Eric DeCosta was on trip on Cape Cod, his final downtime for a lot of months. Coaching camp was nonetheless a number of weeks away, and the Baltimore Ravens had no urgent points in the intervening time.
The thoughts of a expertise evaluator, although, by no means rests. DeCosta’s childhood goals of discovering and creating gamers, drafting and constructing a roster went past turning into an NFL normal supervisor. A religious Boston Crimson Sox fan, the Ravens GM as soon as thought loads about working a baseball group. All these years later, there are occasions when he nonetheless does.
Watching the Hyannis Harbor Hawks of the Cape Cod League, one of many high summer season showcases for school baseball gamers, DeCosta noticed the prospects on the sphere. He made psychological notes of measurement, athleticism and subject presence. He then bought his cellphone out and began texting.
Prime Orioles executives Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal don’t ask for DeCosta’s unstructured baseball scouting experiences. But they stay up for them each summer season. “I’ve informed him when he’s on the Cape that I’m going to ship him a radar gun and I count on some experiences written,” mentioned Elias, the Orioles govt vice chairman and GM. “He’s going to must put his cash the place his mouth is and go on the file on a few of these gamers.”
The downtown neighbors in a provincial Baltimore sporting panorama historically have saved one another at arm’s size. Past the occasional shared promotion, picture op or congratulatory social media submit, the Ravens and Orioles maintained a distance that exceeded the half mile separating Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Ravens’ M&T Financial institution Stadium. In current months, that’s began to alter.
New Orioles proprietor David Rubenstein reached out to Ravens proprietor Steve Bisciotti when his bid to buy the Orioles from the Angelos household neared approval earlier this 12 months. In April, Bisciotti and Rubenstein mixed on a $10 million donation to assist these most impacted by the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge.
That collaboration on the possession stage represented a breakthrough; Bisciotti and former Orioles proprietor Peter Angelos weren’t adversarial, however they by no means bought to know one another, both. The Ravens hosted a gaggle of Orioles coaches and gamers at a coaching camp follow final month and once more at their second preseason sport. Ravens coach John Harbaugh lately took in Orioles batting follow as a visitor of supervisor Brandon Hyde, the 2 having constructed a rapport over the previous couple of years.
However nowhere is the rising bond between the 2 organizations extra evident than within the friendship between the respective leaders of the group’s entrance places of work. DeCosta constructed a relationship with Mejdal, the Orioles assistant normal supervisor, properly earlier than Mejdal and Elias arrived in Baltimore in 2018 and had been tasked with resuscitating a company in want of a rebuild. DeCosta has cultivated a more moderen friendship with Elias, too.
The executives have achieved talking engagements collectively and hung out with each other in social settings. Their households have gotten to know one another. DeCosta’s daughter, Jane, babysits Elias’ children. Mejdal’s spouse, Arati, is a yoga teacher for the Ravens. Mejdal and his son even served as ball boys earlier than a Ravens regular-season sport, catching Justin Tucker subject objectives and ensuring the soccer bought again to the lengthy snapper.
On the evening of MLB’s 2022 draft, DeCosta was a visitor of Elias and Mejdal within the Orioles draft room after they made Jackson Holliday the primary decide. Twenty months later, the Orioles’ high executives had been on the Ravens’ Underneath Armour Efficiency Middle on a late April night, when DeCosta selected Clemson cornerback Nate Wiggins within the first spherical of the 2024 NFL Draft. It’s a relationship that has benefited each groups.
“It was a celebration of Baltimore in a approach,” DeCosta mentioned. “We have now two fairly rattling good groups right here. I would like the followers to see that we have now that relationship. I feel followers need to have fun what we each have occurring. I actually do worth these guys. It’s a good looking factor.”
The Ravens and Orioles have traditionally saved one another at arm’s size. (Kirby Lee / Getty Photographs)
Orioles GM Dan Duquette’s contract was not renewed after a 47-115 season in 2018, and the group was present process a front-office overhaul. DeCosta had by no means met Louis Angelos, the son of Peter Angelos, however they’d mutual acquaintances — and the Ravens govt had somebody in thoughts for the job.
Elias, then within the Houston Astros entrance workplace, was seen as a main GM candidate. And there was a way across the league that Mejdal, the previous NASA biomathematician who specialised in sabermetrics, could be keen to return with him.
DeCosta texted Louis Angelos and informed him that he had some GM candidates he needed to speak to him about. Angelos steered the 2 meet at a Baltimore-area espresso store. DeCosta was anticipating the dialog to final about half-hour. As an alternative, the 2 spoke for greater than two hours in a dialog that originally centered on Elias and Mejdal however expanded to the touch on collaboration, group constructing, analytics and scouting.
“He’s a very considerate man,” DeCosta mentioned. “He was actually hoping that we may have a relationship and there was going to be a relationship with the groups. We talked about Mike and Sig and my experiences with them and the way I actually thought these guys had been good and sensible and the way what they had been capable of do with the Astros was unimaginable.”
DeCosta discovered rapidly that Elias and Mejdal had been on the Orioles’ radar properly earlier than he sat down with Angelos. Nonetheless, DeCosta figured a number of extra supportive phrases couldn’t harm. Then, he waited for the information like everybody else.
“Eric was in all probability our largest supporter,” Mejdal mentioned. “He was checking in with me what appeared to be each different day, extra regularly than my circle of relatives.”
That didn’t cease when the job presents had been prolonged, and accepted. “Once we bought the job, my spouse and myself, we knew zero individuals in Baltimore aside from Eric and his spouse, Lacie, and (former Ravens analytics supervisor) Corey Krawiec,” Mejdal mentioned. “They’re simply type individuals. They invited us to dinner. They welcomed us and a few of their buddies grew to become our buddies. They’ve made our Baltimore life so a lot better.”
DeCosta is an ardent reader. He enjoys studying about profitable individuals, organizations and firms. He remembers studying about how the St. Louis Cardinals grew to become one in all baseball’s mannequin organizations partially due to a participant improvement machine that relied closely on statistical evaluation. DeCosta believes that’s when he first discovered about Mejdal, who joined the Cardinals analytics division in 2005 and stayed by means of 2011 earlier than heading to Houston.
When Bisciotti inspired DeCosta, the assistant GM on the time, to beef up the Ravens’ analytics program in 2011, the group employed consultants to speed up the method. DeCosta admits now that errors had been made in how this system was initially structured, however one factor that served the Ravens properly was networking. They met with quite a few skilled sports activities groups, together with the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), New York Yankees and Detroit Crimson Wings, to trade concepts. In addition they made a degree to succeed in out to the Astros.
“They had been the gold commonplace in sports activities,” DeCosta mentioned. “For us to construct a relationship with them when it comes to analytics was an enormous deal for us.”
Mejdal dropped by the Ravens’ facility in August 2016 whereas the Astros had been in Baltimore and met with DeCosta and different members of the group to offer perception into how Houston was utilizing analytics as a part of its draft preparation. Later that evening, DeCosta was a visitor of Mejdal and then-Astros GM Jeff Luhnow in a collection at Camden Yards.
DeCosta shifted uncomfortably in his seat because the Orioles grew to become the primary group since 1900 to hit 4 house runs earlier than making their first out. Tightly wound, and figuring out how agitated he will get throughout video games when issues aren’t going the Ravens’ approach, DeCosta requested Luhnow and Mejdal in the event that they needed him to depart.
“I didn’t know them that properly, but when it had been a soccer sport, I do know I can’t watch it with a bunch of randoms,” DeCosta mentioned.
Luhnow and Mejdal reminded DeCosta that it was solely one in all 162 and there was nonetheless loads of baseball to play. Positive sufficient, the Astros got here again and received the sport, 15-8, and the seeds of a friendship had been planted. (Luhnow would later be fired and suspended from baseball after The Athletic reported that the Astros had used know-how to illegally steal indicators throughout their 2017 championship run. MLB’s eventual investigation didn’t implicate Elias or Mejdal.)
DeCosta discovered Mejdal to be a straightforward communicator and a enjoyable man to have a beer with. Opposite to the stereotypes related to analysts and quants, Mejdal struck DeCosta as participating and curious. He appeared to ask the precise questions on the proper time and didn’t take himself too significantly. “In contrast to lots of people in sports activities,” DeCosta mentioned.
Mejdal, for his half, was impressed by DeCosta’s “development mindset” and the way keen he was to study, from the time he first reached out to Mejdal.
“In the event you suppose all of it, you don’t try this,” Mejdal mentioned. “That reveals a modesty I love very a lot.”
In 2018, Mejdal invited the DeCostas to an ALCS sport between the Astros and Crimson Sox at Minute Maid Park. DeCosta stayed quiet as his beloved Crimson Sox prevailed — “I used to be joyful on the within,” he mentioned — however he was enthralled by how Mejdal clinically watched and analyzed the sport, his thoughts engaged on each pitch.
“I’m watching the gamers and looking out and evaluating their expertise, and he’s taking a look at it from the standpoint of the science of baseball,” DeCosta mentioned. “That was simply actually spectacular to me.”
Elias and Mejdal had been there when the Ravens chosen Nate Wiggins (left) with this 12 months’s first-round draft decide, whereas DeCosta sat in because the Orioles took Jackson Holliday (proper) in 2022. (Scott Taetsch / Getty Photographs; Nick Cammett / Diamond Photographs through Getty Photographs)
A normal supervisor lives what Mejdal calls “an imbalanced life-style.” A lot time spent away from house and family members, household dinners and holidays interrupted by cellphone calls and textual content messages. There’s loads on the road, and so many individuals are impacted by every resolution a GM makes.
“Our jobs are actually arduous,” Elias mentioned. “You’ve gotten loads that you simply’re having to stability, and each resolution you make can weigh on you. There’s simply only a few those that have lived by means of that and have sensible expertise in that chair and perceive the difficulties which you can search recommendation from and know that they don’t have any explicit agenda. It’s very nice to have Eric for me as a useful resource.”
Earlier than a current draft, Elias encountered a state of affairs that was uncommon for a baseball GM however that soccer GMs take care of extra often (neither aspect was keen to offer the main points). Searching for counsel, he referred to as DeCosta. The roles have been reversed, too.
The 2 have comparable backgrounds, each “scouts at coronary heart” who’ve grown up in forward-thinking organizations decided to contain analytical enter within the participant analysis course of. When DeCosta was a visitor within the Orioles’ draft room in 2022, an expertise that he referred to as probably the most satisfying of his skilled profession, he took notes and paid explicit consideration to how the Orioles decision-makers processed a lot data and weighed subjective scout observations with data-driven evaluation. DeCosta was additionally in Elias’ workplace as he negotiated Holliday’s signing bonus with agent Scott Boras.
When the favor was returned, Elias marveled on the giant digital boards within the Ravens’ draft room and the calmness, even when Baltimore was nearly on the clock and telephones rang incessantly with presents to commerce again.
“Despite the fact that we’re in numerous sports activities, the character of the draft is analogous,” Mejdal mentioned. “You’ve gotten this finite, usually great amount of details about every participant, all of those totally different attributes, they usually don’t all level in the identical path. As you get increasingly refined with the draft choices, it turns into extra an train in combining data. To see how one other sport does it, particularly with a group that’s on the forefront of it, is an incredible alternative.”
Everybody from the GMs to the mascots appears to be feeling the connection in Baltimore today. (G Fiume / Getty Photographs)
The gamers have gotten within the act as properly. Because the Ravens had been working by means of particular groups drills at first of a current follow, their 23-year-old security Kyle Hamilton, already an All-Professional, stood on the sideline engaged in a dialog with 23-year-old Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson, an All-Star, former Rookie of the 12 months and a present MVP candidate.
They posed for an image, two faces of the franchises sporting huge grins. It was a deal with for the town’s bird-loving sports activities followers, who’ve lengthy celebrated glimpses of synergy — nevertheless small — between Baltimore’s two most distinguished skilled sports activities groups.
“It’s enjoyable for us. They’re one of the best at what they do and we’re hoping to be the identical,” Elias mentioned. “These sports activities groups have a relative significance to the town that’s approach past the typical for a sports activities franchise. The well being of the town, economically, and the nationwide stature of the town are pushed fairly a bit by what these franchises do, how they’re run, how they plan.
“We needs to be working collectively on that entrance. I do know that the baseball and soccer operations have very shut relationships now, nevertheless it’s thrilling to see on the possession and enterprise operations stage, that’s solely going to develop.”
For a great variety of years, late summer season in Baltimore meant that the town’s sports activities followers had turned the web page on a disappointing Orioles season and had been already locked into the Ravens. That, nevertheless, has modified.
The Orioles are one of many high groups in baseball for a second consecutive 12 months, due to a roster loaded with younger stars corresponding to Henderson, Holliday and catcher Adley Rutschman. It’s not arduous to ascertain them taking part in deep into October for years to return, whereas the Ravens hit their stride throughout their common season.
“I didn’t actually know a lot in regards to the Baltimore sports activities tradition,” Mejdal mentioned. “I had no concept how necessary baseball and soccer are to the individuals of Baltimore. I had no concept of the reverence they’ve for the gamers, the sport, Camden Yards. That has made it a pleasure to be concerned on this. I’ve seen Ravens playoff video games and that vitality is obvious in soccer, too.
“Why on this planet wouldn’t these two organizations which can be so necessary to the town work collectively? It simply appears inevitable and pure.”
(Prime picture: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Pictures: Nick Cammett / Diamond Photographs through Getty Photographs; Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Solar / Tribune Information Service through Getty Photographs; Claire Greenway / Getty Photographs; G Fiume / Getty Photographs)
