A Talent Management Case Study:

Major League Baseball’s Quest

for Super keepers

William Y. Giles
Chairman and Honorary President
Major League Baseball National League
 Introduction
• Branch Rickey (Revered baseball executive), brought Jackie Robinson to big
leagues, said, “luck is the residue of design.”
• Rickey’s statement convinced that a major league organization could not
depend on good fortune, chance, providence, or fate to deliver the results
sought by fans, owners, and the multitude of businesses nourished by a
professional baseball team.
• To sustain excellence team- must continually reconcile an assortment of
frequently competing forces.
• It must provide a winning and crowd-pleasing team, at an affordable level, in an
attractive venue.
• The successful teams know, however, that “the residue of design” will be the
catalyst for success. That catalyst is talent management!
To understand the context of talent management in baseball, it
is important to recognize the following trends:
• Team composition is constantly being reshuffled because of the
need to balance affordable payroll costs, team effectiveness, and
revenue.
• Talent assessment techniques are becoming more sophisticated in
order to more accurately establish player worth value.
• Knowing a player’s value drives a team’s talent management
decisions regarding player compensation investment, retention,
trade, and acceleration through the various levels of the
organization.
• Compensation is being more carefully refined by player type such
that performance and potential performance can be rationalized
against players in the same position on other teams, individual
contribution, and fit within the team.
• The minor league network (a system of talent- and revenue-generating teams aligned with a
major league club), more than ever, is a highly valuable asset in building a high-quality cadre
of talent that can be used to staff one’s organization at a lower cost (player salaries are lower at
the outset because the mandatory requirements for player pay increase with time), a trade chip
used to obtain high-quality talent from other teams to fill one’s own voids, and a way to ensure
that core competencies are mastered before entrance into the big leagues.
• Teams that can manage this equation are able to generate a continuous flow of relatively
affordable competitive players, but it is extremely difficult to do so.
• To address the trends cited above, major league baseball utilizes a talent management scheme
to ensure a flow of high-quality talent, from all sources, that is not dissimilar to that of a more
conventional organization. Baseball, like most businesses, must find, classify, assign, and
optimize throughout the organization the contributions and market value of Superkepers (those
who greatly exceed expectations), Keepers (those who exceed expectations), and Solid Citizens
(those who meet the requirements) and it must eliminate the Misfits (those who fail to meet the
team’s requirements, typically because of lack of talent, physical conditioning, or character).
The classification and treatment of players must be balanced for every team from the lowest-
level farm (minor league) team to the major league parent team itself.
• The talent assessment scheme used by the major leagues can create
“bench strength summaries” that can identify not only the
classification of players at each level but surpluses (more than one
player who can move to the same position at the next level), voids
(positions with no backups within the organization requiring trades
or the signing of free agents), performance problems (player
improvement areas), and trade opportunities (opportunities to deal
a surplus of backups to fill a position void) and blockages (a
condition where a current player has less ability than his backup).
• Research has shown that teams that sustain excellence over
extended periods of time are proactive in the identification and
management of talent.
The conceptual components of the major league baseball talent
management approach include the following,

• Assessors
• Performance appraisal
• Potential forecast
• Coaching, training and development
• Talent management strategy
Assessors:
• These are the managers, coaches, scouts, and front office staffs, at every
organization level, who evaluate the players using the categories defined
below. The quality of the assessors is a critical component of the talent
management scheme. Executives in the parent organization need to assess the
assessor’s skills in forecasting the talent level of players.
• For example, Tom Greenwade, the legendary scout who identified players like
Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle for the Yankee organization in the 1940s and
1950s, was highly praised as an important contributor to the team’s success in
succeeding years.
• The eyes of the organization, beyond its full-time employees, are free agents,
part-time, and associate scouts. The scouts are assigned to evaluate players in
locations around the world, various leagues, and specific teams.
• These scouts are typically organized and coordinated by a director of scouting,
who assembles all information necessary for a comprehensive player talent
management plan. The scouts are the “headhunters” of baseball. They guard
the entrances to the major league reservoir of talent.
Performance Appraisal
• The measurement of actual results in areas deemed important to the player’s
position is the player’s performance appraisal. Baseball was a pioneer in the
measurements of accomplishment. There is, perhaps, no other institution with so
many or so precise sets of measures.
• On October 22, 1845, the first set of statistics was published in the New York
Morning News about one month after Alexander Cartwright (baseball’s founder)
and his Knickerbocker teammates first codified the rules of baseball. Since 1871,
over 170,000 games, covering 15,000 players, 2,300 team seasons, and a myriad
of highly specific, measured results have been recorded (Total Baseball, 6th
edition).
• Every conceivable outcome of batting, fielding, base running, winning, and
losing has been reported from individual, team, league, and baseball-wide
perspectives. It is possible to make very specific longitudinal and cross-sectional
comparisons of players and teams for over 150 years. These comparisons
contribute to the accurate assessment of players for placement, development,
trade, and compensation. No modern institution can boast of the historical
quality of performance measures as baseball can.
Potential Forecast
• The prediction of a player’s success probability at each level of an
organization is called a forecast of potential. The assessment is based on prior
performance and a projection of how far a player can go in one year and what
his ultimate level of assignment could be.
• The forecast for position players (not pitchers) is typically based on a set of
factors such as arm strength, arm accuracy, fielding ability, fielding
range,hitting ability, raw power, power production, running speed, usable
speed,body control, and directional hitting (pull, straight away, opposite field,
and all of the above).
• Pitcher potential is typically predicted based on fastball velocity, fastball life,
curveball, curveball control, slider, slider control, change of pace, change
control, other pitches, control of other pitches, delivery, and arm angle.
• Self-confidence, mental toughness, aggressiveness, work habits, personal
habits, aptitude, poise, and instincts are as critical as technical skills in making
decisions on player assignment.Collectively, these measurement factors are the
analog of organization core competencies in conventional organizations.
• A sound assessment program will recognize and coordinate
the professional life cycles of players at different levels of the
organization and compare them with those of players at higher
levels of the organization to better correlate the timing of
replacement activity.
Coaching,Training, and Development

• The review of performance and potential for future growth enables

the major league talent assessors to develop a gap analysis. The gap
analysis reflects the difference between a player’s current
capabilities and the requirements of his current and future positions.
• To address gaps, teams have developed sophisticated player
development programs encompassing all levels of competition
within their organization.
• To ensure consistency and the accurate communication of its
“baseball wisdom” throughout its entire organization, a baseball
club articulates, in writing, its suggestions for technical performance
and team etiquette.
• Much like behavioral statements associated with a traditional
organization’s core competencies, a team’s customized advisory
manual defines the key requirements for each position and its
associated best success practices.
• For example, the advisory for catchers includes suggestions on throwing,
blocking the plate, and calling plays. First base advisories include holding
players on, playing the bag, and fielding the position. The advisory manual
also contains specific guidance on hitting, base running, and sliding.From
an “etiquette” perspective, the manual expresses the core values of a team
(perseverance, desire, hard work, being a student of the game, health and
fitness and fan loyalty).
• It sets standards of acceptable behavior for the players to follow.All
developmental programs are codified into an annual calendar to ensure that
all of the assessment components formally come together at least once a
year.
• A manager will communicate, at the end of the baseball year, the specific
areas of development a player must work on during the off-season. A team
will conduct special clinics and training programs to implement individual
development plans. This development calendar, player feedback, and
customized training are the counterpart of a conventional organization’s
succession and career plan.
The Talent Management Strategy
• To be competitive at a world championship level, each ball club seeks to develop
a long-term strategy for staffing its starting major league baseball team with the
greatest number of Superkeepers and Keepers that it can afford.
• Teams without the financial resources to staff themselves with high-priced Super
keepers and Keepers from other teams are more reliant on the development of
high-quality surplus talent from within their own organization that is typically
powered by a minor league system. Such talent will serve both their own needs
and as “currency” for Superkeeper/Keeper trades in lieu of financial resources.
• Additionally, every organization needs to enrich its bench strength with the best
Solid Citizens available and waste no time eliminating the Misfits. To the extent
that baseball clubs have the ability to recognize and manage their reservoir of
talent on a continual basis, they will have sustained success. Those that have a
record of sustained success should recall the wisdom of Yogi Berra, Yankee
catcher and glib talker, who spoke the following humbling words, “Ninety
percent of the game is half mental.”