Player Development (Part 1)

I have always had a fascination with the development of baseball players.   It started when coaching youth ball, and continued on to high school baseball.  But what happens after a player gets drafted and signs that contract?  Are these young men receiving the best possible instruction? Are the teams creating an environment for those players to maximize their abilities? How exactly do you accomplish that?   Strictly through Sabermetrics?   Is it done through “old school” instruction?   Player development is very crucial to the success of any organization or team.  This would apply to non-sports organizations as well.  A fact to which I’m sure Mark could attest, in the operation of his company.   This is why teams do and should invest significant resources to enhance their players’ development.   Gone are the old days, where teams could just go out and give large bonuses to sign the most talented players.  

Some consider player development to be the holy grail of baseball.  Yet, is there a simple definition of player development?   Not particularly.   Former General Manager Farhan Zaidi called it “the toughest job in baseball.”   Gabe Kaplar ( a very innovative man) thought the primary responsibility in player development was “developing the player as a human being.”  Among the many ideas he brought to the Dodgers, was serving organic food in minor league clubhouses, building a chicken coop at Camelback Ranch, having leadership retreats for prospects, and hiring at least one Spanish‑speaking coach to every minor league staff.   That may not seem like much, but if you’re a teenager away from home for the first time, or it’s your first time in the United States, having a supportive structure in place could be paramount to that young man gaining his maximum potential.   According to Kapler: “I think building a deep farm system is the result of effort across an entire organization, and it’s not just Player Development. In other words, baseball operations, analytics, research & Development, scouting, player development, even in many ways marketing, all play an integral role in building the Player Development system.”    

Presently, every baseball organization has a Director of Player Development.  The Dodgers have Alan Slater as the Director, Baseball Development and Scouting and Will Rhymes as its Director of  Player Development.   But what exactly, do they do?  I will over the next few posts (not on consecutive days) attempt to answer this and several other questions about player development.    As I began to research the field of player development, I was immediately struck by how incredibly complex this subject is, and how it involves the collaborative effort of hundreds of people working many different jobs, all with the goal of making players better.   In this post, I’m just going to introduce you to a couple of the different departments that you might not be familiar with.   For example, while a director of scouting is self-explanatory (although the details of his job might not be), how many of you know what the Director of Quantitative Analysis does. 

This is the Dodgers’ current organizational chart for Baseball Operations(not including Stan Kasten or Andrew Friedman):

Senior Vice President, Baseball Operations – Josh Byrnes

Vice President & Assistant General Manager – Brandon Gomes

Vice President & Assistant General Manager – Jeffrey Kingston

Vice President, Amateur & International Scouting – David Finley

Vice President, International Scouting – Ismael Cruz

Director, Player Personnel – Galen Carr

Director, Amateur Scouting – Billy Gasparino

Director of Specialized Performance Programs – Eric Potterat

Director, Baseball Administration – Ellen Harrigan

Director, Baseball Development and Scouting – Alex Slater

Director, Baseball Resources – Duncan Webb

Director, Quantitative Analysis – Scott Powers

Director, Quantitative Research – Daniel Cervone

Director, Player Development – William Rhymes

Assistant Director, Player Development – Matt McGrath

Senior Advisor, Baseball Operations – Gerry Hunsicker

Special Assistant to the GM – Pat Corrales

Special Assistant to the General Manager – Raul Ibanez

Special Assistant, Baseball Operations – Joel Peralta

Special Assistant, Player Personnel -Jose Vizcaino

Senior Scouting Advisor, Dominican Republic – Ralph Avila

Manager, Research and Development – Megan Schroeder

Manager, Baseball Systems – Brian McBurney

Senior Developer II, Baseball Systems – Jonathan Funkhouser

Technical Lead, Baseball Systems – John Focht

Senior Analyst II, Performance Science – James Buffi

Senior Analyst, Performance Science – David Hill

Senior Analyst, Baseball Analytics – Philip Cho

Coordinator, Strong Mind Program – A.J. Lalonde

Minor League Medical Coordinator – Kevin Orloski

Minor League Performance Coordinator – Brian Stoneberg

Senior Data Engineer – Drew Troxell

Developer, Baseball Systems – Kai‑Tang Chang

Coordinator, Baseball Analytics – Ben Zauzmer

Senior Analyst, Performance Science – Emilee Fragapane

Coordinator, Baseball Operations – Ethan Levitt

Coordinator, Professional Scouting – Lucas Geoghegan

Senior Analyst, Performance Science -Jason Gilberg

Senior Quantitative Analyst – Nicholas Kapur

Senior Quantitative Analyst – Jacob Coleman

Quantitative Analyst – Yuji Akimoto

Quantitative Analyst – Eric Weine

Quantitative Researcher – Max Weinstein

Analyst, Baseball Operations – Michael Voltmer

Analyst, Baseball Operations – Craig Weinhaus

Developer, Baseball Systems – Ryan Casey

Assistant Director, Amateur Scouting – Zachary Fitzpatrick

Major League Video/Replay Coordinator 0- John Pratt

Manager, International Scouting – Francisco J. Camps

Video Coordinator – Chad Chop

Major League Video/Replay Coordinator – Jonathan Rhymes

Coordinator, Player Development – Andrew MacPhail

Assistant, Player Development – Eric Jordan

Assistant, Player Development – James Weilbrenner

Coordinator, Performance Science – Joe Harrington

Assistant, Baseball Operations – Zellie Short

Quite an impressive list, and it doesn’t include the hundreds of individuals who work underneath each of these individuals.   Moreover, it includes many positions and tasks that most of us would not consider as necessary, but which are absolutely vital to the Dodgers’ success. 

I would not, for example, have known what a Director of Specialized Performance Programs does and how that fits in with a players development.  The man who holds this position for the Dodgers, is Eric Potterat, Ph.D. He is a Clinical, Performance and Sport Psychologist who is considered one of the leading experts in high-performance psychology, performance optimization, decision‑making and teamwork under pressure, mental skills training, and individual and organizational resilience.   Now some of you might read that and think “just some new-age mumbo-jumbo, just have the players put their big boy pants on and play the game.”   But, you might want to reconsider that outlook when you know that Potterat is credited for developing and implementing the Mental Toughness Training Program for the U.S. Navy SEALs and embedding it into their training pipeline, as well as creating the Performance Psychology program for Red Bull High-Performance athletes. He retired as a Commander from the Navy after 20 years, the last 10 of which he served as the Head Psychologist for the US Navy SEALs and was responsible for all the psychological Assessment, Selection, Development, Maintenance and Enhancement programs for all Navy SEALs worldwide.   When I was in the Marines, I thought Marines, in general, were pretty tough.  But I’m here to tell you, the toughest, most disciplined, and the greatest performers under stress were the Navy SEALS, bar none!   If Potterat and his staff can bring that kind of mental toughness and support to the Dodger players, organization-wide, I’m all for it.   As one executive put it, “it’s no different than your hitting coach, your pitching coach, your infield coach. A mental skills coach is going to help you think better, think more clearly in the moment, and control your emotions.’’ Even the great Yogi Berra understood that concept.  As he put it, “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.’’

“We spend so much time on physical instruction,’’ says Andrew Friedman, “that it just makes sense to have resources on the mental side as well. It helps guys because things are so more visible, and dissected in so much more detail, there’s more pressure.’’

New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman was quoted as saying “Our job is to put our players in the best position to find success, and that means not just physically, but mentally and emotionally at the same time. We’re trying to exercise all of the muscles, including the brain.”

Then there are the numerous analyst positions(Quantitative, Performance Science, Baseball Operations).   Despite the ire that the mere mention of analytics causes with the “old school” folks, analytics can simply be defined as the gathering of information to help teams understand player performance, (i.e. each player’s batting, running, fielding and pitching) in order to help the coaches better understand a player’s past performance as well as predict future performance.  Analysts design and develop analytical tools to aid baseball operations decision‑making across a wide spectrum of areas (player valuation, transactions, strategic planning).  The amount of data that these individuals deal with and compress into useable information is staggering and I won’t even attempt to deal with today.  An on-line job description for a baseball analyst read as follows:   A candidate must be able to “Evaluate existing data sources and build predictive or explanatory models to aid in a variety of player acquisition, player development, and gameplay decisions.”   I have no idea what that even means.  

Baseball analytics actually started in the ’50s, when some innovative baseball people started to recognize that the traditional ways of evaluating player performance were not accurate. Branch Rickey wrote an article in Life magazine about the early version of on‑base percentage. That continued to evolve and really started to accelerate in the ’90s and going into the turn of the century. Certain teams recognized that there was value in the information and in how they could use the information.  Analytics is definitely more than just “Moneyball” vs “scouting.”  In addition to the Dodgers, the Cubs, Astros, and Cardinals have learned that it’s important to use information and analytics as one of their competitive weapons.  In doing so, they have been successful in not only reaching the playoffs but also actually achieving championship status.  The Dodgers only lack raising that championship banner.  Times have changed and continue to change.  It’s no longer just about OBP.   Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow describes the changes from Moneyball to the present: “Today, it’s completely different. We now have so much technology around the ballpark and information about the trajectory of the ball, the physics of the bat swing, the physics and the biomechanics of the pitcher’s delivery—so many components now that advanced sciences have worked into our game. It’s, quite frankly, overwhelming in terms of the amount of information that we have access to and intimidating to figure out how to analyze all that information, work through it, and come up with the takeaways that will allow you to continue to do what we tried to do back in 2003, which is to make better predictions about what players are going to do in the future on the field.”  Analytics has become a major part of baseball.   According to Luhnow, “Most organizations now have database folks and data scientists that are on their payroll and that are helping them not only store the information and organize it properly but also evaluate what it means.”    Luhnow also gave an example(painful as it may be to us) of how analytics is used: “I think the best example is the final play of the 2017 World Series. We’ve got a catcher who is good at framing—where you can turn a ball into a strike by how you present the pitch to an umpire. We’ve got a pitcher on the mound, Charlie Morton, who was a starter finishing the game; we had identified him in the free‑agent market because he had some stuff that we thought could play up in our system. We had an infielder who was standing in right field, a position where five years ago no infielder would ever stand.

Of course, [Dodgers player Corey] Seager [the last batter of the game] hits the hard ground ball right to Jose Altuve.  Altuve is standing in right field, fields the ball in the shift, throws it to Yuli Gurriel, a guy we found in our international scouting out of Cuba who took a lower‑dollar offer to be with the Astros and could’ve gone to another team. There was a lot in that final play. We were in the shift. We used tandem pitching. The pitcher was a guy we had used analytics to identify, and we had two players that had accepted less money to come to the Astros. And that last play of the World Series, which led to our first championship ever, encapsulates all of that.”    

That’s just a bite-size sample of how these departments collaborate together to help a player become the best he can be.  Over the next few posts, I will try to break it down as to how it works in the physical realm, the mental realm, and the emotional realm.   On another note, my nephew hooked me up with 2 tickets to the Dodger game on Sunday (after I wrote this).  Field-level seats, near the Dodger dugout.   Have I told you yet that I love my nephew?   I hope that I get to experience my first ever Dodger clinching celebration and that I can share some of that experience with you on Monday, but that did not happen…

2D2’s Minor League Report

Tulsa Drillers beat the Arkansas Travelers:   5-1

The Drillers advanced to the Texas league Championship Series against the Amarillo Sod Poodles(apparently an archaic name for prairie dogs) by beating the Travelers 5-1.   Edwin Uceta started and pitched 6 very strong innings allowing 1 runs, 5 hits, 1BB and 5K.  Luis Vasquez followed with 3 strong innings of his own, allowing but 1 hit and striking out 3.   The offense was led by Connor Wong, Cody Thomas, Omar Estevez and Errol Robinson, who each had 2 hits.   Estevez had 2 RBI.  

Great Lake Loons lost to the South Bend Cubs:   7-3 

The Loons were eliminated from further playoff action.   They were able to put together 11 hits, with James Outman, Romar Cuadrado, Leonel Valera, and Michael Busch having 2 apiece.  Outman had the only extra-base hit with a triple.   Valera had 2 RBI.   Kevin Malisheski started and gave up 2 hits, 1 run, and 2 walks in his 0.2 innings.  Several relievers followed with Justin Hagenman having a particularly rough day allowing 4 of the 7 runs in 1.2 innings. 

Ogden Raptors beat the Grand Junction Rockies: 2-1  

In a rare Pioneer league pitchers’ duel, the Raptors opened their playoffs with a 2-1 victory. Elio Serrano started and pitched a strong 5.1 innings, allowing 1 run on 5 hits.  He walked 2 and had 4 Ks.  The relievers were stellar as Mitchell Tryzanski, Jacob Cantleberry and Nate Robertson followed with 3.1 scoreless innings.  Their series with the Rockies continues tonight in Grand Junction.