So You (Still) Want To Work In Baseball (Part Two)

Plenty of opportunity down on the farm

Welcome to Warning Track Power, an independent newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.

At the end of the first installment of this story, Peter Wardell hinted at urgency. Indeed, anyone hoping to join a baseball operations department should get on a team’s radar early. Part of the challenge, part of the work incumbent upon the candidate is identifying the appropriate person or people to contact.

Communication skills are as important as ever. “That part hasn’t changed,” says Joe Sheehan. “Communication and getting ideas to other people… that’s evergreen. Coming across well is part of that.”

More recently, the process of hiring interns has undergone a change. “2020 changed a lot of things,” Sheehan says. “The Winter Meetings as a [Major League] job fair is a little less important that it was when I was trying to get hired. Good or bad, Zoom is a thing now. There’s no real awkwardness to video meetings any more.”

That means fewer situations in Nashville this week in which nervous candidates desperately try to identify the correct member of a front office for a scheduled meeting. It also reins in some of the craziness. As Sheehan offers, “You’re not interviewing 15 people on six hours of sleep at 10:00 PM… The process of meeting people has probably gotten better.” Late-night interviews felt like part of the fabric of the Winter Meetings. In a way, it was a twisted rite of passage. I can also express unequivocal joy for everyone involved. There’s only so much honor in scurrying for a recently vacated table at convention center coffee shop.

Sheehan adds that the Blue Jays took advantage of free time in October and November and hired some interns already. Remember: getting on the radar early is important.

The Power of a Network

I met Jeremy Zoll at OHSO, a brewery in Arcadia, central enough to many of the team complexes on the east side of Phoenix. He had recently graduated college. We shared a bond.

An important part of this entire story is being at the right place at the right time. Scouting acumen, coding expertise, and advanced degrees in sports science mean very little without a place to practice those crafts.

My career in baseball was fueled by the kindness of others. I was gifted a tremendous head start through a serendipitous decision I made as a high school senior. I attended Haverford College.

During my freshman year, Haverford alumnus Josh Byrnes was beginning his baseball career in Cleveland. No one knew at the time that Byrnes was blazing a trail. In 2000, when I began pursuing a job in baseball, I called him.

My second phone call was to Thad Levine, another Haverford grad and a teammate of Byrnes on the school’s baseball team. Byrnes had hired Levine to work with him in Colorado. Both were exceedingly generous to me with their time, advice, and accessibility. They helped me brainstorm independent projects that I could (and would) submit to general managers. They facilitated introductions to help build my network. Most importantly, they instilled the belief that there was a place in the game for me.

Both Byrnes and Levine have enjoyed long, successful careers in baseball. Zoll, who held seasonal internships with the Reds and Blue Jays before securing his first full-time job as the advance scouting coordinator with the Angels, now works with Levine in Minnesota.

“I would be going about it very differently now than I did 10 years,” Zoll says, regarding his efforts to find a job in baseball. “What I try to impress upon people is that being a baseball generalist is a tough road.”

When I got my foot in the door in 2005 — and even when Zoll had his first professional baseball experiences — most team’s baseball operations staffs weren’t large enough to fill out a starting lineup. Most entry-level employees were generalists by default. Today, the Twins’ R&D department alone accounts for 30 employees — and it’s somewhere in the middle of the pack by Zoll’s estimation!

The linear hierarchy of GM to Assistant GM to Director of Baseball Operations has gone the way of wool uniforms.

“I look back and I’m like, ‘Geez, the way I broke in isn’t really a way that people would typically break in today,’” says Zoll, who stresses the importance of a specialized skill set. He brings up the old wisdom, when the three branches of the game were general baseball operations (transactions, rules interpretation, roster management, contract negotiations, arbitration, etc.), scouting, and player development. “Dabbling… is getting you virtually nowhere at this point.”

He also says that the more recent advice to learn Spanish and learn SQL became obsolete by 2018. (Being legitimately bilingual, though, remains — in Zoll’s words — “a game changer.”) His advice: Get specific earlier on what you want to do.

Zoll established himself in player development. He spent two years as Assistant Director of Player Development with the Dodgers. Prior to the 2018 season, he joined the Twins as Director of Minor League Operations. Today he is a VP and Assistant GM.

Zoll identifies a number of areas within player development where someone can carve out a niche. “There are real paths within PD that are going to remain true… PD is extremely ripe with opportunity,” he says, listing specializations such as biomechanics, leadership, influence, and motivation as potential areas of entry. Even with reductions to the Domestic Reserve List, which governs the maximum number of players in an organization outside of Latin America, Zoll recognizes a continuing great need for help developing players holistically. “That really remains ripe.”

He concludes that it might not be easier to land a job now, but there are many more opportunities. The advice I’ll add that brings me back to my first encounter with Zoll: Be someone that a potential employer will want to have a beer with.

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Patience, Monty. Climb The Ladder

“I didn’t really know how to get in,” Alex Cultice admits.

During the winter of his senior year at Kenyon College, Cultice was interested in a job in baseball. He had a few conversations with people in the industry, but he figured law school was in his future.

Two days before graduating, the Diamondbacks invited him to interview for a minor league video internship. A few weeks later, he was in Missoula with Arizona’s rookie ball team in the Pioneer League.

The following year, in 2012, he was a minor league video intern in South Bend. The next season, he was in Mobile. Usually, someone in Cultice’s position doesn’t climb the minor league ladder like a prospect would. I warned him as much once when we spoke in Spring Training 2014, before he was heading off to Triple-A Reno in the same capacity. His perseverance was rewarded.

The Diamondbacks minor league facility in Scottsdale is only 20 miles from Chase Field. In 2015, he assisted with video in the Major League clubhouse when the team was at home. When they were on the road, Cultice would handle minor league video responsibilities at Salt River Fields.

How did he keep himself focused and centered during five years of internships and part-time employment? “Stay patient and don’t be above anything,” he says. “Little stuff can endear you to people.” It’s one thing to say it, it’s another to be reliable, likable, and dedicated to putting forward an outstanding product — whether it’s delivering hot coffee or taking the initiative to generate an advance scouting report for a minor league hitting coach.

By 2016, he was a full-time employee of the D-backs, on his way to working as the Major League Staff Assistant. His patience paid off in 2017 when new leadership took over. The big league coaching staff experienced turnover. Erstwhile minor league coaches Tony Perezchica and Robbie Hammock assumed roles with the Major League team. Cultice had built excellent relationships with them during his years on the minor league side. The coaches trusted him. They enjoyed being around him.

Cultice traveled with the team. He was a liaison to the coaching staff, formally and informally. He spent this past season as a pro scout for the D-backs while also contributing to advance scouting efforts. Very recently, he was hired by the Angels as their coordinator of run prevention.

To put Cultice’s journey in perspective, his professional baseball career began on June 20, 2011, the day the Missoula Osprey opened their Pioneer League season. Less than three weeks later, Mike Trout made his big league debut. Next season, they’ll both go to work in the home clubhouse at Angel Stadium.

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Working The Gun

Josh Stein and I learned the game together. On most nights in 2005 and 2006, he and I — as well as intern-turned-VP of Pro Scouting Peter DeYoung — could be found behind the stadium radar gun at Petco Park.

“We don’t stand there and punch the radar gun anymore,” says Stein. In fact, the demand for a traditional baseball operations intern barely exists. Many of those responsibilities, like creating magnets (containing players’ names and other vital info) for the draft board and organizational depth charts, have been automated and digitized. That endangered internship role involved a lot of clerical work. It was great way to learn the game. Those interns were exposed to the entire operation. On any given night, an intern could have been the third-highest ranking baseball official in the building.

As Zoll has essentially said already: Here lies the baseball generalist.

Stein’s testimony validates Zoll’s take on areas of opportunity. (It’s important to add that there is still variation from club to club. I can’t present evidence, but I think that certain candidates will fit better with certain teams. This, too, is research for the job seeker to perform as part of preparation.)

The Padres offer entry-level sports science jobs at each minor league affiliate. There are more R&D internships than ever before, and Stein notes they’ve become more formal.

“The game is so different,” Stein, now a VP and Assistant GM in San Diego, says. Then he adds: “People were saying that when we started.”

One True Love

Coaches, scouts, and players often talk about makeup — the intangibles that inhabit the fine line between success and failure. The pursuit of a job in baseball will challenge your makeup. It will test your drive and desire.

Alex Cultice uses a moment from the classic sitcom “Cheers” to describe his relentless quest for a job in baseball. He recalls part of what Norm says to Sam during their final conversation before the bar closes forever.

“You can never be unfaithful to your one true love.”

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