Front Office

Spend enough time in a Major League Baseball front office, and you get used to having to make decisions before you have access to everything you'd like to know.

There may be a player you're interested in, but you haven't seen enough of him yet to feel certain about what he'll become. The data may tell you one thing, while a scout who has watched him for months might come away with a completely different impression. You can keep gathering information, but eventually you have to decide — and sometimes the opportunity won't wait.

The same uncertainty comes with decisions that often take years to evaluate. A team can invest in a new facility, technology, or player development without knowing exactly when, or even whether, that investment will make a difference at the Major League level.

Sam Menzin spent fourteen years making those kinds of decisions with the Detroit Tigers.

He started as an intern in baseball operations and eventually became Vice President and Assistant General Manager, working across analytics, player evaluation, contract negotiations, arbitration, technology, and long-term planning.

When he left the Tigers and started SJM Sports and Campus Edge Baseball, he found himself dealing with a different version of an all-too-familiar problem: making decisions when there was always going to be something else he wished he knew.

Here are seven things that experience taught him.

1. Stop Having the Same Meeting About a Number Everyone Already Knows

Baseball organizations have access to enormous amounts of data. That doesn't necessarily mean every conversation about it is useful.

Menzin saw how easy it was for a group to spend an hour discussing a number everyone in the room already understood. The metric might be important, and the meeting might feel productive, but neither meant the conversation was getting anyone closer to a decision.

"Organizations relitigate settled numbers because the conversation feels productive. It is the most comfortable meeting on the calendar, and it produces nothing."

Menzin has found that the same thing can happen in business.

A company may spend meeting after meeting reviewing revenue, customer growth, acquisition costs, or another familiar metric. Everyone knows whether the number went up or down. The more useful conversation is usually about why it moved and whether anyone needs to do something differently.

Sometimes the answer leads to another question.

Other times, there really isn't much more to discuss.

2. The Chart Isn't the Explanation

As baseball became increasingly data-driven, teams gained access to information that earlier front offices could only have imagined.

That didn't mean the numbers could explain everything they were seeing.

A model might identify a change in a player's performance, but Menzin still wanted to understand what was behind it. Maybe the player was dealing with an injury. His mechanics could have changed. A new role or a different group of opponents might be affecting what showed up in the data.

"The data should raise the question. It should not get to close it without a human in the loop."

Sometimes understanding what the numbers were showing meant watching more video. Other times, someone needed to talk to the player, a coach, or a scout who had been watching him regularly.

Menzin sees a similar problem in business.

A dashboard can show that customers have started behaving differently. It may even tell you when the change began. What it can't always tell you is why.

That answer may still require talking to the people involved.

3. Don't Invite Ten People to Help Eliminate Eight Bad Ideas

Early in a decision-making process, there may be a long list of possibilities on the table.

Most of them aren't going anywhere.

Menzin learned that bringing a large group into the conversation before basic screening could slow the process without improving the eventual decision.

A smaller group might be able to look at ten possibilities and quickly determine that only two or three deserve serious consideration. At that point, involving people with different expertise becomes much more useful because they have something substantive to evaluate.

He has carried that approach into his work as a founder.

If a company is considering several new projects, partnerships, or investments, the entire leadership team doesn't necessarily need to spend time evaluating every possibility from the beginning.

Someone can do the initial work first.

Once the choices get harder, having more perspectives in the room may actually help.

4. Some of the Most Important Spending Takes Years to Pay Off

Baseball also taught Menzin that some decisions can't be judged by what happens in the next few months.

A team might invest in a facility, new technology, scouting, or player development knowing that it could be years before the effect becomes visible at the Major League level.

Even then, drawing a straight line between the investment and the result can be difficult.

A young player may develop because of several coaches, years of training, better technology, and his own work. A new facility may improve the environment for dozens of players without producing one clean number that shows exactly what it contributed.

That can make long-term investments harder to evaluate, but it doesn't make them less important.

Menzin has encountered the same issue while building companies.

Hiring someone today may create opportunities that don't become obvious for a year. A product may need time to develop before customers see it. Relationships can take years to become valuable.

You still need time to measure whether those investments are working.

The difficult part is accepting that the answer may not arrive on the same schedule as the money going out.

5. You Can Be Completely Right and Still Get Nowhere

Working with analytics also taught Menzin that having the right answer wasn't enough if the decision-maker couldn't understand how you got there.

"Technical correctness without translation is just an unread report."

An analyst could produce careful work supported by good data. But if a coach, scout, executive, or player who didn't spend every day working with the same information had to understand the recommendation, the explanation had to meet them where they were.

Menzin learned to change how he presented an idea without changing the idea itself.

Sometimes that meant using fewer numbers. Sometimes an example worked better. In other situations, it helped to start with the decision someone was trying to make and explain how the analysis related.

He still thinks about communication that way as a founder.

Employees, customers, investors, and partners don't all come into a conversation knowing the same things. An explanation that works perfectly for one group may leave another wondering what it has to do with them.

Translating the thinking is part of the work.

6. Don't Confuse a Better File With a Better Person

Evaluating players often means comparing people when the amount and quality of information available about them isn't equal.

One player may come with years of statistics, scouting reports, medical information, video, and other data. Another may have played somewhere that produced much less information.

The person with the more complete file isn't automatically the better player.

Menzin sees a similar problem when companies evaluate people or opportunities.

A candidate with an immaculate résumé is easier to understand on paper. A company with a polished data room is easier to evaluate. Neither tells you, by itself, that you've found the better person or business.

Sometimes a cleaner presentation reflects a stronger opportunity.

Sometimes it simply means one opportunity arrived with more information.

The challenge is recognizing the difference.

That may require asking more questions, looking for information that isn't immediately available, or becoming comfortable with the fact that two choices can't always be compared using identical evidence.

7. There Are Still Things You Have to See for Yourself

For all the data that became available during Menzin's years in baseball, there were still times when the best next step was to watch the player.

He never saw scouting and analytics as competing approaches.

The numbers might identify something worth looking into. Video could add another piece. A scout who had watched the player for weeks or months might notice something that wasn't obvious in either.

And sometimes there was no substitute for being there yourself.

Menzin has written about how technology changed player evaluation, particularly as teams gained access to increasingly detailed information about how players move and perform.

Having more information didn't eliminate firsthand observation. In some cases, it made that observation more useful because people arrived knowing what they wanted to look at more closely.

Menzin still finds himself doing versions of that outside baseball.

Sometimes decisions are made based on a spreadsheet. Other times, he wants to visit the operation, meet the person, watch how something works, or talk directly to the people involved.

After years of working with both data and firsthand evaluation, he has learned not to assume that one always replaces the other.

What Followed Him Out of Baseball

Menzin didn't leave the Tigers with seven rules taped to his laptop.

What he had was fourteen years of seeing decisions go well, seeing others go badly, and getting used to making calls when the information in front of him wasn't as complete as he'd like.

That experience followed him when he founded SJM Sports and Campus Edge Baseball.

There are still numbers to interpret and people to evaluate. Investments may still take years to prove themselves, and decisions must be made before all the information arrives. Sometimes another spreadsheet helps; other times, the better move is to pick up the phone and talk to someone.

The scale and setting have changed. Menzin is no longer making those decisions inside a Major League front office with an established organization around him.

But after fourteen years in baseball, he had already spent a lot of time learning how to make decisions without knowing everything first.

Sometimes that meant finding better data or asking another question. Sometimes it meant talking to someone who had seen something the numbers missed. And sometimes there simply wasn't another piece of information before the decision had to be made.

At that point, he had to make the call.

About Sam Menzin

Sam Menzin is a sports executive, entrepreneur, and advisor whose career spans professional baseball operations, athlete development, and finance. He spent 2012 to 2025 with the Detroit Tigers, eventually becoming Vice President and Assistant General Manager. His earlier experience included roles with Turner-Gary Sports, the New York Mets, and the Complete Game Institute.

A native of Westbury, New York, Menzin studied history and psychology at Swarthmore College, where he played four years of varsity baseball. He is also completing an Executive MBA at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

In 2025, he founded SJM Sports, where he evaluates clubs as investments for ownership groups and institutional buyers. He is also an analyst with Woods Capital and the founder and CEO of Campus Edge Baseball.