Given the paucity of reporting on Major League Baseball’s disgraceful lack of minority hiring for important positions, such as general manager and manager, the article surprised me. The headline, too.
Written by Bill Shaikin, the article appeared in the June 30 edition of The Los Angeles Times under the headline, “Major League Baseball is ‘failing’ in its attempt to increase front-office diversity and the issue could get worse.”
It was brought to my attention by a reader of this site, who obviously has read a column or two that I have written on the subject.
As if the lack of minority hiring weren’t bad enough, Commissioner Rob Manfred makes it worse by talking about what he is doing to fix or at least ease the problem. The reality is Manfred has been the commissioner for two and a half years, and the problem is as bad as Bud Selig left it when he retired in January 2015.
The Shaikin article quotes Selig as saying the minority matter is a cyclical issue, but the only thing cyclical about the firing and hiring of general managers is some years there are more firings and hirings than other years. There is nothing cyclical about the number of African-Americans and Latinos who are hired. It’s hard to make a cycle out of one or two.
A more realistic and telling view of MLB’s hiring practices can be seen in a few developments of the last two years.
David Stearns and Matt Klentak were hired as general managers five weeks apart at the end of and after the 2015 season, Stearns by Milwaukee, Klentak by Philadelphia. The new general managers, both white, had special connections that helped them get their jobs.
Both had worked in the commissioner’s office as interns. Klentak had worked with Andy MacPhail on collective bargaining, and Stearns had worked under Manfred, who was then the chief management labor negotiator.
Klentak knew he was going to get the Phillies’ job. He was the Angels’ assistant general manager, and when I heard that Billy Eppler, the Yankees’ assistant general manager, was going to get the Angels’ general manager job, I mentioned it to Klentak, and he shrugged it off. “There’s another job I’d rather get,” he remarked, obviously knowing MacPhail was going to hire him.
I don’t know what Stearns knew about the Brewers’ job, but I had heard the Brewers would name him as their general manager. “Manfred has pushed the Brewers to hire Stearns,” an executive of another team told me.
Kevan Graves, on the other hand, did not get any team’s general manager job. No one interviewed him for a g.m. job. Kevan Graves is black.
It could be argued that no one interviewed Graves because he wasn’t seen as having g.m. potential or at least as being as far along as Klentak and Stearns. However, one former baseball executive spoke very highly of Graves, his credentials and his potential.
“Graves is very intelligent, great people skills and can scout,” the former executive said. “I’d bet money Graves will be a successful g.m. in the future.”
Graves, 36 years, came across on the telephone, like an absolutely delightful young man. It would be good for my business if he turned out to be everything my anonymous observer said.
In his second year as Pittsburgh’s assistant general manager, Graves said he had not had any interviews for a general manager’s job.
“I’ve had incredible opportunities in Pittsburgh,” he said on the telephone Saturday. “I have progressed in Pittsburgh. I’m appreciative of the growth I’ve been able to go through here. I believe I continue to be stretched and challenged and developed in Pittsburgh. Hopefully at some point I’ll get that opportunity but I’ll make the most of the role I’m in today. I’m incredibly fortunate to be in Pittsburgh.”
Graves graduated from Dartmouth College in 2003, a year after the Phillies’ Klentak. They were teammates on Dartmouth’s baseball team. Graves entered baseball in 2006 in the executive development program, a now defunct program. MLB apparently ended the program because it had become too expensive to maintain.
MLB, however, squandered millions on an executive search firm, Korn Ferry, before cutting it loose because of conflict of interest problems. Now MLB has an in-house “pipeline program,” under which minorities are brought in and tutored to prepare for interviews for front-office jobs.
Manfred speaks proudly and confidently of the pipeline program, but I can only be skeptical of his comments because they always have a hollow ring to them. Given my response to his comments, I am not surprised that Manfred has stopped talking to me. My views on his minority efforts overshadow the fact that three years ago I was the first writer – newspaper or Internet – to report that he had enough votes to be elected commissioner, spelling out his imminent victory with names of clubs for and against.
So let’s look at some of his comments to the Times (not The New York Times; that once-great newspaper doesn’t cover baseball news developments, preferring instead things like croquet, curling and cupstacking). This passage is from the western Times:
Manfred defines success in baseball’s diversity efforts not by getting any particular numbers but by putting in a process that can be trusted.
“I want programs in place that ensure we are hiring enough qualified minority candidates,” he said. “I want programs in place in which we take people who make progress in the baseball operations area and work with them on their career path, and on rounding out their skills, so we know we are creating a pool of qualified candidates that are available to take those jobs. And then I want clubs giving a genuine opportunity to diverse candidates.
“After that, the numbers are going to shake out the way they’re going to shake out.”
After reading the article, I sent Shaikin this e-mail:
I have just read your piece on baseball’s diversity hiring and commend you for writing it. It was referred to me by a reader of my web site who knows of my interest in the subject through the many columns I have written about it over the past half dozen years or so. I would like to point out some things about MLB’s bogus diversity hiring efforts.
First, Manfred is full of baloney. He talks big but does nothing legitimate to enhance diversity hiring. One of the people you quoted, David Stearns, Milwaukee’s g.m., has his job because he worked for Manfred in the commissioner’s office and Manfred “pushed” the Brewers to hire him. I put the word pushed in quotes because that was the way it was said to me. I have used it probably half a dozen times and neither Manfred nor anyone else denied it. I have also pointed out that Manfred has never done that for a minority.
In addition, Matt Klentak, the Phillies’ general manager, got his job because he, too, worked in the commissioner’s office and there got to know Andy MacPhail, now the Phillies’ president, who hired him. Blacks and Latinos don’t get those positions despite Manfred’s meaningless comments on diversity hiring.
In the context or action speaks louder than words, when Manfred became commissioner, he forced a guy named Frank Marcos out of his job as head of the Major League Scouting Bureau despite the fact that Marcos was the master of minority hiring. At the time of his departure, the scouting bureau had something like 30 scouts, and all but one was a minority, including a woman. If Manfred were sincere about minority hiring, he would have retained Marcos and said go get ’em.
One of the people you cited, Tyron Brooks, was once an unwitting part of a club-concocted scheme to elude Selig’s so-called rule on minority hiring. Several years ago, while Selig was still commissioner, four clubs, including Milwaukee, interviewed four different black mid-level front office executives. There was no way any of them was going to get the general manager job, but their so-called interviews satisfied Selig’s rule. Brooks is the only one of the four who has since surfaced, and he’s not a g.m.
One more example of why Manfred’s words are empty. While he pushed the Brewers to hire Stearns, he has never, to my knowledge, pushed any club even to interview DeJon Watson, let alone hire him. For the past two years or so, Watson has been described to me as the best candidate for a g.m. job who is not a g.m. Watson has never wanted to be considered a minority candidate, presumably because he wanted to be hired on merit, not on race. Nevertheless, I don’t think Manfred has ever talked to him or about him. Meanwhile, at the age of 50 or 51, time is passing him by, if it hasn’t already.
Anyway, I was glad to see you focus a spotlight on MLB’s diversity shortcoming. I encourage you to follow up on it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I asked the commissioner’s office if any African-Americans or Latinos had worked in the commissioner’s office and subsequently were hired by clubs. Pat Courtney, the chief communications officer, sent me a list of 13 men and women he was able to think of in the short time I gave him
Kevan Graves was on the list, but it included no general managers. Therein lies Manfred’s pipeline problem. He cannot lure young blacks and Latinos into his pipeline because he has no role models to show them.
If MLB has no or few blacks and Latinos sitting at general managers’ desks to show the pipeline prodigies, why should they want to commit themselves to low salaries and long hours just to become one of a dozen special assistants to the general manager like the Washington Nationals have?
If Manfred means what he says and genuinely wants to lure bright young blacks and Latinos into baseball’s nest, give them a role model to strive to match one day.
Maybe next year; maybe Kevan Graves if there’s a vacancy or two. This would be a no-brainer. Graves’ boss in Pittsburgh is Frank Coonelly, the Pirates’ president, who was Manfred’s chief aide when Manfred was the chief management labor lawyer.
Manfred hasn’t asked and won’t ask me, but if I were hiring a general manager, I would agree with my anonymous former executive and hire Graves. Our conversation was brief, but I heard enough to know what I would do.