Kyle Boddy · Portfolio

Summary

The purpose of this interactive portfolio is to document the work I've completed in professional baseball, the skills I possess to help an organization take their Player Development and Scouting departments to the next level, and to write a bit on my philosophies and vision for those departments.

The navigation on the left-hand side of the page (or in the drop-down menu if you're on mobile) details the areas discussed and serve as a send-ahead for interviews heading into the 2022 season.

Due to various media elements, this site is best viewed on desktop.

Brief Review

The portfolio can be navigated with the navbar on the left (or top-right dropdown menu if you're mobile), and they include:

  • Summary: This page; a brief overview of the contents.
  • Curriculum Vitae: My standard CV summary.
  • References: A list of individuals that I interacted with while at the Cincinnati Reds and their short testimonials.
  • Org Review: Overview of the work the pitching department accomplished - both process and result-based analysis.
  • Director Work: Work primarily related to my role at the Director level - front office work.
  • Coordinator Work: Work primarily related to my role at the Coordinator level - on-field product and managing a coaching staff.
  • Case Studies: Sample athlete profiles that help contextualize the type of work our department completed for an individual.
  • Sports Science: In-depth review of Sports Science initiatives completed by our department.

When assuming control of the Cincinnati Reds as the Director of Pitching Initiatives in 2019, the Reds organization ranked 25th in overall MiLB Expected ERA (xERA).

At the conclusion of the 2021 season, the Reds MiLB pitching ranked 6th in overall MiLB xERA.

Per Stuff+, from 2019 to just before the 2021 draft, no team gained more MiLB org fastball value than the Cincinnati Reds. When combining breaking balls and fastballs, the Reds finished 2nd in Stuff+ Gained, which elevated the organization to overall 3rd best MiLB Stuff+, up from 18th.

I led a pivotal restructuring of the pitching department: Building comprehensive training programs for our staff members, setting standards in a department that had few prior to assuming control, holding the employees accountable to those standards, and ultimately reshaping the department with exceptionally productive employees (new and reskilled), all while doing so in a highly-transparent, highly-documented, HR-approved manner to eliminate liability to the organization.

My contributions to Sports Science and Analytics came with nearly no assistance from our internal departments - our pitching coaches were trained to build, operate, and repair a fully-fledged marker-based biomechanics initiative in our minor league cages. They also reviewed biometric data that was linked to performance and held players accountable to those standards, saw a successful rollout of PULSE wearables for all pitchers at the High-A and below levels with 95%+ coverage, and were fully trained to operate Trackman, Rapsodo, and Edgertronic devices with no assistance from technical interns.

Eric Jagers (then my Assistant Pitching Coordinator) and I led an extremely strong recruiting platform to acquire a heralded Non-Drafted Free Agent class in 2020, yielding exceptional talent at below-market bonuses. Our pitching depth in the 30-35 FV bucket was sorely lacking, and the predraft 2021 grades from Fangraphs had us go from 10 to 18 prospects at the 35 FV level, with a number of pop-up arms that made dramatic improvements and should make 2022 pre-season lists. Both of our Arizona Fall League starting pitcher selections were release candidates in Spring Training, but made dramatic turnarounds to their careers.

Opportunities

There are two types of opportunities that I believe fit my skillset:

I believe I have significant value to offer at the Assistant General Manager or Senior Vice President level. A decade's worth of experience inside professional baseball in the areas of Scouting, Player Development, and Sports Science in addition to building Driveline Baseball from a bootstrapped company of one into a market leader that employs over 100 talented individuals gives me a unique skillset not easily found in the industry. Furthermore, my lengthy experience as a software developer, data scientist, and economic analyst across both large firms (Microsoft, Avalara) and early/late stage startups (PokerStars, Predator Web Systems, EV Investments) gives me a broad, specialized technical background.

At this time, I am not considering offers for Director of Pitching or equivalent titles for full-time roles.

There are a number of specific, more limited roles I can effectively step into as a Special Assistant to the General Manager, most likely in the fields of Player Development, Scouting, and Sports Science. I carried out Special Assignment scouting for the Cincinnati Reds in 2020, and worked for a number of teams starting in 2012 as a Scouting Analyst (split roughly evenly across Pro and Amateur). I've also set up several biomechanics initiatives from marker-based to markerless, and worked as an Integration Engineer both at Microsoft and as a consultant for MLB teams to get skill departments and sports science initiatives together for maximum effectiveness.

I have roughly equal interest in either role, though I lean towards favoring the Special Assistant route currently.