In the present day of Major League Baseball, essentially every team’s front office and coaching staff rely on analytics to help better their team.
One of the leaders in the analytics movement is the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose front office, headed by president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi, relies on analytics almost to a fault at times.
Because of their success and intelligence, front office members and coaches in the Dodgers organization have been picked off one by one over the last few years for significant positions with other clubs.
One recent example of that is former Dodgers third base and infield coach Chris Woodward, who was named manager of the Texas Rangers.
In his introductory press conference in Texas, Woodward credited the Dodgers organization for teaching him the analytics side of the sport to help prepare him to be a manager for the first time, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“Being in a forward-thinking organization in L.A. caught me up to speed on the new ways of baseball, heavy analytics,” Woodward said at his introductory news conference. “All those things give me a better understand of how to make decisions.”
Woodward sat in the dugout and watched some of the decisions manager Dave Roberts has made in the World Series each of the last two years as well, good and bad, so he should be able to learn from those as he will now be faced with plenty of tough decisions.
Woodward was highly-regarded in the Dodgers organization, so he certainly will be missed although the opportunity definitely was not one that he could pass up.
