Rumored Luhnow Replacement: Dan Kantrovitz
Posted on January 4th, 2012 by azruavatar in UncategorizedUpdate on Jan. 4th, 2012
Joe Strauss reports the hiring is official. Dan Kantrovitz (get used to spelling that) is the new Director of Amateur Scouting. If there was a candidate who, on paper, should make you feel like they will be able to replace Luhnow, this is him. As so often is the case, it will be years before we get a good feel for how effective he’ll really be.
Now to see how blog friendly he is . . .
Originally Published on Dec. 22, 2011
I had intended to do a write up about Luhnow and possible successors but for various reasons decided it wasn’t in my (or Future Redbirds) best interest to just crown anyone or leave anyone off a list.The short version is that I was always extremely impressed with Jeff Luhnow. I found him to be very intelligent, generous with his time and sincere in his open-mindedness when it came to “new media”. To characterize the Cardinals success as just Jeff would be inaccurate, and I think he’d be the first to tell you.
Jeff helped to build a better process and install the right people in the right places to succeed. He was fundamental (along with support from his boss) in re-orienting the structure and way the scouting department did things. Additionally, he was very much a believer in incorporating statistics something that the Cardinals organization embraced a little more strongly after his arrival.
Luhnow embodied what the organization became but he was not the organization itself. That involved a lot of smart people and a lot of those smart people are still in the organization that Luhnow helped to build. In short, Jeff was important but neither infallible nor irreplaceable. And I hope none of that is construed as a slight toward Luhnow who, again, I have the utmost respect for.
Today, Keith Law name dropped Dan Kantrovitz as a possible successor. He’s in the family, so to speak, but is with the Athletics right now. Here’s a pair of articles that you might find interesting: The Crimson, LaptopMag. Also, for those of you who follow The Book Blog with former Cardinal consultant and UZR creator Mitchel Lichtman (mgl), he seems to approve of Dan (in a very general way).
Have a happy holidays. Jeff and I will be putting together the 2012 FR top 20 shortly. I think I’ll have a few more posts in me before the new year as well.
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Luhnow will do great things in Houston and many fans, myself included, will miss his contributions. Whether or not he got enough credit for getting the farm system back ‘in the game’ so to speak will be proven with the upcoming 2012 Draft and how St. Louis moves forward.
If the Cardinals have a chance to bring in another great mind, I hope they spend some No. 5 money to get it done ;)
Ivy league stat head who is a former minor league player and STL native. Can you have a better resume than that to replace Luhnow? He’s got both sides of the fence covered. I don’t know anything about Dan other than what I read in the linked articles but this sounds excellent. Luhnow was so frightfully inexperienced in he world of baseball when he came to the Cardinals initially.
and for all the knocks on billy beane for the A’s not living up to the Moneyball hype, the A’s clearly have superlative prospect analysis and scouting. they’ve gotten ridiculous deals from numerous teams (including the cardinals) by identifying underappreciated players and exploiting the undervaluation.
Really? The players they got for Holliday was quite a haul. Isn’t this the same team that got rid of Carlos Gonzalez and Huston Street? I wouldn’t say taht the A’s have great prospect analysis at all.
The A’s just make so many trades getting rid of so many players that i just think the odds make them have great trades and crappy ones. I dunno, thats just my opinion, probly wrong.
Nothing they hvae done has shown me that there draft or scuoting is any better than the Cardinals.
Agree. I don’t think the Holliday trade proved successful for them. And even though they got Haren for Mulder, they unloaded him just as he was starting to dominate. And for a team who is trying to keep cost-controlled players they gave up a lot of year of Cahill and Gio Gonzalez. And by doing so they got a lot of top prospects. It was great scouting it was great value they gave up in return.
Oakland has no plan at all I believe. Beane just makes moves to make them. they had the foundation to be very good with that Big 3 version 2 pitching staff but they trade it all away.
Not sure I really agree with that.
I think Barton, who the A’s were most interested in, just got released.
Wouldn’t really call the Holliday trade a win, and they got fleesed by colorado to get Holliday.
Oh, and they always have ideal draft positions.
Didn’t know Barton was released. Would love to have him as a pinch hitter or backup who can spell Berkman in some situations.
You may be thinking of the wrong Barton. Daric Barton, the one in the Mulder trade, just got re-upped on a one-year contract.
I thought I read somewhere he was released. Guess I was wrong.
He was on the projected nontender list. Perhaps they reached a one year deal to avoid arb.
Correct.
Ed Creech was supposedly a scouting genius when the Cards hired him as director of scouting in 1998. He went to the Dodgers a year later and was never really considered a sscouting genius again. Not sure of the impact of any one guy.
Kantrovitz seems pretty interesting. Nice to see that he’s got a history with Mo, too. Thanks for the update and links.
I was an intern with Dan in the Cardinal PR/Community Relations Dept in 1998. Great guy, very smart. Obviously, his internship took him a little further with the organization than did mine.
Keith Law likes to play up Harvard.
There are probably replacement possibilities who already work for the Cards. Mo stayed inside the organization and selected Matheny for manager. The same thing might happen with backfilling Luhnow. Ideally, the team might like to hire somebody who would be committed to the job for years.
Something is weird about the Law link. It seems to go to an old-old-old mlb.com article on the farm system that mentions Kantrovitz as a former Cardinals guy but has nothing to do with Law. Am I missing something?
Klaw mentioned it in his chat. I think the link is for reference to his past with STL.
Can’t say I’m overly thrilled if it’s this guy. Seems like a very smart guy but what resume does he have for evaluating talent? He has a statistics degree? Really that doesn’t have much to do with evaluating talent. The fact that he has previously been in charge of college scouting shows me it will be more of the same with drafting college guys based on stats. Not what I want out of hte head of scouting honestly. Not sure when he was in charge of college scouting but we missed on an awful lot of people or could have gotten better HS players.
I don’t think that is a totally fair assessment. He was a player at the college and minor league levels himself so he certainly knows what it takes to play the game (at least to a certain level). I’m not sure how you can criticize him for taking or not taking HS players when his job was to oversee the scouting of college players.
He’s currently the A’s director of international scouting. He’s not just a stats guy; he has an extensive scouting background.
To take that further, Luhnow himself has said that a stats approach has little value on an international level.
Makes him more interesting to me now.
It should be noted that Luhnow did not have any scouting background when he came into the Cardinals’ organization. He came from a business background (MBA). We’re talking about the head of player development, in which the ability to make the department run at its most effective level is the most important. The resume needs to show that.
The criticism is that he’s been in baseball a very short time compared to others in our system who may be lifers and have watched and scouted baseball for decades rather than played for a few years and scouted for a few.
I never understood this argument. Just because somebody has experience doesn’t make them better. This applies to all industries, not just baseball. Some of those guys are lifers in their position for good reason. Good scouts don’t mean they will make good scouting directors.
Well if a guy has been scouting baseball for 40 years and he knows the traits when he sees them of the players who made it and those that didn’t. Experience probably is more helpful when scouting HS players. I want someone in charge of scouting who has had experience finding guys and having them t urn into stars and them having an idea why they turned out so good.
So the guy might be a great scout. Again, that doesn mean he will make a great scounting director.
How is that great scout going to handle a situation when his subordiante is leaving the team’s baseball accademy? What is his plan to replace him/retain him?
How is this great scout now going to man all scouts, domestic and internationa within the constraints of his budget?
Again, just becasue he is a good scout does not mean he will make a great scounting director.
It wasn’t Luhnow’s job to recognize good players; it was his job to recognize and retain good scouts (and minor-league managers, hitting instructors, and so on), and then make informed decisions based on the evidence that the lifers (and statheads and others) assemble. One need not be a lifer oneself to do that.
Reasonable
happy “hollidays” to all
Give keith law credit for ferreting out good rumors. Kantrovitz is the new scouting director.
I really like this hire — St. Louis native, former college player, former minor leaguer, former scout, super-smart guy with advanced statistics training — but I was disappointed to hear that Sig Mejdal followed Luhnow to Houston as “director of decision sciences.”
On the bright side, it looks like John Vuch is staying.
I was disappointed to hear Sig leaving as well.
I hate to say it though, his skill set has become a little more common in recent years. They will have to push to find someone more creative than the average SABR guy.
Cardinal Nation Scout.com article on the name of Kantrovitz
http://stlcardinals.scout.com/2/1145391.html
People here seemed to be worried about lack of experience for this guy?
Luhnow just named has his scouting director a woman who as little as 7 years ago was still in college (best I can tell not playing baseball but was a cheerleader) and who as little as 2-3 years ago was pretty much on the public relations side of baseball (with the Dodgers). Couldn’t find what she has been doing the last couple of years. Somewhere in there she went to law school.
Luhnow obviously doesn’t think experience is a big factor for the job.
http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-01-03/astros-new-gm-adds-numbers-cruncher-legal-eagle-to-staff
I love how the Sporting News article’s headline says “ex-cheerleader,” not “Harvard grad.” Nothing like a little latent sexism to go along with your sports news!
Who is practicing sexism now? I mean, who says a cheerleader has to be a women? :) In fairness, it is probably much rarer these days (and thus more newsworthy) that an ex-cheerleader is hired for a FO job than a Harvard grad.
Also, do they call men “legal eagles”? That phrase is just dripping with sexism.
I think “eaglos” is the correct word for male attorneys, while “eaglas” is for female attorneys and “eagles” is the politically correct unisex version, particularly for those attorneys whose sex you can’t identify.
The same is true for the term legal “beagles”, and there are alot of legal “eaglas” and certainly alot of legal “eagles” who are legal “beaglas” and legal “beagles”.
I can testify to that as an attorney who sees alot of dogs in court everyday.
Just spitballing and having fun….. and bored wanting more baseball info to follow….
Sincerely,
Gaylord Perry
Our dog is a beagle mix. Even if he had a law degree, he’d still have an annoying bark and smell bad.
You mean there are no female eagles? Baldy’s gonna be surprised when he gets back to the nest…
luhnow took a job with the cardinals in 2003 after graduating with a bachelors in business from the Wharton School and engineering in 1989, with minimal experience. see his interview with erik:
“I entered the industry with very little baseball experience and quite a lot of other experience that I have used to do my job. There is a steep learning curve in baseball and everyone knows this, so it’s not a surprise that someone who comes in from the outside, especially at a high level, would be initially viewed with some skepticism. I knew this coming in and I also knew the best way to prevent this from being a problem would be to work hard, work smart, listen carefully, and give it my best.”
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/4/7/824829/q-and-a-with-jeff-luhnow
i don’t think anybody should be surprised if he finds kindred spirits and brings them into the front office in houston.
Yes, and he did other analytics for 3 years before becoming scouting director and before baseball he was a company CEO. No comparison in experience levels.
since you don’t know what she’s been doing in the last 7 years, i’d say you’re assuming facts not in evidence.
Stephenie Wilka has worked for the Dodgers and Red Sox (the former of which she worked as executive director for their philanthropic arm). Also, she’s not Houston’s new “scouting director”; her official title is “coordinator of amateur scouting.” A coordinator, in any industry, is not a director-level position, and in this case, implies that she’s not expected to be making any actual scouting/player development decision-making. In fact, the guy she’s replacing left his job to become…wait for it…an amateur scout.
Her bio from Tallen and Keshen Holdings: http://tallenkeshenholdings.com/team_bio.html
She’s somebody with director-level experience for two baseball teams in major markets taking a coordination role in a different area. In terms of baseball experience before taking this job, I’d say she’s got 2003 Luhnow trumped.
Since I mentioned Luhnow’s time working in the organization prior to becoming scouting director it seems pretty clear that I was comparing their experience for the scouting director role.
I dont deny she has more baseball experience than Luhnow did in 2003 but in terms of relevant experience I dont think so in the least. Given the same level of talent, give me the experienced leader with proven analytical skills any day over someone who worked in a different area but in the same industry.
That is actually an assumption (and a wrong one) on your part. Just because I didn’t present the evidence doesn’t mean I’m presuming anything. I pretty much know what she has been doing the last seven years.
but you had previously said you “couldn’t find what she has been doing the last couple of years.”
that’s not an assumption, that’s reading your own words.
regardless, if you “pretty much know what she’s been doing the last seven years,” you neglected to note that she “spearhead[ed] the growth of the [Boston Red Sox] club’s outreach in the Dominican Republic” (following Forsch31′s link) which strongly suggests a substantial role in scouting and recruiting Dominican talent. instead, you only pointed to public relations experience. moving to the DR to build a recruiting program is very different from issuing press releases on Yawkey Way.
“….and then relocated to spearhead the growth of the club’s outreach in the Dominican Republic. Stephanie oversaw the construction of two baseball fields, the operation of an early education facility, and the donation and delivery of an ambulance. ”
If you can get from that to scouting and recruiting Dominican scouting, I envy your imagination!
no, i imagine the phrase “spearhead the growth of the club’s outreach” to mean she was in charge of the operation generally, beyond merely the physical plant of the ballpark. perhaps i am wrong, but i don’t think that is an outrageous assumption.
regardless, you certainly don’t know enough about what she did in that capacity to dismiss her as inexperienced.
Good link Carioca.
A luscious cheerleading dame will rank the talent. What do you bet that the Astros will draft some of the best looking hunks?
this is just outrageous sexism. i don’t know why anyone would put this kind of commentary out in public.
i have two daughters. i hope that when they enter the workforce nobody pigeonholes them this way.
I also have two daughters, and I’m the last guy to ever defend Jumbo here. But I’m pretty sure he was joking.
Check your sarcasm detector tom.
hmm. usually my pessimism about human nature serves me well. all right, then, sorry to have misconstrued the comment.