What is (or will be) the structure of the new front office?

[Brock Beauchamp]

I've been a little confused about this so sorry if it's been covered elsewhere in topics... but Arnold is not being named POBO. I guess that makes sense and is fine but... are the Brewers going to be down a top-level executive in 2023? In the typical POBO structure, you have the POBO making the big decisions regarding the overall direction of the franchise and setting tone, attitude, and overall strategy.

Then you have the GM, who assists the POBO and often negotiates contracts, ties up loose ends, and does the day-to-day stuff. He's more of a "nuts and bolts" role under the POBO.

Have the Brewers announced if they're going to fill a second GM role to assist Arnold? Or will they just run a little short-handed for the time being?

 

[Jopal78]

21 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I've been a little confused about this so sorry if it's been covered elsewhere in topics... but Arnold is not being named POBO. I guess that makes sense and is fine but... are the Brewers going to be down a top-level executive in 2023? In the typical POBO structure, you have the POBO making the big decisions regarding the overall direction of the franchise and setting tone, attitude, and overall strategy.

Then you have the GM, who assists the POBO and often negotiates contracts, ties up loose ends, and does the day-to-day stuff. He's more of a "nuts and bolts" role under the POBO.

Have the Brewers announced if they're going to fill a second GM role to assist Arnold? Or will they just run a little short-handed for the time being?

 

No having a POBO right now allows the team to promote folks if another club came sniffing around trying to poach baseball operations people; the possibility of moving people up one rung on the title ladder is good protection maybe.

[nate82]

4 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I've been a little confused about this so sorry if it's been covered elsewhere in topics... but Arnold is not being named POBO. I guess that makes sense and is fine but... are the Brewers going to be down a top-level executive in 2023? In the typical POBO structure, you have the POBO making the big decisions regarding the overall direction of the franchise and setting tone, attitude, and overall strategy.

Then you have the GM, who assists the POBO and often negotiates contracts, ties up loose ends, and does the day-to-day stuff. He's more of a "nuts and bolts" role under the POBO.

Have the Brewers announced if they're going to fill a second GM role to assist Arnold? Or will they just run a little short-handed for the time being?

 

These are just titles and a way to justify not allowing teams to interview someone in the organization.  

But I wonder if the Brewers will hire someone to be the GM.  It would be smart to hire and delegate some of the responsibilities.  Being a GM of a baseball team is like being the POTUS, well actually even more demanding as the President actually gets to take days off unlike a GM or POBO.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

9 minutes ago, nate82 said:

These are just titles and a way to justify not allowing teams to interview someone in the organization.  

But I wonder if the Brewers will hire someone to be the GM.  It would be smart to hire and delegate some of the responsibilities.  Being a GM of a baseball team is like being the POTUS, well actually even more demanding as the President actually gets to take days off unlike a GM or POBO.  

Oh, I’m not worried about the titles, I’m mostly curious about whether they’ll add someone to replace the person who is stepping away from the organization. 

[nate82]

Just now, Brock Beauchamp said:

Oh, I’m not worried about the titles, I’m mostly curious about whether they’ll add someone to replace the person who is stepping away from the organization. 

Right now it doesn't look like they will.  If a team comes calling to interview one of their execs then maybe they will promote if they really like that exec.  Similar to what happened to Arnold in the past.  

[MrTPlush]

7 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I've been a little confused about this so sorry if it's been covered elsewhere in topics... but Arnold is not being named POBO. I guess that makes sense and is fine but... are the Brewers going to be down a top-level executive in 2023? In the typical POBO structure, you have the POBO making the big decisions regarding the overall direction of the franchise and setting tone, attitude, and overall strategy.

Then you have the GM, who assists the POBO and often negotiates contracts, ties up loose ends, and does the day-to-day stuff. He's more of a "nuts and bolts" role under the POBO.

Have the Brewers announced if they're going to fill a second GM role to assist Arnold? Or will they just run a little short-handed for the time being?

 

I don't know how common POBO even are across MLB. They used to barely exist. The Brewers didn't have one until the Mets started harassing the Brewers about Stearns interviews. It varies so much by teams. Sometimes the POBO has nothing to do with actually acquiring players and/or developing them. The POBO really is just in charge of stadium operations and financial stuff. The Mets the GM is top dog, technically from that standpoint. The Brewers really aren't losing anything, imo. The assistant GM will just take over Arnold's job...which they probably were doing in tandem anyway. Arnold won't be POBO unless he is good and teams want to interview him. It is just weird titling. When Stearns became POBO, literally nothing changed. Likewise when Arnold became GM.

 

The real question people should be asking (if it hasn't already been said by Arnold...I haven't heavily followed since the end of the season)....what does this mean for Counsell and the coaching staff?

[Brock Beauchamp]

14 hours ago, MrTPlush said:

I don't know how common POBO even are across MLB. They used to barely exist. The Brewers didn't have one until the Mets started harassing the Brewers about Stearns interviews. It varies so much by teams. Sometimes the POBO has nothing to do with actually acquiring players and/or developing them. The POBO really is just in charge of stadium operations and financial stuff. The Mets the GM is top dog, technically from that standpoint. The Brewers really aren't losing anything, imo. The assistant GM will just take over Arnold's job...which they probably were doing in tandem anyway. Arnold won't be POBO unless he is good and teams want to interview him. It is just weird titling. When Stearns became POBO, literally nothing changed. Likewise when Arnold became GM.

The real question people should be asking (if it hasn't already been said by Arnold...I haven't heavily followed since the end of the season)....what does this mean for Counsell and the coaching staff?

Without looking it up, I'm relatively confident at least ten teams are now using a POBO>GM model of front office and more are added yearly. It's relatively new and only about a decade old but teams have been flipping over to that model in a hurry.

Which makes sense, as the role of the old "General Manager" is becoming too big for one person to manage. When front offices were a handful of people, having a General Manager made sense. Now that analytics departments alone can number well into the dozens of people, it makes less sense to put that workload on a single person and instead split it into two roles, one that manages high-level strategy, the other that manages day-to-day workloads.

[Axman59]

It's just title inflation.

Old School: General Manager/Assistant General Manager

New School: President of Baseball Operations/General Manager

They do the same work as before but with a more impressive title. Teams switch to the new model to keep up with the Jones's.

[Brock Beauchamp]

6 minutes ago, Axman59 said:

It's just title inflation.

Old School: General Manager/Assistant General Manager

New School: President of Baseball Operations/General Manager

They do the same work as before but with a more impressive title. Teams switch to the new model to keep up with the Jones's.

That's not entirely true, though, There isn't only an assistant GM now, many teams have multiple assistant GMs (or they've split AGMs into several different roles like "technology", "player personnel", etc.). Front offices are getting bigger (by a lot), which is why these new titles are being created.

[UpandIn]

38 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

That's not entirely true, though, There isn't only an assistant GM now, many teams have multiple assistant GMs (or they've split AGMs into several different roles like "technology", "player personnel", etc.). Front offices are getting bigger (by a lot), which is why these new titles are being created.

They are...but I don't know that means you need to have a POBO. 

But with the changes just within the Brewers organization the last 15 years, you clearly need a much deeper front office. 

Had to believe we had almost no Latin American imprint, no academy down there, our developmental program was...not great.

So whatever we're doing under Attanasio, I'm more than happy with it. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 minutes ago, UpandIn said:

They are...but I don't know that means you need to have a POBO. 

But with the changes just within the Brewers organization the last 15 years, you clearly need a much deeper front office. 

For sure, a POBO title is not necessary but additional layers of management is needed to handle the output of front offices that have ballooned over the past decade. That's what I'm wondering about; whether they plan to add another top-level executive to replace Arnold's old role, I don't really care what that person is called.