Hey there, offseason.
David Freese, Chris Iannetta, Matt Joyce, Shane Victorino and a handful of part-time Angels officially became free agents at 6:00am PT yesterday morning, but it’s another four days—i.e. Friday at 9:00pm—until they’re able to sign with a new team. The Angels are free to negotiate with any or all of them (and 100+ others) in the meantime, but it seems more prudent for Billy Eppler and company to work on restocking the front office (and coaching staff) before attempting to rebuild the active roster.
The departures of Matt Klentak, Scott Servais, and Tim Bogar from the Angels front office were rumored since just about the day Jerry Dipoto resigned. Their migrations are absolutely tough losses, but not shocking ones, so to claim their exodus has “decimated” the front office is a little ridiculous. Every front office experiences turnover when a new general manager is hired and, given the contentious situation that unfolded over the summer between Jerry Dipoto and the coaching staff, Billy Eppler had every reason to anticipate more egress than normal. It could have been worse, in other words.
Eppler has already filled one position, hiring former All-Star third baseman Eric Chavez in Bogar’s role as a special assistant to the GM, but the bigger holes left by Klentak and Servais are still left to fill. We know that the odds of Eppler bringing anyone else over from the Yankees baseball ops department are slim to none, but that’s about the only thing we know. Eppler hasn’t named any potential candidates and nothing has leaked out on the rumor mill, so we’re left to comb through the field and guess who might end up donning the front-office chic polo-and-slacks combo in Anaheim this winter. Our task, then, is to pare down the list of potential candidates from literally every non-GM front office person in baseball to those who might be content with an AGM gig in sunny SoCal. This will not be rigorous in any way.
The first order of business is to rule out everyone who has not been linked to (or had) a GM gig in the last month; this is almost all front-office folks. Next is to eliminate the people who already have an assistant GM job or the equivalent, because no one’s going to want to move laterally or down to work under Arte Moreno; this means J.J. Piccolo, Dan Kantrovitz, Tony LaCava, Derek Falvy, Tyrone Brooks, and Chaim Bloom are out. Finally, we toss out the Yankees peeps—fare thee well, Kevin Reese and Jim Hendry—leaving us, conveniently, with 10 potential hires. In no real order, they are:
1) Alex Anthopoulos
….aaaand I’ve already broken the rules I set out above. As I said, not rigorous. It’s extremely unlikely that Anthopoulos would agree to be an underling to a rookie general manager after being the point man in Toronto for nearly a decade, but maybe not quite as unlikely as his other job prospects. The only open GM position right now is with the Miami Marlins, which no one in their right mind would apply for—and certainly not someone with Anthopoulos’ pedigree. It makes a certain kind of sense then that AA might be open to taking a temporary advisory role for a year until better options open for him in GM land. Even the Sporting News’ 2015 Executive of the Year doesn’t want a 12-month gap on his resume.
2) Dan Jennings
If I’m going to include Anthopoulos I might as well throw Jennings into the fray, too. Jennings loses a lot of points for working alongside Jeffrey Loria for more than a decade, but gains some goodwill back by irking Loria to the point of getting fired. Jennings was part of the Miami cadre for so long it’s easy to forget he got his start in MLB as a scout with the Reds, Mariners, and Rays in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He may have been unqualified to manage a team, but he’s more than qualified to hold Servais’ or Klentak’s old positions in Anaheim. He may feel an AGM role is beneath him at this point, but It’s not like Loria is going to hire him back as GM. Wait, he might actually do that.
3) Chris Gwynn
Gwynn was one of many to interview with the Angels for their GM position. He worked as the director of player development with Seattle for five years, but resigned rather abruptly last month after Jerry Dipoto was hired. I can’t speak to the likelihood of any of these 10 people actually joining the Angels front office, but “guy who didn’t want to work with Jerry” seems like a pretty good fit for the organization that let Dipoto walk out five months ago.
4) Ross Atkins
Atkins is another guy who interviewed for the Angels’ GM gig (as well as the Phillies), so they already have a pretty good idea of who they’d be adding to the front office. He was drafted by Cleveland as a pitcher way back in 1995 and has been with the organization ever since, spending the last 15 helping oversee the organization’s in farm system in some capacity. He was the farm director from 2007-2014, then worked last season as the VP of player personnel. It’s hard to imagine any of the other candidates being more entrenched in an organization the Atkins is, but maybe he’s up for a change of scenery.
5) Kim Ng
Ng has popped up in just about every GM conversation over the last decade, but she never seems to make it past the initial stages. It’s almost as though teams are engaging in tokenism to make it seem like they’re being diverse… Anyway, Ng worked as an assistant GM for more than a decade before taking her current role with MLB as their senior VP of baseball operations, so there’s no questioning her qualifications. The only question is if she has any interest in stepping back into a team role if it’s not as a general manager.
6) Matt Slater
The director of player personnel with Cardinals since 2007, Slater interviewed for the Phillies GM gig last month but didn’t make it past the initial interview stage. Not to be confused with the Patriots’ special teams player.
7) Larry Beinfest
Another Jeffrey Loria castoff. Since being fired at the end of 2013, Beinfest has spent his days vacationing and getting quality time with his family. Seeing as the Marlins were still paying him until last week, why do anything else? He’s reportedly open to jump back into baseball now. He also definitely wrote his own Wikipedia page.
8) Dana Brown
Brown was the special assistant to Alex Anthopoulos in Toronto for several years. Now that AA is gone, though, it’s tough to know what the future holds for Brown. That Tony LaCava, who has long been rumored to be in conflict with Brown, was handed the interim GM job by new president Mark Shapiro would seem to indicate that Brown’s days as a special assistant are over. That doesn’t mean he won’t stick around with the Blue Jays in another role, but he might find a better gig elsewhere—i.e. Anaheim.
9) Greg Hamilton
The one person on this list who isn’t already working within Major League Baseball in some capacity. Hamilton is the director of the Canadian national baseball program and an Ivy League grad (Princeton), which explains why his name came up when the Blue Jays GM job opened. It’s probably unlikely that he’d take a job in Southern California given his close ties to Canada, but stranger things have happened. He’s certainly the most outside-the-box candidate who’s also inside-the-box of these 10.
10) Ray Montgomery
Montgomery was an internal candidate for the Brewers GM gig, having worked his way up from area scout to scouting director over a decade-plus, but was passed up in favor of 30-year-old Harvard grad David Stearns. Stearns may end up being a great GM, but that’s still gotta smart if you’re Montgomery. Eppler’s background really isn’t much different from Stearns’, but he’s at least got some high-level playing experience to fall back on.
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There’s no guarantee any of these 10 are on the radar of Eppler and company, but it’s probably safe to assume at least some of them are. Honestly, unless they decide to bring back Bill Bavasi and Tony Reagins, there’s really no reason to get up in arms about whomever they end up hiring. The key, really, is just hiring someone. Gotta set your house in order before stepping outside.
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