Wilder: A conversation with Indians assistant GM Mike Chernoff
From Laurel Wilder at Did The Tribe Win Last Night? on March 16, 2014:
Laurel Wilder: I’m sure you’re very busy every day here in Goodyear, but I don’t think the average fan realizes what you do on a day-to-day basis, especially when it’s not the time of trade deadlines or during the winter when trades are being made and contracts are being signed. Can you walk me through what an average day looks like for you, if there is such a thing as an average day?
Mike Chernoff: There is no such thing as an average day any day in baseball if you work in the front office. But spring training is a little bit of the same every day for our players; they’re getting in at 7:00 or 6:30 [in the morning] and their day starts, they have all their practices and then games start at 1 – that’s on the player side. We get in early, we get in at 4:30 or 5 in the morning and try to get some office work done. So if we’re negotiating contracts, multiyear contracts with players, we’ve got to do some of the legwork on the negotiations in the morning before the day really gets going and we have meetings with coaches and players and things like that. We are in the middle of March, so we’re getting ready for the amateur draft even though it’s in June. We’re getting reports in from our amateur scouts, we’ve got our pro scouts on the road watching other teams in spring training to see if we have a need at the end of spring training, who are we going to try to tap into. So a lot of it just is communicating with and coordinating with those groups and every day is different in terms of who you are communicating with, but it’s gathering those pieces of information and doing that type of analysis. Then, that takes you up until some time in the morning when things really start speeding up. That’s when meetings with some of the coaches, going out and trying to watch things like our B game today [March 13] at 11 and then going to watch our game at 1. A lot of the work really gets done early in the morning, and once the game starts, it’s bearing down on the game and trying to help; be a resource in terms of coaching and also evaluating some of our guys during the game.
Read the full article here: http://didthetribewinlastnight.com/blog/2014/03/16/a-conversation-with-indians-assistant-gm-mike-chernoff/
Originally published: March 17, 2014. Last Updated: March 17, 2014.