Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 509: How to Hire a GM

Episode Date: August 7, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss San Diego’s hiring of A.J. Preller and what they would look for in a general manager.

And all the trouble world around us seems an eternity away. And all the debt collectors, rent collectors, all will be behind us. But they'll never find us. Cause we'll be driving, driving, driving. Good morning and welcome to episode 509 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, a writer for Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller, who is in the car. In the car! I'm in the car!

First time, long time. Driving in a car. Why are you is in the car. In the car! I'm in a car! First time, long time. Driving in a car. Why are you driving in a car? First time we've ever recorded with me in a car. Well, in a moving car. We've recorded many times with you in a stationary car. That's a good point.

Well, I'm back in a car. And what's the occasion? I just went to my first independent league baseball game and now I'm back in a car. And what's the occasion? I just went to my first independent league baseball game, and now I'm driving back, and it's a substantial drive. I'm almost to the Golden Gate Bridge. But I went to see the San Raquel Pacifics play against the Pittsburgh Metal, and it was a little joy. It was a miracle of entertainment.

I got to sit with, I was invited by a guy named Gary who listens to the show and Gary's son, Michael Kirshner is a pitcher with the San Rafael Pacific and also a wonderful writer. I've read some of his writing since I found out about him and he's a great writer. He's a very good pitcher. And so he invited me out and I went and I watched and And Eric Burns was playing. Eric Burns, remember Eric Burns? Of course you do. You see him on TV every day.

Yeah, Eric Burns, the MLB Network guy? Yeah. I just... Yeah, he... No, he played two games this week for Vanderfell. He was a stunt. This was not the typical veteran, you know, old-timer guy who's trying to hang on. He was doing this as like a fundraiser for the Pat Coleman Foundation.

So he played two games for them in left field, and he was awful. Like, he was trying, and he's in really good shape. He actually looked like he might be the youngest player on the field because he was so trim, and he's a little guy. And he's been training for like an Ironman, triathlon, and he's in great shape. He hasn't played baseball in so long that he was just like absurdly slow with his swing. And so in two games, I think he batted nine times. He drew three walks.

I think he struck out maybe ten in bats. I think he struck out four times and had one hit. The one hit was like a little line drive to right field. He had good control of the strike zone, but he was way late on every pitch, and his swing looked not that good. And I wondered if he had, say, three weeks, or if he played within three weeks,

I wonder if he would actually be the best player on the field, or if not. But it was fun to watch him play. Wayne Franklin, do you remember Wayne Franklin? Yeah. Wayne Franklin, actually, this is a different story. I mean, there's so many little sub-stories going on in these games, which is part of why it was so fun.

But Wayne Franklin is a pitcher for the medal, the Pittsburgh medal, and also their manager. And he basically pitches like every other game or on just a couple days rest and he never comes out of the game. He'll throw like 150 pitches every time. He's just a junk-falling old man now.

And he's the ace of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's in last place by so much that they sold off all their good players recently and they basically ended the season. So it was fun. It was a lot of fun. Wayne Franklin faced Burns yesterday, and I guess won, because Burns went, I think, 0 for 4 with a couple of strikeouts and a walk.

That's interesting. That was reminding me of another Eric Burns story, another nonprofessional another Eric Burns story another another non-professional baseball Eric Burns story he was he was when he was cut by the Mariners in 2010 I guess it was I guess that was the end of his career he he started he started playing in like a beer league like three days later he was playing softball and just hanging out and and doing that with his friends and stuff like a few days after he had been playing for the mariners he's not that not that little a guy by the way six two uh oh interesting he looks he looks little so i promised uh there's

another listener named john who was there uh with his five-year-old son, and I also got to meet him. He was also great. And I promised him that you and I would play the how much did he make game. So we have to do Eric Burns, how much did he make in his career, and you're going to have to check. Okay. All right. That's a good one. Eric Burns.

Man, he must have had a solid eight, nine years more or something like that, maybe. I'll guess that Eric Burns made $7.5 million. $70.5 is way more than I would say. $7.5. $7.5, yeah, that's much more reasonable. Yeah, well, he had one year where he was like an MVP vote-getter, and that was fairly late in his

career when he might have been able to actually cash in on it. So I'm going to guess much higher. I'm going to say that he got, I'll say 26 million. That is almost a perfect guess. He made 28 million. That is almost a perfect guess. He made

28 million. Good for him. He broke a bat. At one point he broke a bat. Like I said, he was not particularly good, so the pitcher broke his bat. I wondered whether that was his bat. Do you think that Eric Burns has enough

money that he brings his own bat when he does his stunt roster appearances? I would think so. Probably. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Also, a couple things. I'm supposed to congratulate on your new job. Somebody in the comments of one of my articles, Amos Catelli,

insisted that I tell you congratulations during the podcast. So here I am. Not necessary, actually, because I read your article and I read the comments section and I saw that and responded to it. But thank you. Okay. All right, Brett Anderson got injured right on cue. Not much needs to be said about that, but it was right on cue.

When something is right on cue, you say, right on cue. So there we go. And then lastly, I did see that there's a movement to support Eli, I think, is Eli in the relievers league. Do you want to explain this? Oh, right. uh do you want to explain this oh right so you you are dominating the reliever league all of your all of your teams or many of your teams are very close to the top of the the rankings and there is one non-sam miller team that is managed by eli rosenwake. So yeah, when this was posted yesterday,

your teams were 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 11. All 11 of your teams had spots in the top 50. Your lowest ranking teams were 48 and 44. So yes, Eli had the number four ranked reliever league team. So if anyone wants to root against Sam, they are by default rooting for Eli. And I would encourage you to root for Eli. I noted before, but I need to keep saying it

because it really is embarrassing. I had a massive advantage in being able to draft multiple leagues and to get the hang of it and to see where players were going and all that. So I wasn't in all these leagues because I wanted to win every top spot. I was in it because I just wanted to be able to administer each of the different draft pools.

And it kind of sucks that all of my teams, which I got basically by cheating, are doing so well. And so I also am rooting for Eli. To me, Eli is the tail of the train, and I am in the front of the train, and nobody is rooting for the front of the train. So go, Eli, and everybody else. Is that a Snowpiercer reference? Yeah, of course. Okay.

And there was one other thing I wanted to mention. What was it? Oh, your man Mark Mulder is throwing again. Yeah. The comeback is back on for next year. Isn't that amazing? And you're probably projecting a 3.5 ERA. Uh, no.

No? No. Okay. All right, so my topic is about GMs. There is a new GM who's been added to the ranks, AJ Preller, who was the assistant GM of the Rangers, is now the general manager of the Padres. So there's been quite a bit of coverage of Preller and his background,

and I was reading a long MLB.com story about all of his experience and specialties as a GM. And it got me thinking about how I would handle a GM search or how we would handle a GM search. And so I wrote some quotes down here about Preller. So there was a quote from Mike Deer, or the story, basically the story said that the Padres were looking for a talent evaluator. They were looking for someone who could judge talent personally. And Mike Deer said the most important characteristic all along was who was going to be able to bring impact talent to the San Diego Padres organization. to be able to bring impact talent to the San Diego Padres organization.

Preller had overseen the Rangers scouting and player development departments. He was known for being big on the international market, for helping build the Rangers Dominican Baseball Academy and sign a lot of their foreign-born prospects and players. And he also had sort of a diverse background before that. He had been an intern with the Phillies. He worked for Major League Baseball on discipline stuff with Frank Robinson. He worked in the labor relations department, did some salary arbitration stuff. He worked for the Dodgers as an assistant in baseball ops, where he was exposed to

arbitration again and amateur scouting and professional scouting and all that. So he has had his finger in all the various front office pies at one time or another. And he said that he is going to wear many hats, that there's this pressure for GM candidates to identify as an analytics guy or a player development guy or a scouting guy. And he says that his strength is he's able to do all of those things. Of course, that would be the smart thing to say, whether you can or not. Yeah, coincidentally, just like everybody who's been hired for any job in the last eight years according to every press release. Right, pretty much, yeah.

There's no advantage to labeling yourself as an analytics guy. I'm pretty one-dimensional. I'm the most one-dimensional candidate they can find. Right, so of course everyone is going to say that they can do everything to the press and maybe in their interviews also. There was that story, was it the Jeff Baker story over the offseason about how Jack Z had sold himself as an analytics guy and had actually just been using Tony Blanchino's packet that he prepared for him or something. Because he's clearly a scouting guy more so than he is any other type of guy. And you could probably say that about Preller too,

although he's done plenty of things. And this story actually mentioned that Preller was on the road 320 days last year scouting, just watching baseball in various places. And there was a quote at the end where someone says that, well, Don Welke with the Rangers described him as a field rat. He's an evaluator through and through. You just as soon find him on a backfield watching minor league games as huddled around the backstop in a big league park. And then there's a quote from an industry source who says, I cannot think of another GM in baseball who can out-scout him. And so I was trying to think if I had been in the Padres' position,

whether that's, or any team's position, whether that is something I would be looking for, whether that would be high on my list of GM qualities or low on my list? Do I want a guy who is always on the road and likes being at minor league ballparks and backfields? Would I be worried that that is his true love, that he's going to get sick of being in the office and being a manager and a coordinator?

And how important is it really for a GM to be a scout, to be a good scout? I mean, it can't hurt, obviously, but that's not a huge part of the job, or at least it will be a smaller part of his new job than it was of his old job, I would assume, in that GMs have the ability and the necessity to delegate a lot of things. They have scouting staffs, and so they can't necessarily always go out and see the player at a moment's notice and always be on the road because they have to be the epicenter of the front office and interacting with everyone. And so without saying anything about Preller's suitability as a candidate, I just wondered whether that is something

I would look for and whether you have any preferences. If you had to hire a GM tomorrow, would you want someone who could be described as a scouting guy or as an analytics guy or as any other type of guy or woman or anyone? Would you want someone who could fit into that box? Would you want someone who truly could do everything? Would you want someone who doesn't have much of a baseball background and is coming from the business world? Would you want a new GM? Would you want someone who's been a GM before? Do you have any preferences in that area?

Yeah, you could almost argue that Treller's value to a club gets slashed by like 80% now because so little of his work is going to be the thing that you have identified as the skill that sets him apart. You're saying he is the greatest in the world at this thing and we will very rarely let him do it. And that's why we hired him. I mean, it seems like all things considered, you'd much rather have him be in his previous position for you. The problem is that he was never going to be in his previous position for you. He was going to be in his previous position for another team

until presumably a different team, a third team, gave him the job that you just gave him because that's what he actually wants to do and that's what pays the money and all that. So I feel like, in a sense, it's not the perfect solution in terms of the world getting the most out of everybody's talent, but maybe it's the inevitable solution. I think that you maybe could make the case, though,

that, in fact, this is almost like comparing a closer to a starter. Yeah, I was just going to make that analogy. All right. Yes, so as you were going to say, he's going to pitch one-ninth as many innings or one-sixth as many innings or whatever. However, they're going to be in extremely high leverage. And you essentially are, you want the world's greatest scout because the decisions are, A, going to be final and therefore carry much, much, much more leverage than a preliminary decision that, you know, some cross-checker would make three steps up the way.

And he's also only going to have probably a quarter as many, eight as many looks as a scout might get at a player. He might only get one chance at a player to see a player before he has to make a decision on him. So in a sense, what you're maybe trying to get is the genius, the font, who can just see very quickly and make the right decision when it matters instead of getting the laborer who's able to really sit on a guy and take his time and doesn't have to be perfect the first time and isn't going to make up for your effort,

which is something that Preller or any GM, a luxury that they don't have. And where would you put player evaluation skills, any type of player evaluation skills, whether it's scouting or analytics, on a scale of 1 to 10, if you're looking for a GM candidate, where would you rank that? How much do you care if the GM can personally assess a player's worth? Because I feel like I wouldn't put that very high.

I would put it just high enough that he's not going to do something disastrous. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't want someone who has such misconceptions about what makes players valuable that he would, you know, do the Ryan Howard deal. Like I wouldn't want, wouldn't want the guy who thinks that, that aging isn't a big deal and, and RBIs are really super important. But beyond that, which, you know, if you get past that point and you're like a four or a five, if you're just willing to listen to the other people around you who presumably are nines and tens, that would be perfectly fine with me. I don't know that I would give much of an edge to a GM who was a seven or an 8 instead of a 5 or a 6? Well, none of the skills that you would think to evaluate on a potential GM candidate

is in contradiction with any of the other skills. And so to some degree, it's a false choice. It's a choice you don't actually have to make. You'd like to get a guy who's 10s across the board. But if you had to prioritize, if you had to choose, I don't know. I think that it's probably pretty important. I mean, you do have to make, ultimately, you do have to make the call. And while you might prefer to have a guy who's going, you might, you might, I'm not saying you necessarily

definitely would, but you might prefer the guy who is, and I think probably you would, you would prefer to have the guy who's very open-minded and humble of his own beliefs and not rigid with the conclusions he draws. But I think there's probably all, almost all humans err on that side. And you might think that you're getting the open-minded guy, but you're just getting a guy with different biases who's going to be just as locked in by them. Or you're

liable to get a guy like that. Everybody has flaws, and the idea that you're just going to get the guy who never makes mistakes because he always listens to the wise counsel around him is like a one in a million or worse than that. So I think that I would put it fairly high accepting the fallibility of all the candidates.

I think I would put it fairly high. My number one priority would be the ability to run a company and particularly the ability to collaborate and to draw more out of a group of people than you might draw out of that group. I would want a manager more than I would want a talent evaluator, but I wouldn't mind a talent evaluator. That's a pretty good skill to have, and it's one that's probably a little bit, I was going to say maybe a little bit more difficult to replicate from other people,

although I'm not actually sure that's true. Yeah, I would put front office talent evaluation higher than player talent evaluation, because I feel like if you get a guy who's a nine or a ten in hiring other people, then that will have a ripple effect where those people will be nines and tens in other areas and will compensate for whatever you're a five or a six. And if you can consistently hire the best people, that would be probably the number one thing that I would look for. that'd be probably the number one thing that I would look for.

Because if you put the wrong people in place, then no matter how good you are individually, you can probably still do a lot of damage. Would you ideally want someone who had been with a bunch of teams and held a bunch of different jobs in baseball and seen a little bit of everything? Or would you want an expert in a certain field? I think for baseball, given that baseball is supposed to be where relationships are probably fairly important and where everybody wants to have respect for the cog that they are in a machine, I would say that probably the diversity of experience would be useful. Mm-hmm. Your car is talking to us.

Yeah. I know where I am now, so I can actually shut that off. And shut off. Anyway, you wanted me to answer that again? No, that was an answer. Yeah, okay. So this story also mentioned how lengthy, how rigorous the interview process was. There were only eight candidates, but I guess there were three rounds of interviews. Four of the candidates returned for second interviews, but it totaled more than 100 hours of interviews. And I've heard very high numbers for interview length before.

I remember reading about the Cubs interview process and how they subjected managerial candidates to two full days of interviews. like two full days of interviews and and managerial candidates i i would imagine would be easier to interview or to find out things about in an interview than general manager uh general managerial candidates or or maybe not i don't know with a manager you can you can give him game situations and ask him what he would do in those situations, and maybe that would give you a decent read on all of the non-clubhouse personality stuff about him. Whereas with a general manager, it seems like it would be difficult to simulate the job in an interview setting. difficult to simulate the job in an interview setting. I was trying to think of what I would ask a GM candidate if I had five hours with a GM candidate in a room. How would I try to suss out whether he would be a good GM for my team or not? It's a difficult thing to do. Presumably,

you know things about him. You know his past. You've talked to many people who know him and the person has a reputation in the game. And so you're drawing upon all of that. But what would you ask? What kinds of questions would you ask? Would it be more about just talking to the person and seeing if you can conduct a conversation and look each other in the eye and get along? Is that the most important thing you would want to glean from an interview? Or would you want to put the person on the spot and give them, I don't know, trade scenarios or signing scenarios or ask them, ask them, I don't know, sabermetrics questions or scouting questions. Do you have any, any idea of what kind of questions you would ask in a GM interview?

I once applied for a job at a record store, and the interview was like five musical acts, and then you had to say what genre they were. That was the dumbest interview ever. I would name five players and ask, what team is this guy on? I think that mostly what you're doing, all the questions are, I think mostly what you want is to spend time with them and get a sense of whether they're cool and whether you're going to work with them or not

and whether you just get good vibes or not. I don't think you can possibly replicate or simulate the tasks of the job, but you don't really need to. Like 98% of what they need to be a but ninety eight percent of what they need to prove to you and then prove it by the fact that they're in your office being interviewed by kiki color is not somebody that they did covered he is not

so dash g m e in the week field louisiana but i couldn't that was compelled true uh... you know all the fact that you need to pass. He was on every list of next GM. The work has been done for you. And so all the questions that you're asking are basically just a way, a framing device,

for you to spend time with him and make sure that at the end of it you feel comfortable. It's extreme. That seems like an extreme amount of time, but it doesn't hurt, I guess, to spend more time with him. But no, I can't imagine that any answer after about 40 minutes was going to dramatically change, or should dramatically change

his prospect. Yeah, And would you, you mentioned the list of GM candidates, and it is always the same people on those lists. And eventually a lot of them graduate from those lists and they get the job and others don't. But many of them are year after year, they're mentioned as the top GM candidates. So would you just trust the wisdom of crowds approach? I mean, presumably, if you're a person who's hiring a GM,

you've been in the game for a while. Maybe you've met people that you know personally and have some relationship with and think might be good at the job. But if you were going in as you are today, would you just pull up all of those lists and invite all of the people on those lists to be the people that you interview? Or would you go off book somehow? I remember when we talked once about how many of the best GM candidates we think are actually working in baseball as opposed to other industries? Would you, I don't know, would you consider putting feelers out to some CEO you admire and think has done a good job with that company and maybe likes baseball but hasn't been in baseball?

but hasn't been in baseball? Or would you just stick with the conservative and maybe the prudent choice of just going with the consensus best candidates? I think I probably would. I think I would be conservative. I wouldn't trust myself particularly to do something radical. And you're probably not going to lose because of the jam you pick if you pick one of these, you know,

eight to six weeks to be here. And you could lose if you go, you know, off the book. So I don't know. I would probably feel like it's dope. I don't know that that's the right thing to do. But it just feels like there's so much more negative risk. I mean, really, how much is the best GM out there, the best unconventional GM out there, possibly going to be worth more than the best conventional GM out there. It can't possibly be that much, I wouldn't think.

Whereas, you know, he could be, like, I just think of, like, the Maury Wills is a different thing. I just think of playing Maury Wills as a manager. We generally don't think that managers move the needle all that much, probably a couple wins maybe a year, and they're really, really good. And then you've got Maury Wills, who might be a minus 20 manager. And so I would kind of be worried about that if I was radical. Yep. Makes sense.

Okay. Well, we will offer our... What about you? What about you? Yeah. We will offer. What about you? Yeah, if I were a different person, if I were a baseball lifer, I would probably not rely on the list.

If I were a baseball lifer, I would probably know all the people on those lists and I'd have formed my own opinions of them and their work and their reputations. And I would probably be aware of some other potentially good candidates who were not on the national radar. But yeah, going in as I am now, I don't know. I mean, maybe I would think of a couple people who are not on those lists, but for the most part, I wouldn't really trust my own ability to outdo all the other people and all the consensus about who would make the best GM candidates. So I would probably stick with that approach also. Okay. Okay. That enough. We will offer our headhunting services to any future owners who'd like to enlist us to find a perfect match for your next general managerial job. Please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com and subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the $30 discounted price on a one-year subscription. And we'll be back with another show tomorrow.

Hopefully you'll have reached your destination. Probably. All right. I will talk to you then. Oh, wait. Oh, what? I just realized I'm driving tomorrow night too, but a different drive. Oh, no. We, what? Wait, I just realized I'm driving tomorrow night, too, but a different drive. Oh, no. We'll figure it out. I don't know if people can take two days of this.

Yeah, probably not. Okay. We'll figure it out. All right. Talk to you then.