The Red Sox are nearing a deal to hire Taylor Smith for an unspecified analytics-based role in the club’s front office, according to MassLive.com’s Sean McAdam and Chris Cotillo. Smith could be joining the ranks as an assistant general manager, which would presumably also come with some type of VP title like Boston’s other four assistant GMs under chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.
Smith had been working with the Rays as Tampa Bay’s director of predictive modeling. He has been with the organization since graduating from the University of Georgia in 2018, and Smith was initially hired as an analyst in Tampa’s research and development team. He’ll now head to a larger role in Boston, becoming the latest in a seemingly endless line of Rays staffers hired by other teams to try and learn from Tampa Bay’s consistent success in player development.
As McAdam wrote in another piece earlier this week, assistant GM Mike Groopman had been considered the “de facto overseer” of Boston’s analytics operations, but Groopman was being shifted into another role “with more of a focus on player acquisition.” It would seem that Smith will now be filling the gap left behind by Groopman’s role change, and it remains to be seen some more shuffling could be on the way.
Paul Toboni, another assistant GM, has been rumored to be the top in-house name to become Breslow’s official top lieutenant as Boston’s general manager, so if Toboni is promoted, the Red Sox would still have four AGMs (Smith, Groopman, Raquel Ferreira, Eddie Romero) in place. McAdam suggests that promoting Toboni might also be a way of keeping him within the organization, and away from GM vacancies with the Giants and Mets. There are some links between Toboni and other those jobs, as McAdam writes that Toboni is from the Bay Area, and he previously worked with Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns in the Brewers’ front office.