Nepotism and Failing Upwards: a Colorado Rockies Legacy
There isn’t much MLB news these days, which makes it just a bit tougher for an organization to sneak something past the media without notice. The Colorado Rockies almost got away with it, but Purple Row’s Evan Lang spotted a familiar surname in a new front-office role. A few weeks ago, the club named Sterling Monfort, youngest son of team owner Dick Monfort, as the new director of professional scouting.
According to Sterling’s LinkedIn page, here’s all of his work experience since graduating from Arizona State University in 2014:
- Scouting/Field Advisor, Colorado Rockies, 2014-present
- Assistant Director- Scouting Operations, Colorado Rockies, 2018-present
This immediately begs several questions, some more pertinent than others. Why does he have a LinkedIn page if he only ever worked for Daddy? Does aggressive nepotism impress future employers? Wait… he’s never going to have any future employers! Is this some kind of rich failson joke?
Becoming a Scout
There are precious few scouting jobs in MLB. According to Baseball America, only three franchises employed more than 15 scouts last season. Estimating an average of 10-12 per organization, there are no more than 300-360 gigs altogether. Given that there are probably more articles online about how to become an MLB scout than there are actual jobs, there must be thousands of people looking to break into the profession with fierce competition for employment. What an incredible coincidence that the Rockies owner’s son just happens to be one of the best and brightest!
According to one of the aforementioned articles, here’s how to become a scout:
- Know your goals.
- Know the demands of the job.
- Get an education.
- Consider an internship.
- Take indirect career routes.
Another article offered this advice in bold text, “The first thing that you need to do to become a baseball scout is to have an associate’s degree in sports. Playing or coaching in baseball will be helpful. According to the BLS, most scouts have had experience in playing or coaching baseball. Such experience can help assess a player’s skill level to predict their potential.”
Based on Sterling’s LinkedIn, he possesses only a few of these qualifications. His degree has nothing to do with sports and he didn’t play baseball at ASU (except on the club team). Other qualifications, such as his baseball internship with the Grand Junction Rockies, were handed to him on a (sterling) silver platter. He most assuredly did not take an indirect career route.
Not only has he slid into a coveted scouting job, but he also progressed into an assistant director capacity after only four years. Now just eight years after graduating college, he has become a scouting director in full. As hard as it is to land one of these jobs in the first place, it’s even more difficult to climb the ladder. Turnover in scouting departments is constant. Some scouts toil away for decades without a substantial promotion. These are the people he will now presumably oversee.
Nepotism and Failed Hiring Practices
It’s almost impossible for the Rockies to have done a thorough job search, scouring the industry for the most qualified candidate internally or externally, only to land on the owner’s doe-eyed son. It’s indicative of a franchise that prioritizes personal favors over high baseball acumen and experience.
None of this should be surprising to Rockies fans. This is the same organization that hung with Jeff Bridich as general manager long after he proved to be grossly incompetent, allowing him to pay millions of dollars to the Cardinals for them to take Nolan Arenado off their roster, completely bungle free agency year after year, and fail to adequately stock the farm system. When it became impossible to ignore the other 29 teams taking advantage of his ineptitude, he was allowed to resign… only to be replaced by his righthand man instead of an outside perspective. This led to a cascade of internal promotions including Sterling Monfort’s.
No franchise in baseball has a more dire demand for qualified front office talent from diverse backgrounds with multifaceted, robust baseball experience. Unfortunately, no organization is more fiercely loyal to failing upwards, treating their most desperate need as anathema.
As a result, they remain the most hopeless franchise in MLB, even further from contention than those whose record was worse than their 74-87 finish. Given their dubious hiring practices for front offices positions, this is unlikely to change any time soon. After all, you can’t fire the owner. You can’t fire his progeny either, nor can you prevent their clearly undeserved promotions.
This article was originally published in Here’s the Pitch: the IBWAA Newsletter on January 11, 2021, and is republished with permission.
