Yanks’ Top Scout Has Eye for Talent and Ear for Nuance
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/sports/baseball/01eppler.html?_r=1
TAMPA, Fla. — The flight to Japan had just begun, but Billy Eppler could not
wait. As soon as the plane reached its cruising altitude and he heard the
overhead chime, Eppler asked the man beside him a pressing question.
He turned to Gene Michael and said, “How did you have the guts to trade
Roberto Kelly for Paul O’Neill?”
For Eppler, the Yankees’ pro scouting director, the trip was more than a
search for international talent last summer. It was another lesson in an
education that never ends.
At 33, Eppler has become increasingly visible around the Yankees. He is
General Manager Brian Cashman’s most trusted adviser on potential player
acquisitions, the way Mark Newman is on the farm system and Damon Oppenheimer
is on amateur prospects.
The difference is that Newman and Oppenheimer, who are team vice presidents,
work from the Yankees’ complex here. Eppler is based in New York, and he was
the linchpin to Cashman’s reorganization of the baseball operations
department in late 2005. Before the Yankees add a player from another
organization, the vetting is done by Eppler and his staff.
“He’ll be a future G.M. somewhere,” Cashman said. “He’ll be in this game
for a long time.”
Michael, the former Yankees general manager and the architect of their last
dynasty, agreed with Cashman’s prediction. “That wouldn’t surprise me,”
he said. “Billy has talent, and he’s only going to get better.”
As important as he has become, Eppler tries to work in the background. He
gives interviews only with Cashman’s approval. The batting practice pitcher,
Japanese interpreter and chiropractor have biographies in the Yankees’ media
guide. Eppler does not.
Yet Eppler emerged as a supporting player in “The Yankee Years,” the book
by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci that chronicles Torre’s 12 seasons as manager.
It is not a flattering portrayal. Eppler is presented as a “stats guru” and
symbol of a front office that, to Torre, ignored the heartbeat of the game.
Cashman has not discussed Torre’s book, and Eppler would not comment on it
specifically. But the notion that statistics guide Eppler is inconsistent
with his background and passion.
“Unfortunately in this game, if you’re under the age of 35 and you didn’t
play in the big leagues, it’s kind of easy to get classified,” said Eppler,
who pitched for the University of Connecticut until a shoulder problem ended
his career. “And it’s fine, I understand, but it’s not something I’m real
versed in.”
Cashman has a statistician, but it is not Eppler. Michael Fishman, 30, is the
Yankees’ director of quantitative analysis, filtering reports from scouts,
trainers and staff — “plus every statistic pipeline that you have,”
Cashman said — through a program the Yankees designed.
“Is Billy a stats guy? No, and I joke with him about it,” said Bill
Schmidt, the Colorado Rockies’ vice president for scouting. “But does he
use it as a tool? We all do. Billy is a well-rounded scout, and any
well-rounded scout is going to look at stats.”
In 2000, Schmidt hired Eppler as a part-time scout in San Diego, Eppler’s
hometown. The job paid $5,000 a year (and gas), but it was better than his
previous job delivering flowers.
Eppler had first looked for work with the Yankees through Oppenheimer. Their
fathers owned Chevron stations in San Diego, and Oppenheimer’s mother worked
for the Padres. She put Eppler in touch with her son, who put him in touch
with Schmidt.
Schmidt had scouted for the Yankees under Bill Livesey, who was Michael’s
vice president for player development and scouting in the early 1990s.
Schmidt soon made Eppler a full-time scout and gave him mentors in the late
Don Lindeberg, a Yankees scout, and in Livesey, who is back with the Yankees
as a scout.
“Not all young guys want to pay attention to the veteran guys who’ve been
in the game a long time,” Schmidt said. “But Billy gave respect to those
people, and he was upfront and honest. He knew he didn’t have all the
answers, and he wanted to be good.”
As much as Eppler is a product of the Rockies’ executive factory — which
has spawned the future general managers Josh Byrnes, Jon Daniels and Michael
Hill — he is a descendant of Livesey’s.
They would talk about tools, Eppler said, and, yes, statistics. One day in
2003, the year Michael Lewis’s book “Moneyball” was published, Livesey
asked Eppler what he considered a good on-base percentage. Eppler answered
.360. To his delight, Livesey agreed.
“From that point forward, if he was in the park, I was sitting next to him,”
said Eppler, who still relies heavily on Livesey’s advice.
Livesey, 68, said Eppler impressed him with his willingness to learn and a
background he steadily expanded over five seasons with Colorado. Eppler
worked in amateur scouting, player development and professional scouting,
learning what to look for in a prospect, how to move players through the
minors and how to evaluate other teams’ talent. He also mixed in a semester
of law school.
In November 2004, Eppler joined the Yankees’ Tampa staff to work under
Newman and Oppenheimer. It was a dark time for the Yankees, who had just
suffered an epic playoff loss to Boston, and the schism between the Tampa and
New York branches was crippling their efficiency.
George Steinbrenner, the principal owner, typically debated moves with
scattered advisers over dinner at Malio’s, the since-closed Tampa
steakhouse. The leading voices were whomever Steinbrenner trusted at the time.
It led to a fractured roster, with misplaced parts like Chris Hammond and
Kenny Lofton. The lack of accountability frustrated Cashman. There was no
record of who made which recommendations and why, no growth to be gained from
mistakes.
After the 2005 season, Cashman accepted a new contract with the promise of
greater authority over baseball operations. He formed a pro scouting
department and hired Eppler to run it from New York.
At Eppler’s suggestion, the Yankees have added six full-time pro scouts,
doubling the number when he started. His presence — and the waning influence
of Steinbrenner — has also smoothed relations between the Yankees’ dueling
hierarchies.
“It’s helped the flow of things,” said Oppenheimer, whose scouts now
concentrate fully on amateurs. “I don’t know the last time someone left the
Tampa office to go to New York. Billy knew how things worked in Tampa, and he
was able to tell the New York side, ‘Hey, listen, I’ve worked down there, I
’ve got a better understanding of it.’ The communication between
departments has really helped Cash.”
Every winter in Tampa, for three or four days, Eppler gathers the staff for
free-form meetings on players and philosophies. There are new scouts, like
the recently retired major leaguers Kevin Reese and Tom Wilson, and additions
like Rick Williams, a former pitching coach, and Tim Naehring, a former third
baseman and scouting director.
By the end of the meetings, the goal is for Cashman to have more nuanced
recommendations and for the scouts to have a sharpened eye for talent.
“That’s where convictions come from,” Livesey said. “You throw it out
there, and all of a sudden someone challenges you, and you have to defend it.
If you do that successfully, it becomes a conviction. If not, it probably wasn
’t a very good idea. The challenging makes everyone stronger.”
Cashman played baseball in college, but his background is administration — a
specialty of his assistant general manager, Jean Afterman. He does not
consider himself a scout and relies heavily on Eppler to coordinate opinions
and prioritize targets in free agency and trades.
The result has not always been a better flow of talent. The Yankees have had
notable failures lately, including Wilson Betemit, LaTroy Hawkins and Kei
Igawa. Other additions, like Bobby Abreu, Brian Bruney and José Molina, have
worked.
Most notable, perhaps, is the volume of low-risk, high-reward players Yankees
scouts have found under Eppler. Relievers like Bruney, Dan Giese, Edwar Ramí
rez and José Veras were signed as free agents, and all pitched well last
season.
Stories like the signing of Alfredo Aceves especially invigorate Eppler. On a
tip from Lee Sigman, the Yankees’ scout in Mexico, Eppler sent one of his
scouts, Jay Darnell, to shoot video of Aceves’s pitching.
“Jay puts him on YouTube that night from his hotel in Mexico and hides the
name,” Eppler said. “There was a code name we put him under, and he puts in
five different clips. I call Mark Newman up: ‘You’re not going to believe
this — you want to see him? He’s on video right now. Go to YouTube, type
this in, you’ll see five clips.’ That deal ended up working, and we signed
a package of players.”
Aceves helped the Yankees at the end of last season, and now he is insurance
for the rotation. The more significant moves came after the season, when the
Yankees guaranteed $423.5 million to the free agents Mark Teixeira, C. C.
Sabathia and A. J. Burnett.
Those moves might have seemed obvious, but they will be a significant test
considering the money involved. More than ever, Cashman is banking on the
opinions of Eppler and his staff.
“We’re running a baseball business,” Cashman said, “and I’d like to
think we’re running it better than most.”
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