Rates & Barrels - Working in Baseball, Pt. 1: Sam Fuld, Ross Fenstermaker & Sean Ahmed

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

This episode is part one of a two-show series called “Working in Baseball”. At this year’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, we had an opportunity to discuss jobs in baseball with several people in different positions around the game. Whether you’re a long-time fan interested in knowing more about the inner workings of the sport, or someone who hopes to build a career in baseball, we think you’ll enjoy these conversations.  On this episode, Eno sits down with Phillies general manager Sam Fuld, Rangers assistant general manager Ross Fenstermaker, and Pirates Director of Research & Development Sean Ahmed.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow The Show on Twitter: @RatesAndBarrels e-mail: [e-mail] Check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Give the gift of The Athletic this Holiday Season! One-year gift subscriptions are just $19.99 at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crypto is like finance, but different. It doesn't care when you invest, trade, or save. Do it on weekends, or at 5 a.m., or on Christmas Day, at 5 a.m. Crypto is finance for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Kraken, see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Kraken's registration details at kraken.com.

This episode is part of a two-show series that we're calling Working in Baseball. At this year's Winter Meetings in Nashville, we had an opportunity to discuss jobs in baseball with several people in different positions around the game. Whether you're a longtime fan interested in knowing more about the inner workings of the sport, or someone who hopes to build a career in baseball, we think you'll enjoy these conversations. In our first conversation of this episode, Eno sat down with Phillies General Manager Sam Fold to discuss his move from the field to the front office after eight years in the big leagues. All right, we're here with Sam Fold, GM and one-time friend in the clubhouse. Congratulations on two great seasons in a row uh with the phillies um and uh we've been doing this series here we've been talking to people about their their their pathways

to to where they are and uh i just want uh you to help sort of connect the dots between those conversations we have in in the clubhouse with the a's um and you are today. Yeah. I'll try to do that quickly. Yeah. I mean, I think I was, when I played, I was always just, I don't know,

curious came, look, looked at the game and with an open mind, yeah, had a, it was just a kid growing up who really liked numbers. I was like the dorky kid who carried around a stats book. That was like my security blanket growing up as a five,

six year old. And so I just always was interested in, in the statistics, a stats book that was like my security blanket growing up as a five and six year old and so i just always was interested in in the the statistics uh that that the game is like you know it's such a big part of the game and obviously it continues to grow but just real quick i can vouch for that curiosity because we had such interesting conversations in the clubhouse i remember you asked me uh to look into uh what it'd be like if we uh shuttled outfielders uh from the left and the right depending on the handedness of the batter yep yep um you asked me once actually tried that in philly a little bit in spring training yeah

yeah the south philly swap we called it didn't didn't really come to sometimes when you have these things pitch clock makes it hard these days pitch clock makes it hard but there's also sort of like the implementation like the players would actually run like maybe a mile over the course of the game that they wouldn't otherwise yeah no but you gotta have those like kind of curious for the players i knew it or they were like what's the stupid crap maybe more open-minded to it than we anticipated okay collectively agreed that it probably the juice wasn't necessarily worth the squeeze. I think the combination of

just being curious and looking at the game objectively, I appreciated the way that the industry was trending. I was right out of college when I read the book Moneyball and was impacted by that book in a meaningful way. It was my first awakening that other people looked at the game like this.

It was a while to end up in Oakland? A little bit, yeah. Did you pick Billy's game right at all? Yeah, we had good conversations. Sometimes it was in the fifth inning up in the weight room when he was up on the bike and I was getting ready to go pinch run or something. We had a lot of good conversations and certainly great deal of respect for him and David and everything that they've done there. But yeah, no, I think when I, when one, I was like a bad enough player that I was thinking about post playing all the

time. My first year was like hitting 200 and low as a 23 year old. I might need to figure out what's next. while you were playing my first year was like hitting 200 in low a as a 23 year old i might already already so i spent a lot i probably spent 13 years thinking about what what i was going to do after i played um but uh i think once i once i hung them up i knew i wanted to be in the game just great appreciation and love for the game. And particularly looking at the game objectively and with, with sort of making evidence-based decisions, I was curious to see how that looked when you,

when you got a chance to peek under the hood and actually work at an organization. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was lucky to have a great conversation with, with Matt Klintak when I, when it was funny, he had sort of like mentioned through my agent, like when I was still looking to play, like, Hey, whenever you're done, told my agent, like whenever Sam's done playing, like maybe circle back, maybe something would be a fit here. So I did, um, thought the geography

made a lot of sense, heard a lot of good things about the organization culturally and like the direction that they were headed. And luckily Matt had had a really uh a sound idea of how to like you know sort of introduce myself into the game and what was your first role well we called it a player information coordinator and i was sort of like a liaison between our uh analytics group and the coaching staff and the players so um you know i think it's a role that you're seeing more and more these days and, you know, finding ways to make the sort of large load of data that we get, that we have access to and making it meaningful, digestible, and impactful for players and coaches from a player improvement standpoint,

from a strategy standpoint. And that from your background, it probably helps that you played, you know, just from how they receive it, but also how you might chew it up. Yeah. Yeah. I think,

sure. That, that helps. It doesn't mean that's the only way you can, you can attack that role, but I think it helped to have the sort of like, I don't know, empathy to know that it's not as easy saying like,

you need to stop swinging at those slides. So at least I had that appreciation and, and I certainly learned a lot. Like I, you know, you don't have access to a ton of data as a player. You know, you have fan graphs and you have BP and other public resources,

but like learned a ton from our group. Once I got a chance to become a Philly and. Is it peaking too far under the hood to ask if you've changed that a little bit for your organization in terms of what is available to them if they are curious? Players? Yeah. Yeah, it's been an evolution.

I think you have to be responsible and thoughtful in how you deliver information to everybody. But yeah, I think generally – But you have those curious players like yourself that kind of want even more, want access to it. Case by case. We're always having those kinds of conversations,

how much is too much. But there's no doubt that the next generation of players is hungry for information. Even more so, right? Yeah, which is really cool. But it makes, I think, the challenge increases.

Like, just have to sort of take it case by case, appreciate everybody's own ability to like digest information and the aptitude makes sense of it yeah um so yeah we have those talks all the time but there's no right or wrong answer but i think in general it's good to give guys uh a look at some information that could help them so you've you've come from uh being hired to now you're in the position to hire. And because you're doing so well as a team, you get poached probably. You get people that get to move on to bigger roles in other organizations.

So is there just the effort to sort of tread water? Do you have to try and still have that growth mindset even though you've been so good? And like, how do you balance sort of, oh, we just, we need this role and well, we need a really good person in this role and we need to like, you know, find this person. Yeah, I mean, I think even if we had won 120 games last year

and won the World Series, like you just have to continue to grow. Like the industry is moving really fast. Everybody's advantage seeking and you're foolish to rest on your laurels and just say we're going to run run things back whether that's literally the roster roster construction decisions or um you know leveraging data and technology and innovations that exist and are just growing like at a really rapid pace yeah so um yeah it's a challenge when when you know you start having success you become a little bit a little bit more of a target on target on your back and you run the risk of losing some really good people.

But you hope you have a nice pipeline built in internally that allows the next person to kind of grab the baton and take on new opportunities. And then you're always like looking to sort of backfill the entry level roles and just continue to funnel a lot of great talent into the organization. As you're doing that hiring, I mean, this is almost a job fair, and especially when nothing's happening. So we're focusing on the job fair aspect of this. There's a lot of people here looking for jobs, a lot of people who listen to our podcast who would like to work in baseball. And so I've been asking, generally, you know, things are you looking for in an applicant? And then specifically, you know, if you have any specifics for someone that, you know, is sort of starting out and wants to, you know, get into operations, scouting, development,

what it is like, are there specific skills and are there general skills that you sort of, yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know maybe i'm uh biased by the current book i don't read books as much as i'd like to but i'm reading a book uh latest adam grant book uh hidden potential and i'm sort of a lot of that early and i've gone through two chapters so but the first time it really resonated resonated with me um when we're talking about character skills and i think like this uh the technical skills, I think, can be learned. Of course, it's advantageous to have a really robust technical skill set if you're looking to be employed in baseball these days.

But I think the character skills sometimes get underlooked and underappreciated. And so the open-mindedness, the curiosity, the willingness to be vulnerable, the passion, work ethic, all those things are like, that's where we start. You know, we start with a human being and the character traits. And I think the, yeah, the skill set, the technical skills, the education that can come along once you're, you know, that's part of the onboarding process is part of the continual development that we really value. But it starts with the human.

You got to get the right level of empathy, willingness to work with others. The communication skills are also important, especially now as you've just got so many resources available in an organization. There's so much cross-functional work that you just have to have the requisite empathy and communication skills to be able to work with one another. There's no siloed work these days. So that's sort of non-negotiable.

I don't know if that's true in every organization, but... Everybody talks about it. Well, I was thinking about, like, you demonstrated your communication skills as a player with good media skills. And I'm thinking about that sort of, you know, demonstrating it outside of the interview. You know, for these young people, is that publishing?

Is that, you know, is there something you'd like to see to sort of demonstrate these things outside of just the interview process? Yeah, I think the interview process itself is, you know, depending on the role, I think it only tells so much. And I think a lot of what we do is it's reference checks and particularly like, you know, with candidates that have an extensive history in the game and we have resources that we can lean on. But if it's an entry-level role, there's not a lot of background, not necessarily an opportunity to call up a college professor

and say, how was this? I think showing passion through some sort of work, you know, some sort of self-driven work, I think is a great way to start. You know, ultimately I just spoke to it but you have to have a passion for this game and a willingness to really like grind and and uh i don't know look at look at ways to impact the industry it's they're going harder and harder especially if you're the outside looking in and don't have access to the great amount of data

that we do internally it can be a challenge but if you just put yourself out there and say hey i think that i i think that this might be interesting to a club and pour your heart and soul into it, I think that's a great way to start. That's way more important than I think anything you might do in an interview process. Sweet. And you guys are going to sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto anytime, right? You're going to go do that? You're going to break some news?

No. No. Thanks so much for coming on. And I wish you all the best. And this is the year you go over the mountaintop. I know it. I hope so. I hope you're right.

Thanks, Eno. Appreciate you. In our second conversation for this episode, Eno sat down with Rangers Assistant General Manager Ross Fenstermaker to discuss his path through baseball, which started with an internship in Seattle back in 2009. We're here with Ross Fenstermaker, AGM of the world, a champion Texas Rangers.

Congratulations. Thank you, you know, I appreciate that. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. And, um,

you know, uh, I'm really interested in, we've been interested in talking to people about how they got to where they are, um, and their paths through baseball, because,

you know, in some ways, uh, this is a hiring, this is like a industry convention where people get hired and people come to want to get hired. So you played at UC Davis. Briefly. And you were bad?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Me too. I didn't even play at Davis. So what was your position? I pitched. Oh, okay.

Sweet. Or I pitched. Oh, okay. Sweet. Or I threw. And a little bit of a deal with the Mariners for a little bit? Yeah, internship with the Mariners in 09. And then Texas ever since. And then what were your different roles coming up through the Texas organization? Yeah, I've worn quite a few hats. So general baseball operations internship led to pro scouting out in the field, led to international cross checker, led to pro director, international director, and most recently AGM overseeing international scouting and player development.

So pro director and international director, those scouting titles. Yep. Baseball operations. I think we've had this thrown around a little bit with some of our interviews we've done. What is the difference between – what is baseball operations? It's basically the business of baseball. So making sure that everything in terms of filling out rosters, finding players, acquiring players, developing players, putting the rosters together throughout the minor leagues, leading up to the major league club.

Obviously, scouts have to find those players. Coaches have to develop those players. Somebody has to supervise all of this, make sure that it's an efficient process and you ultimately land with the 26 best guys that you can, and hopefully it leads to a world championship. So it's like filling out rosters, being part of the process of putting people at the right level, putting players at the right level,

making sure you have the right amount of coaches in each place. It's sort of like making sure things work right. Yeah. Operations. Yeah, I think you said it well. You're identifying players that have professional talent and then you're finding coaches that have the...

Oh, so there is a little bit of an evaluation component. Yes, absolutely. Okay. So I think it's interesting because there's been a little bit of tension as we've talked to people about getting your foot in the door and whether or not just getting your foot in the door and getting into an organization is good enough, or if you might take the wrong path then. And so how hard was it for you to kind of hop from operations to scouting? I think it was an interesting challenge. So, I mean, the start of my career was just general baseball operations exposure. And then to go into scouting, what was unique, it's not so unique anymore. But at the time, I think I was 23, 24 years old.

There wasn't many pro scouts in their 20s. So it was a pretty significant jump to go out in the field and evaluate players. But I felt, you know, in terms of my aspirations in the game, it was important for me to be able to understand the evaluation side rather than just the business side of the game and go out there and recognize how challenging it is to evaluate players at all different levels of the game and, you know, be able to empathize with our evaluators and the challenges that go into that walk of life, so to speak. Run me through a little bit like though, how you got that opportunity or how you convinced, like, like, was there an interview? Probably was there, were you just sort of, did people just like, well, there's an evaluation part of operations and they were like impressed that you had made some good calls? I think so. You know, or.

I mean, you're involved in the draft process when you're in the office. So you get to see players, you know, video, you get to read reports, you get to talk players. But it's not like they're, hey, 22 year old intern in the operations department. Should we draft this guy? No, no, definitely not that. I mean, so kind of how do you how do you how do you make an impact? Well, it's one of the things I love about the Rangers is, you know, Josh Boyd was my supervisor at the time. He's still an AGM with us here now.

A huge mentor of mine would talk players with me all the time. AJ Preller was around as the general manager with the Padres. John Daniels created that culture. So, you know, I got opportunities as a young intern to, to have these conversations with, you know, pretty influential people in the organization. They realize, Hey, I think this guy might have an opportunity to evaluate and, some calls on players and go down that track and that path. And they believed in me and gave me that opportunity. It sounds like there's a little

bit more opportunity for that in operations because at least you're around all the people that are doing these things. It would be harder to say, for example, get a job in ticket sales or something and make that jump because Boyd's not hanging out with the ticket sales people. Like let's have a conversation about these players. Yeah. I think there's, there's some separation in terms of the actual business side and then the operations, baseball operations side of the game. So I think that's a harder transition to make it. It certainly happens. And there's a lot of great stories out there of people that have done that. I was lucky that I started in baseball operations and had exposure to decision

makers and people in influential roles that were looking to hire, you know, directors of departments and, um, that access and exposure gave me the opportunity and a pathway to continue down, you know, the route that I, that I'm on and I've been on ever since. So, yeah. And when you, so when you're looking for the next Ross Fenstermaker and, uh, and, uh, you're hiring, uh, it sounds like you, you, you have your, you know, in your purview, you've got, uh, scouting and development and you, so you're, you're looking at a lot of different roles that you could hire for to some extent, you know, the next Ross would maybe you hire him for the wrong role first, uh, wrong, or, you know, you've hired them for one role first and you find the right place for them

eventually. So doesn't that have something to tell you about like the hiring process? You know, how do you think about the hiring process when you're looking, are you looking very specifically for these skills that are going to fit this role? Or are you looking for a general skill set that you think might help the team? And maybe they'll help the team this way later and this way later. But just they seem like they could help us. They have a good baseball mind or whatever it is. I think it depends on what you're hiring for. So if you're talking about entry-level applicants or positions, I think you're looking for people that are passionate about the game.

I think you're looking for people that are passionate about the game. I look for people that are very curious because I think curiosity is an indicator of growth. People that want to learn about different aspects of the game, but also, you know, are out there doing things, you know, are producing work, writing a blog or, you know, doing research projects or going to the field and scouting and introducing themselves to people. There's so many different ways, coaching, that you can access and show work and show that you're passionate about it versus just applying for a job and hoping that somebody sees a resume and that appeals to them. Yeah. And so the work that you're doing to identify those is often just looking. It's not as much maybe sorting through resumes as it is almost sorting through someone's public resume. So what they're doing out in the public space.

I think the concept of resume in baseball is outdated. I think your resume is your work that you produce that's available to the public. So research project, blog posts, scouting information that you could share, you know, proof of concept coaching. You know, it doesn't matter where you coach. Coaching is pretty similar no matter what level you're coaching. It's about leading and inspiring players to be the best versions of themselves and finding unique ways to help them optimize their abilities, getting the most out of them. So I don't think that there's a perfect path for anyone. These routes to working in baseball operations, these positions are quite circuitous in a lot of ways. And I think we just look for commonalities

and the types of people that we're looking to hire and you provide them opportunity in the right environment and you get to evaluate them and see how they can grow and progress. Are you getting poached pretty hard right now or or are you excuse me i said no we've had we've had a few people leave um but i i i tell our people all the time our our goal here is to have that happen because either we don't have the position available for you um and if that position is available elsewhere, that's something that you aspire to be or do. You're going to remember us. Yeah, you're going to remember us. But it's fulfilling to see young employees enter the organization, develop them, and then they're

ready for bigger and better. And my hope is that one day I get to work with a lot of these people and they hire me. And we want to create, as much as we want to create talent on the field, the pipeline, we also want to create talent in the front office as well. And, you know, I think we'll be really proud as we take a step back and we see, you know, we've got AGM, senior directors, GMs, you know, all across the game that were members of our organization at some point. So yeah, came out of the came out of the Rangers tree. That's right. You know, you know, so it's interesting that you're in a really great position in terms of you you want you won yeah um and and yet the work always

continues in terms of hiring new talent and you're always always looking for new new people um and yet you know and you've done such a great job uh you know player development wise with your young hitters i mean that lineup is uh is so nice and the young players that have come up I mean there's even people that didn't even really contribute fully at their fullest capacity that are just knocking on the door like y'all didn't even play Ezekiel Duran

like that much dude I'm like he's a really good player so you know there's so many there's so many good players coming up through the pipeline you want to make sure that you continue uh doing that and continue turning out new hitters if you wanted to improve something like maybe your pitching pipeline yeah it's obvious that like the culture can't be necessarily the problem in this full in this full in the full organization because you're doing some things right. So when one thing is a little bit behind other things,

do you get more attention? Is it about people? How are you thinking about pitching development right now generally in terms of how you might look to improve it? I think that's a great question. I do think it's an area for us to continue growing. On the hitting side, we had an additional year with some of the folks that are in place between Tim Hires and Donnie Eckerd, the major league level,

and the continuity throughout the entire organization. There's a lot of familiarity with one another, which I think has bred success throughout the minor leagues on that side of things. Nothing but the ultimate credit to Kip Fagg and the scouting group for the continuity between the departments in terms of what we can develop well, and then drafting good players with the right makeup and intangibles to get the most out of them and entering our system. So I think that's really firing on all cylinders. And I think we'll

continue to move forward with that on the pitching side. You know, Mike Maddox coming in year one, we won the world series. I think we're trying to get continuity throughout the entire organization, adding the right people in the right roles, making sure that the system is designed in the same way that the hitting side is designed. And also recognizing the challenges of pitching. Pitching is a non-linear development path. Hitting is, I think in a lot of ways, an innate skill. Pitching is challenging. Three miles an hour in a Kansas City Royals. You're just buying three miles an hour in a Kansas City Royals jersey. Yeah, so it worked out for both parties.

We had Chapman. We won the World Series. I mean, I am the biggest fan of Cole Reagans, and I wish him nothing but success. I still talk to him to this day. It's exciting to see him continue forward. But yeah, he remade himself, and I think we're working on ways that we can do that internally and have our hands on that. And it's just a process to grow, but we're, we're fully

invested in there. We're moving in the right direction. I think I hear in there though, you're talking about continuity. I think this is, I think this is the hardest thing about player development. So I've, I've talked about organizations as tankers. There's, you got so many people, you have so many coaches and, and, and staff and players. If you think about it, you're talking about hundreds of people that make up the culture and the people that are in your organization. If you, if there is something you want to change, it's not going to happen in one year. No. And yet the pressure that we in the media put on you or the pressure of

winning the pressure of, of playing being in an industry where results are very obvious and are counted in wins. It's just very obvious and it's posted everywhere and everyone knows how many games you won last year. So there's this pressure that's yearly. And so we've seen some teams hire try to change and maybe two years into the process i'm not going to name names but like two years in the process be like well that didn't work yeah and let these people go um i i don't know what the question is. It's just like,

well, I think there's two things that stand out. Like, how do you deal with that yearly pressure, but also wanting to give the people you put into place a little bit of time to change the processes that are being, that you're changing. I can promise you that one thing that typically buys you time in this

industry is winning the world. Right. Yes. So you got a couple, hopefully we got a little bit of time, but, but the reality is, is there's two things that are going on here. I actually think we, as an organization have been relatively

successful at bounce back major league pitchers. So optimization at the major league level and getting more out of them. I think the development path takes longer and we're in about year two of this. And I hopefully these changes that hopefully these, these seeds continue to bear fruit as we have more and more time, and hopefully we've bought ourselves some time with our recent success at the major league level. But I think it takes time, and we're on the right path. But I have not – it's unique in that the interest in the minor leagues

and some of the top – the way that it's covered in the minor leagues, it's more instant gratification when player development is a process. And like we go back to the hitting example, I think hitting, there are some innate aspects of hitting that you have bat the ball ability. You kind of do or you don't. In pitching, like I said earlier, it's nonlinear and like it takes time. So I think they're on different tracks, but they're examined and evaluated in the same way. And I think it's just a little bit different. And over time, I'm confident that we're on the right path and we're going to continue to move this thing forward. Yeah, I think one of the things that's super important, though, is I'm a big fan of doing in their own process because they don't necessarily have the key performance indicators that they've all agreed to, to measure themselves. held values and and here values there's another word for it statistics commonly held numbers that you guys believe in that you kind of let coaches and coordinators know that like this is how you

will be evaluated and not necessarily it could be strikeouts minus walks i mean that's a very simple one but like you know whatever it is it's not necessarily going to be era yeah might be you know certain key performance indicators that allow you to be like, well, it has only been two or three years, but we haven't seen performance in these indicators that we agreed would be kind of the way

that people would be measured. So does that allow you to kind of be a little bit quicker in understanding how well the process is going? I think that's a great point. So we have our KPIs on the pitching side and the hitting side and everybody knows them. They're, they're universally known throughout our organization. One aspect of that, that I think you just touched on is, and you've done a lot of work in your space

on pitching models. So stuff models and location models and pitching models in general. So we have accelerated those efforts over the last few years, but they're constantly updating and they're constantly evolving. They're getting better and better over time. So in some ways it's dangerous because it's slightly a moving mark, but I think it's moving from 80th entile best outcome to 90th entile best outcome. So you're going in the right direction. You're still in the right space, but we have our consistent tried and true statistics and KPIs that we rely on. But we're also progressing forward with some of these more advanced models and teaching our coaches how to coach to these models and how to optimize players. So that's where the process really takes time. It's new and unfamiliar to a lot of folks, but familiarizing them and accelerating that process ultimately leads to quicker returns. I think it also leads to one of the most difficult lines to walk in player development, which I'm sure you'll be familiar with this sort of thinking,

which is just that you want to give players the best of what you've got. So you want to say, hey, this is what we believe are the best ways to coach you. We think of the most important stats and metrics. These are the things that we think matter to your future success. And they're not the same as they were five years ago. So we might have been wrong five years ago. And five years from now, we might have different ones.

And yet, trust us that this is the best of what we have now. So there's like a little bit of like, you have to trust that we're giving you the best, but we also have to keep enough of an open mind to improve and get to what's going to be better in five years. I would hope that our players would substantiate what I'm about to say in terms of our culture. I always address them and I, our coaches address them. We are only here to serve you in your career. It's not about us. You are the talent. Our jobs are to be here for

you and help you be the best version of yourself. So with that is the humility aspect of we don't know everything, but we're going to do everything in our power to present what we think is most important for you and be thoughtful updaters over time as we learn more and say, maybe that isn't as relevant as it was three years ago now that we know this. But there are things that are unpredictable. I don't think 10 years ago we were talking about artificial intelligence and influence on pitch design and pitch shapes and pitch optimization. And there'll be something in 10 more years that I'm not familiar with right now, but I promise you I'll research and try to find out for our players because that's my job and role and responsibility.

Thanks for coming by and talking to us about all these things. I think you're in the most fascinating space in baseball. I think that there's still opportunity for teams to improve in player development and I think it's a big differentiator for people that want to sustain success. It's perhaps, I think, one a big differentiator for people that want, the teams that want sustained success is perhaps, I think, one of the most important things. So do you feel that way about player development? And that's an important part of your day-to-day job?

I do, yeah. I think it's such a unique space. You can make a huge impact on players' lives, both as people and players and the organization impact. Once you help someone get to the major leagues, they'll love you for life. I mean, there are many things that are gratifying and fulfilling in this game, but

seeing players actualize their dreams and hoist trophies that have come through your system, I mean, it is second to none. That's awesome. Congratulations again. Thank you, Eno. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. In our third conversation for this episode, Eno sat down with

Sean Ahmed, Director of Research and Development for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Sean detailed his move to the sport, which began with an internship writing and editing for the Cubs magazine Vineline back in 2007. Well, I'm here with Sean Ahmed, the Director of R&D for the Pittsburgh Pirates. And thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, Eno, great to see you. Always love seeing you annual tradition.

Yeah. And we've known each other for a while and I didn't even know what your role was until recently. Someone was like, Oh yeah, he was when, went back was when he was at the Cubs, he was a writer for the Cubs.

Yeah. So that's kind of fun. A brother in the craft. Tell me a little bit about coming from what was the writing but what were you doing before the cubs and how do you get from writing for the cubs into r&d tell me a little bit about your backstory yeah i whenever i talk about my background it like reveals just like a generational shift and when i graduated from college it was 2006 and the advice at the time was break into the game any way you can

and then move over. And I didn't even at the time necessarily know that a baseball operations path was there or anything like that. I knew I wanted to work in baseball. And in college, I was an economics major with a Latin American studies minor. And I wrote for the newspaper and podcast and worked with the baseball team there. And so it was my baseball major. I just loved baseball. And at the time with the Cubs, when I interned with them in 2007, kind of the spring after college, there was probably only five, six interns across the entire organization. And now it's easy to have that many like video interns with you know a baseball organization let alone r&d interns let alone etc so um yeah i started in a publications and creative services

department i wrote i edited the cubs magazine yeah it was the cubs internal magazine and and you also work on internal so not like something that went out to oh no i'm sorry yeah it was the in-house magazine that went out yeah so it's called vine line and actually some people with the athletic side of sharma uh wrote for it you know he was a freelancer for us kevin goldstein was a freelancer um jason park so yeah yeah yeah and then uh jason parks is now uh the scouting scouting director for yeah the pro pro scouting director for the diamond back the pro scouting director for the Diamondbacks. And I worked with him at the Cubs. Both teams with the twins now?

Yep, that's right. That's right. Just saw him a little bit ago. So yeah, I broke in that way and did that as an intern. Then while waiting for a full-time job to materialize, I interned with the White Sox spring training after that. last year in Tucson, Ozzie Guillen was the manager. It was a fun experience to be around and learn. What sort of intern were you? What sort of title was it? It was a media relations and baseball operations intern, just for spring training. It was just

for spring training. It was kind of like a baseball information okay in internship yeah this is 2008 this is revealing what like 2008 2007 is versus now like how highly specialized these are right um so yeah i got my first spring training experience got my first experience with a different organization and while i was there i got a full-time offer from the cubs returned them, to that publications department as an associate editor, and did that for kind of three-plus years after that. And then as the Cubs were changing ownership, I ended up getting thrown a business kind of project, like a business analytics project. It just kind of worked my way and it was from uh a new new vp of uh i forgot the exact title but kind of like you know business strategy uh who had come in alex sugarman and and through working through that they realized i had the skill

set that was not exactly you know um congruous with exactly what I was doing. And yeah, I can go in the rest of the way, but it kind of like grew from there that I eventually kind of started leaning more into the interview out of it. And like, you know, it was a good project. It was like a resume builder and yeah, it basically just, it kind of opened the perspective and the door to, there might be a career path this way. And once for For you as well as the organization. Yeah, exactly. And what I ended up doing is I leaned really hard into going for that because I was clear I didn't want to do it on the business side. At that point, I was clear I wanted to be on the baseball side. And so I ended up quitting my job and just focusing on essentially in my code up to speed. I figured it would take about three to six months

to get a yes or a no. And because it took a while to get a R&D department in place, it actually took two years. And, but- That sounds familiar. Yeah, exactly. It's classic baseball.

One way or another, you're waiting a long time until something materializes. And so I got my code up to speed. got it taught me you know what it meant to like build a model productionalize it the fact that you're going to get an answer that you have three hours to to answer and you have a model in place you probably learned this from things like stuff plus and things like that um so yeah and then 2014 joined the cubs full time as an analyst, an assistant in the R&D department and spent the next six years with them. You're now with the Pirates. So you've seen three different organizations. If I can put you back in those shoes, I don't actually know which shoes to put you in.

If it's the editor, if it's, you know, doing that business project or if it's just, just sort of early in the process, was there a moment where you were surprised about something or you were like, oh, I thought they all had their crap together. They don't or whatever it was, you know, like was there some sort of general surprise that you had early on in your career in baseball? Yeah. I would point to one that was early on,

I think is was really important then and i i actually tell people it's really important now just like when you're young and trying to get in the game it's how different organizations can be culturally the people the structure the white socks at the time versus the cubs very different um and good and bad you know or strengths and weaknesses they're just different um and and i think now what's so important, it's not an easy game to just like move around or get a job in any particular spot. You can't always just like get this exposure to multiple areas. But I think recognizing that not all organizations are structured equally, have the same sort of people and ultimately hopefully finding your best match and a good culture and all that. So I think that's why I always go back to, um, yes, I guess that would be,

that would be my number one. Well, the thing about also, uh, you just said about, um, how different the internship structures were back then and how they are now. Um, and, and that someone said to you, it almost sounded like you were saying that this isn't true anymore, that just get your foot in the door and then you can move around. Do you think it's harder to move around within an organization now? I think so now.

And I think that's a reality of the fact that like baseball has just becomes more specialized. It needs more expertise. The problems are more challenging. The scale of the organizations is bigger. So at the time there was so much where being a generalist was how you, It needs more expertise. The problems are more challenging. The scale of the organizations is bigger. So at the time, there was so much where being a generalist was what you had to be. You had to be able to tackle a bunch of different problems.

The problems were smaller. Exactly. So you needed someone who could tackle everything. And so I don't think it was an easy path even then. For me, it was dramatic. I had to quit and like focus on doing and move over so i wouldn't represent it as easy then or anything like that i didn't mean no no or or any easier or more natural but i think now but like did you like imagine uh like somebody who's in it's like a sales rep for tickets you know who got into the organization because they wanted to be in

in baseball operations and like how much would have to kind of align and how much luck would be involved even within the organization you're already in the organization it would still take a tremendous amount of luck to end up in baseball operations to get that chance to show something or to you know what I mean like it took that it took that project landing on your doorstep to kind of, you know, let people know. Right. And that's not maybe in today's larger front offices with more specialized roles, not going to happen as often, you know? Exactly. And, and just the threshold for getting an R and D job these days is higher than it used to be. It's higher than when I had it, you have to be a great programmer. You might,

you benefit from, if you've already published, you know, great education, things like that. It's, it's, this segues pretty well. You know, you're hiring all the time. I mean, I'm not, you're hiring most of the time. I mean, as an organization, people hiring all the time, and I'm not talking specifically, but it may be, if you want to talk specifically, if you were hiring, what sort of skills would you be looking for? If you are hiring, what skills are you looking for? Like what, what is in demand for you specifically or generally? Yeah. Well, I think for us, what's clear to me is we are growing R&D group. Last year, we relaunched was our baseball informatics department as a research and development

department. And with that, some new focuses, some new skill sets we're trying to bring on. that some new focuses, some new skill sets we're trying to bring on. One thing I'll say that we're always in search for, and right now, this year, we absolutely have been growing the space is engineering. There's so much data out there. Engineering is one of your keys to not only getting the data in and making it available to your researchers, data scientists, and analysts. It's also the way you kind of scale the work right because you don't have one analyst for every single you know uh coach player um front office executive who's demanding information so you got to scale scale what you do um but then also also because uh you have so many different uh different ways the data comes in so you have you know the track man the hawkeye the the blast the thing and you have, you know, the TrackMan, the Hawkeye, the Blast, the thing, and you have to kind of,

you have to organize processes, you have to have processes that organize those things so that you can house them in one place and then distribute them. Yeah, and just automate it, right? And just have it so that you have the latest data as soon as possible. Because if your coaches are expecting

to have insights from the previous night's game the next morning so they can discuss it with the pitcher that data has to be in your warehouse has to be run through models and already available to them sometimes clean yeah exactly because it's not always it's not always correct right off the bat exactly right and so engineering is oftentimes a more thankless job but it's it's a foundational, important backbone job. Is that one that can actually lead to other things down the road? It's not a siloed, it's not as like, oh, that can lead to an R&D position, that can lead to other types of projects in the future if you get your foot in the door that way. Yeah. For us, it is actually R&D and for the Cubs it was too. And I think in most cases,

yeah, it's, I mean, we do have kind of like a research wing and a systems wing and systems will have the engineering, but yeah. But they're doing this, they're doing the same work. So sometimes you can just shift projects almost. Right. Yeah. I think, I think there are ways. I've also found people who really love it. Right. And sometimes it just depends on do you like an open-ended project?

Like, are you a researcher who is comfortable with the fact that you're looking for insights, but you might never land on it? You know, you might never get to an answer. How would you play baseball on the moon? Yeah. That's my example for that. We haven't gotten there yet. Maybe 2024, finally.

But for engineers, you know, there's a lot of satisfying things because if you have a vision for your internal web app, then engineering solutions that aren't going to be there. This is a thing that we are actually going to get to. We're going to be able to do this. You create it, you see it. It's tangible. And other things like that. But otherwise, we're looking for data scientists.

That's a big focus for us and what i mean by that are are really like broad skills it's broad in terms of the total types of skill sets but really like an expertise so are there any keywords key like python like is there is are there certain requirements or can someone be an R versus Python? Like, do you prefer one of these things? For us, R and Python, one or the other is all we ask. And I am a believer that if you've learned a program in one language, you oftentimes can learn another, right? So I try not to, like, draw too hard of a line or fine of a box because I think a lot of that you can learn later. But what I'm looking for now, because the baseball challenges, the data challenges, the research demands are so much higher than they used to be, I'm looking for a team of experts and technical ads, culture ads to the team, as opposed to the unicorn or the generalist that can just do it all.

So now I think as, and I think this is where baseball is, but not every other sport. As you've scaled this out, you don't need 20 people who are all capable of doing a little bit of everything. You benefit when you have the physics PhD working alongside someone who's great at machine learning or statistics and stuff like that. And they learn from each other, they can tackle different problems and they can ultimately push us forward. Yeah. I refer to organizations as tankers. I mean, you've got room for a lot of different people. They're huge organizations are getting bigger and bigger. And, but the, the,

the good of that is you can push through some really great projects and do some really cool things. And, you know, baseball teams are doing things internally that I think might surprise people in a good way. Like, you know,

baseball teams almost have stuff that's on par with like a Slack, you know, they're building internal communication softwares and like doing really cool big projects because they're big. But the flip side is if you want to change a team, if you're trying to build something, or if you're trying to move it from one sort of mindset to another, you know, that the tanker can be really hard, gets stuck in the canal or has to do the 800 point turn. So tell me a little bit about, you know, changing. You've been a part of two organizations that were in the midst of change and changing culture, changing an organization.

And I know I don't need the specifics because that's hard. But just sort of generally what it's like, what the job is like when you're trying to turn the tanker, basically. Yeah, I think the term you stuck is one of the key words, like culture change can get stuck. So you can sometimes like reorient yourself. You can tackle some low hanging fruit. You can make some strides a year or two in. But it's really easy for it to get stuck. And it's a competitive industry.

And you can find yourself being passed pretty easily. I've benefited from, with the Cubs, when I started in 2014, some people who were incredible at building culture and a culture that was driven to win. When it happens was the slogan. And we all kind of built a culture where we believed that if we all beat the 29 other people in our job, then that was going to lead into something special. And I think also just a philosophy of you get the right people on the bus and then you figure out where they sit. So just get great people, always hire smarter than you are and hire different.

And now also benefit from a GM in Pittsburgh, Ben Charrington, who's super thoughtful about culture and the importance of culture and collaboration. and collaboration. And I think it, again, benefits from you get just great people on board who are motivated to do good things, who do bring a different technical or culture or perspective, you know, add to the team. And that can, like, yield things that avoid you getting stuck, avoid you either not being able to get to new answers or just eventually just seeing too uniformly and not like challenging each other enough to achieve greater things. So I think it's that. It's hard.

I mean, you don't see you can have the perfect process and you might not see results. Right. That's sports. That's in reality sports. So it's very easy to get stuck if you're not constantly pushing that engine. Yeah. And it's hard because you hire good people and if you do start to have that success then you get poached and so you have to keep hiring like it the work doesn't really end that

way you just got to keep keep trying to keep working towards it you know just keep hiring good people it's it's happened to to us and it's a great thing and uh to me it's also you know i'm an internal optimist. It's always also a new opportunity, right? There's so many compelling people in this game. You meet them all the time. We see them around the halls here. And we see public work people are doing or private with teams.

And so there's a lot of great people out there. I try to get as many of them in-house with us, kind of produce in with each other, driven to do and achieve a really hard thing, which is make a winner. Yeah. Well, that's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on, Sean.

It was great to see you. Thanks, Eno. Good luck this week. Always good to see you. Thanks for listening to part one of our Working in Baseball series. In addition to the podcast version of these episodes, each interview is posted individually on our YouTube page.

Join us for part two when Eno chats with Kyle Bode from Driveline and Lance Brozdowski from the Marquee Sports Network. Thank you.