the manager may decide to and don't swap about much. When you bring in a pinch hitter for an important at-bat have to add in a bench player or two, in the latter stages of a game, or a pinch runner some positional juggling may be if the score is close and the extra speed on the required. bases could make all the difference.