Had an incredible opportunity to do an extensive interview with Houston Astros’ World Series champion manager, AJ Hinch, recently…
AJ and I have had a relationship ever since he hosted me on a recruiting trip at Stanford in 1993. Although I went to UCLA, we maintained a relationship through college, and a couple years later when I reached AAA with the Oakland A’s, we were teammates. AJ was eventually traded to KC and a few years later made the decision to hang up the spikes. He immediately jumped into a coaching/executive position and became the minor league coordinator for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
In 2005, I was traded from the A’s to the Rockies, then two weeks later was traded to the Baltimore Orioles… 2 months later, I was released by the Orioles and became a free agent.
I was fortunate to have a few different offers and decided to sign with the Cleveland Indians as a fourth outfielder. Mark Shapiro, the Indians GM at the time, made an amazing pitch and had me absolutely stoked on Cleveland. Literally minutes before I was about to call Mark and tell him that I was going to be an Indian, I got a call from AJ Hinch, who had just begun his job as the minor league coordinator for the Diamondbacks. Because we had a relationship, AJ was calling on behalf of the D Backs front office…
AJ: “You want to be the everyday big league center fielder in Arizona.”
Me: “Sh*t yea I do.”
I signed with Arizona a few days later…
Fast forward 3 years to 2009 and I was still playing for the D Backs when I got another call from AJ telling me he had just been hired as the manager of the team.
So let’s quickly break this down… AJ had been my recruiting host, teammate, signed me from a front office position and just so happened to be my manager…
Oh yea, I have also interviewed AJ several times while working for MLB Network.
Needless to say, our relationship is incredibly unique and has had so many different experiences on so many different levels…
Simply put, AJ is the best manager in baseball right now.
How? Why?
Sort of like our relationship, AJ has experienced the game from every angle. AJ was a player, a minor league coordinator, a front office executive and a manager. He has had a ton of success with all of the above, but he has also experienced a ton of failure.
We all want the prize; we all want to stand on stage and hoist the World Series trophy above our heads, but what are we willing to do for it?
AJ worked his ass off and immersed himself in baseball experiences, good, bad and ugly…
As a first time manager with the D Backs, he learned what worked for him and he also quickly figured out what did not. Ultimately, he was fired… Instead of sulking and feeling sorry for himself, he got right back into the game by taking a front office position with the San Diego Padres and then was hired by the Houston Astros as their manager in 2015…
Two years later, AJ led the Astros to their first ever World Series Championship.
The Astros had a rallying cry focused around “Process”…
The process of developing a championship team was several years in the making and was even predicted 3 years earlier by Sports Illustrated, who optimistically declared the Astros 2017 World Series Champs despite losing over 100 games in 2014. Many people in the baseball world thought the Astros’ process and Sports Illustrated were both an absolute joke… Yet, the only people laughing in 2017 were Sports Illustrated and those who were an integral part of the Astros process…
One of those, their manager, just so happened to experience an entire process of his own. ⚾️
-EB