REPORT: Cubs Hiring Dan Kantrovitz As New VP Of Scouting

While changes haven’t been seen on the roster as of yet, big ones have been made everywhere else for the Cubs so far this offseason. A new manager, new coaches, switching things up in the front office and now the Cubs have a new VP of scouting.

The Cubs will reportedly announce the hiring of Dan Kantrovitz, who will replace Matt Dorey as the team’s VP of scouting.

Breaking news – Cubs will name Dan Kantrovitz their new VP of scouting later today . Kantrovitz was asst GM of Oakland last vice years 2012-14 director of scouting for Cards . ( Flaherty – Kelly – Weaver )

— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) November 13, 2019

Confirmed: Cubs have hired Dan Kantrovitz as scouting director (replacing Matt Dorey, who had moved to farm director job).

— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) November 13, 2019

Kantrovitz has spent the last five years as Oakland’s assistant GM and before that was the Cardinals director of scouting.

Hate the Cardinals all you want, but you definitely have to admire their organization and success finding and development a lot of home grown talent. Here are just some of the players drafted when Kantrovitz was working in St. Louis.

Guys drafted by the Cardinals while Kantrovitz was VP of Scouting:

Michael Wacha, Stephen Piscotty, Carson Kelly, Kyle Barraclough, Rowan Wick (as a catcher!), Marco Gonzales, Luke Voit, Luke Weaver, Jack Flaherty, Daniel Ponce de Leon

— FullCountTommy (@FullCountTommy) November 13, 2019

So, the Cubs get an outside voice who’s worked in a few savvy organizations and has previously been a candidate for a couple GM positions.

Here are some tidbits from Kantrovitz’s beliefs from a 2018 FanGraphs interview, while he was in his fourth season as the A’s assistant GM.

Via FanGraphs.

On new technology:
“You hear a lot about wearables and sensors, but I think computer vision and AI are becoming more pervasive. Probably like many teams, we are spending some time on both. As far as public data, before it was always trying to find public data online. Now publicly available software or code can also be valuable. Sites like GitHub are great resources.”

On the draft:
“Partly because there is a lot of work to do, and partly because it’s how I cut my teeth in baseball, there probably isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not doing something draft related. I’m biased, but I don’t think there is a more important function or event in baseball operations than the draft.
“There always seems to be new data coming in, models to test, natural experiments to dream up, players to research. The scouting and decisions are entirely Eric Kubota’s and the amateur scouting department, but the underlying analytics, performance projections… that’s stuff I enjoy helping out with.”

Check out the full interview here.