Everybody in baseball is looking for a way to exploit a market inefficiency, but even for the most radical analysts, this is outside-the-box.
During the winter meetings, which begin in San Diego next Monday, the Rangers new senior advisor to the general manager will exist in the future.
About 18 hours to be exact.
Dayton Moore, who ran Kansas City’s baseball operations department for 16 years and owns a World Series ring for it, joined the Rangers last week in the newly created title of senior advisor. He’s supposed to be a sounding board for GM Chris Young. While the winter meetings are going on in San Diego, Moore will be in Brisbane, Australia, to see his son Robert, a minor leaguer in the Milwaukee organization, in the Australian Baseball League. He will be across the International Date Line, 18 hours ahead, but he will have his phone charged and ready and his line will be open.
“I’m going to be available every time Chris needs me,” Moore said Monday of his new role. “Unless I’m talking to my wife or children, my phone will always be open. My job is to listen. And to come alongside individuals in every department to help them become the best version of themselves.”
This is a new role for Moore, 55, which is saying something. Since graduating from George Mason University, he’s been a college coach at his alma mater and then an area scout, assistant scouting director, assistant director of player development, director of international and pro scouting and director of player personnel, all with Atlanta. From 2006 until September, he ran baseball operations in Kansas City as GM and then president. While in Kansas City, the size of baseball operations almost quintupled, from nine full timers to 42.
By comparison, Young, three months into being atop the baseball operations department, is overseeing about 60 full-time front office employees in Arlington. It can be a lot. For a first-year GM or an experienced one.
There are plenty of problems for the Rangers to tackle. Like: Yes, Jacob de Grom and Carlos Rodón may be at the top of the pitching market, but how much more are they worth than the next tier of starters such as Jameson Taillon and Nathan Eovaldi? Is the difference worth it? How much does losing a draft pick counterbalance the contract? And how do you spread dollars around to allow you to address multiple remaining holes in the starting rotation and finish out the lineup.
And those are just things for the next couple of weeks.
The GM business is 24/7. Roster headaches and crises are year-round issues. It’s why many clubs have gone to a structure in which there is a GM and a President of Baseball Operations. That’s the structure the Rangers had between the hiring of Moore and the dismissal of President of Baseball Operations Jon Daniels in August. It’s the same structure the Royals had with J.J. Picollo as GM last season and Moore moving into the president’s role. Moore was fired in September.
The Rangers have decided not to go with a two-headed monster. Young will head baseball operations. Moore joins a handful of former players in advisory roles but is the only one who has run a baseball operations department.
“It can become overwhelming,” Moore said. “One person’s problem becomes everybody’s problem. A lot of days, you don’t know how or what to do first. It requires a bandwidth that is enormous. The mess can take away from the mission sometimes.”
Moore has a prior relationship with Young. He was the GM in Kansas City when Young pitched there from 2015-17. Beyond knowing Rangers’ personnel professionally, there is an additional level of familiarity since the Royals and Rangers share a spring training complex in Surprise, Ariz.
He hopes to build on equity from those relationships to help the Rangers.
“I feel like there is a trust level that exists,” Moore said. “There are few people in the game I admire as much as Chris. He cares deeply about the Rangers. He’s got so much upside as an executive. This was just the perfect opportunity for where I am right now. I’ve had a lot of different roles in the game, and I feel a desire to share my experiences and mistakes and to share what I’ve learned from them. I want to be a complement to what everybody is doing.”
And, hey, if he does figure out the time travel thing for real, well, it certainly couldn’t hurt.
