It took time before Matt Blood could finally see exactly what he was working with in the Orioles organization.
The former Texas Rangers player development director, Blood took a similar post with the Orioles in September 2019.
He oversaw an instructional league camp and the beginning of 2020 spring training before everything shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Blood, a former St. Louis Cardinals area scout and USA Baseball director, waited. He spent time instructing at the organization’s alternate site in Bowie in 2020 and coordinating with the minor-league system’s coaches and analysts.
And he kept waiting for his new charges to eventually play games that counted in the standings. That finally occurred in May, when Minor League Baseball officially returned to the field after roughly a 20-month hiatus.
The 2021 season, for the most part, was a pretty good one for Blood and the Orioles’ prospects.
The organization’s farm system was named No. 1 by Baseball America. Several young players showed why Blood and general manager Mike Elias were high on them. And some less-heralded players forced themselves into future plans with strong seasons. More than anything, though, for Blood and his staff, 2021 marked the opportunity to finally evaluate again in real baseball time.
Blood agreed to a Q&A with The Athletic this month, discussing various topics including developmental philosophies, the process of building coaching staffs, the utilization of analytics and technology, the state of the organization and a look at some of its top players.
Unfortunately, due to baseball’s lockout, the conversation was limited to minor leaguers who aren’t on the 40-man roster. But it also opened a door to discuss nearly a dozen under-the-radar prospects who Blood believes Orioles fans should start monitoring.
This is the first of a three-part interview with Blood, focusing primarily on development philosophies and instruction. The second part, a continuation of the Q&A, will concentrate more on what’s in the system, two new coaching hires and a look at three of the Orioles’ top prospects.
The third and final segment will be Blood’s take on 10 up-and-coming minor leaguers the casual Orioles fan hasn’t followed yet.
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Note: Conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
What stood out to you the most in the system in 2021 after finally being able to watch games?
You hit the nail on the head. It was great to have a full season and watch these players play and the coaching staff come together to do the things that we talked about and planned to do all through the COVID shutdown. What stood out was the depth of talent that we’ve accumulated in the minor leagues and the competition that was going on at most positions. That was really exciting to see. Just the initiative that we’ve put forth on both sides, pitching and hitting, and seeing those come to fruition, just the progress that was made in those areas was encouraging.
Are there any specific areas of progress to highlight?
Well, on the hitting side, the on-base percentage, the walk percentage, those things are things that we value. And seeing the org take the jump that it did this past season. You hope that those things would happen, but seeing it actually happen was really encouraging for all involved. It’s something that we emphasized and were striving for.
This year, the Orioles were named by Baseball America as the minors’ top system, the first time that’s occurred in club history. Is that validation of your program as you go forward?
It’s not validation, and we have to keep going. It’s not over just because we get ranked highly. But it’s nice. It’s definitely nice to see. And maybe it’s an indication that we are headed in the right direction. But it is by no means our final destination. So, it’s nice to see, but we are highly motivated by the end game and eventually providing significant talent to the major-league roster so that the major-league team will be highly competitive in this division.
Given that you have been in charge of the system for two years now, how would you best describe your developmental philosophy and how have you implemented that?
Well, I’m a big believer in people. This operation is just too big or too spread out for one or two or three people to have a reaching impact. My philosophy is that our entire group of people, our coaches, our support staff and the players, we need to have the right people all on the same page and providing a crystal-clear and consistent message to each other and to the players. It really all starts there. Without a clear and consistent message, then there’s confusion, there’s a lack of trust, there are breakdowns in execution and, ultimately, the production is going to falter.
So, I put a lot of emphasis on making sure we have the right people in the right places and that they’re very clear on the message and the process. There is a high expectation that they will all be working together and collaborating and communicating, so what they say and what they communicate is very clear to the players. It’s a very difficult thing to do. It’s a very large operation, a lot of people and a lot of places. So, this doesn’t happen 100 percent of the time. But it’s our goal and we’re constantly striving for high clarity and a consistent message.
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That’s interesting, because one of the problems I’ve seen in this organization over the years is a lack of continuity and clarity between the majors, the minors and the front office. Was it a primary goal to streamline that when you came on board and how much of a challenge was it?
It’s always a challenge. You’re dealing with people, a lot of people, and they are spread out. So, that’s just a constant challenge of leadership anywhere. When I came on board here it was very helpful that people in the front office were on the same page. We have a small group in the front office, growing but small, and Elias and Sig (Mejdal) and myself are all very much on the same page. And that really helps with the communicating and whether it be with the additions of people like Eve (Rosenbaum, director of baseball development) and Kent Qualls (director of minor league operations). He’s been here a long time, but Kent Qualls is one of the best humans and communicators I’ve ever been around, and so that made it that much easier.
That group all works very well together and communicates very effectively, and so there are no breakdowns there. I will say that a big part of this whole thing working is humility, and it’s something that we really preach and something that we look for in any person in this department. Humility has to be an intrinsic characteristic of that person’s personality as well as their upbringing. We need people who are humble in the fact of wanting to learn and to communicate with others and not feeling that it is their way or the highway. Not feeling like they are a finished product or it’s all about them. We are very much here for each other in building this thing as a group and not just looking out for yourself.
A trend in hiring is bringing in people who have not played the pro game but are versed in areas such as technology and analytics. What’s your take on that trend and is that in line with the humility aspect you have stressed?
I don’t think that there is a box where the right people come from. I think that all people have the capabilities to be great coaches. I think you can be a former major leaguer, you can be a career minor leaguer, you can never have played professional baseball and all of those people have the capability to help players. I think what we are seeing right now is the coaches who are connecting with players and are providing them with the best information are the people who are humble, the people who are intrinsically motivated to go out and learn the best practices in skill acquisition and learn the best practices on practice design. And then use the tools and the resources that are provided them to design elite practices or provide the players with the proper information or feedback that helps those players get better at a more efficient rate. And that’s essentially the people we’re looking for. I don’t count anyone out.
I just want to find people that have that mindset and are driven to create world-class practice designs and learning environments. And it starts with humility. Again, without humility, you’re not going to have the desire to do those things because you’re gonna feel like maybe you’ve already got it figured out and maybe you don’t need help from others.
I’ve met a bunch of humble people who played in the major leagues or have played professionally, and I’ve met humble people that haven’t. And, on the flip side, I’ve met a bunch of people who maybe aren’t quite as humble or have higher egos in all realms, people that played professionally and people that didn’t play professionally. So, like I said in the beginning, there’s no box here. There’s no pond that we fish out of and another pond that we don’t. It’s more looking for those specific characteristics in people.
What other characteristics or expertise do you look for when hiring a coach or staff member?
They first have to have the ability to connect with people and connect with players. They’ve got to be able to gain respect of the people that they are working with through their demeanor and through their communication skills. I look for the knowledge of skill acquisition. Have they done the research to understand how skill acquisition and skill transfer happen? Because there’s a science behind it. So, the really, really good coaches are experts at designing practices and using tools, information, resources, constraints to influence and encourage learning.
You have mentioned “skill acquisition.” Would you put that into layman’s terms? What is it and how does it apply to what the coaches do?
It’s a deep question because it is something there’s a lot of research on. There are books, there’re research papers. There’re a lot of people who are giving talks and seminars on how this happens. But what it really boils down to is, “Is what you’re teaching, in the way you are teaching it, leading to that player learning and actually improving?” And there are proven ways to do that more effectively than others. A lot of times it can be a little counterintuitive because it’s not necessarily what we grew up experiencing when we played. I think that is really interesting because now there is a lot of information and science out there as to how people learn and how we as coaches can affect learning at a higher-success rate through the best practices versus maybe some of the ways that we were taught coming up.
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One thing that has changed in development over the last few years is the utilization of technology. Is there anything specific the Orioles are implementing, or maybe the way they are implementing it, that is potentially different than industry trends?
Similar to what we just said about a coach being able to communicate with a player, technology is similar. It’s only as good as the information that it’s providing and how the player or the coach can use that information to either get proper feedback or design whatever that player should be working on or focusing on. So, the technology and the analytics, if used right, are just providing a clearer message or north star for that player to strive toward or to achieve. It’s just a clearer and more objective picture.
But, at the end of the day, the player has to be the one that understands it and performs the task. So, it is the coach’s job to take the information and provide it to the player in whatever way that player best interprets it or absorbs it. So, you don’t want to get overly technical or analytical. You want to find a way to use whatever the information is to supplement the clarity and accuracy of your message to the player.
What are the specific messages that you are imparting throughout the organization as far as skills sets are concerned?
Ultimately, on the offensive side, the job is to score runs. So, our message is based around the things that lead to scoring runs. It’s pretty simple on the offensive side. Get on base and try to get as many bases as you can, because the more bases you get, the closer you are to scoring. You can break that down to get on base and slug. Hit the ball hard and try to make as much hard consistent contact as you can. Swing at the right pitches. If pitchers don’t throw pitches you can hit hard, don’t swing at them and take walks. It’s pretty simple in that regard.
On the pitching side, it’s sort of an inverse, where we want to strike guys out. We want to keep guys off base and, when they do get on base, we want to keep them as close to first base as possible. We’re trying to develop, on the offensive side, scoring runs and on the defensive and pitching side, the prevention of scoring runs. That really drives our message from all directions.
(Photo of Adley Rutschman courtesy of Joy R. Absalon)
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