Versatile said:
See, you're moving the goalposts.
I am not. My first response to this line of discussion was the following:
buckweaver said:
We should encourage more students to learn more about the ins and outs of an organization, including the non-baseball side of things. Economics, law, business, communication ... these are all important and marketable skills that apply just as well to working in baseball/sports as any other industry.
What I hear most from college students and our interns is: "I want to work in baseball/sports one day." For most of them, yes, that means baseball ops.
My response to them is: "Want to know how to make a career out of
working in baseball? Develop your skills at something else and then look for jobs in the baseball industry."
I'm not going to discourage anyone from striving for a job in baseball ops, just as I'm never going to discourage a writer from striving for a job at ESPN or Sports Illustrated. But you better be really forking good at player development and analysis or find a way to make a name for yourself and get hired (like Kevin Goldstein and Mike Fast just did with the Astros.)
But there are thousands of other good jobs working in baseball. And if you want to "work in baseball" badly enough ... there are realistic ways you can do it. Just know that it probably won't be in baseball ops. But you can still be around the game, you can still be around lots of baseball people and baseball events, you can still make a nice living at it.
That said ... if you will settle for nothing less than being the next Sandy Alderson ...
Thanks in large part to the influence of sabermetrics, there are now lots of different paths to moving up in the front office besides being a good ballplayer — after all, Theo Epstein got a degree in American Studies and his first job was in the Padres' PR department. But that job also requires a lot more areas of expertise than just the ability to construct a talented roster and make smart baseball-related decisions.
You better understand contract law/negotiations, you better understand payroll and finances, strategic planning on an organizational level, media relations, business communication, and so on. So even if that
is your dream, you will still have to develop those non-baseball-related skills (unless you're Dan Duquette, of course.)
And it's a heck of a lot easier to get your foot in the door with a team in any of those other departments than it is through baseball ops, where every Bleacher Report "senior writer" is clamoring for a job, too. And hey, once you're in, you start meeting people around the office, you talk baseball, you pick the brains of the people in baseball ops, you come up with a good idea, and who knows where that might lead ...
I think all of that is much more realistic than dreaming about Sandy Koufax.
EDIT: (to clarify my segue)