My Baseball Career: Ryan McLaughlin

BC: Tell us about your career path and what you currently do in Baseball today?

Ryan: So I played D3 baseball in college, and part of that includes mandatory off-season time during the fall where coaches aren’t allowed to coach players. I kind of took on a coach-like role while being a player in college in order to run off-season practices without coaches there, as they had to be player-run. This is where I first learned that I was interested in coaching. I later played summer ball in Florida where there was really good D1 competition, and I played pretty well, and thought to myself: “maybe i could play professionally after this”. So I did research into what I needed to do to play pro ball, and realized I was not even close to good enough to do that. So I then learned that I needed to figure everything out so I could coach after playing in college.

I took an unpaid internship in the Cape Cod Summer League after I graduated from school and finished playing as a Player Development intern, which turned into an Assistant Hitting Coach role. From there I got connected with the Seattle Mariners who offered me a 5th coach role in High-A ball, and on my way there for spring training, Covid hit, and the season got cancelled obviously; so I spent that year as a pseudo-video intern trying to kill time and make myself useful. Our director of Player Development called me that summer and offered me to be a 4th coach in AA Arkansas the next season. That year I was half hitting analyst/assistant pitching coach as well as a strategy coach; basically those were all of the responsibilities that fell to me.

After that I was offered to be a hitting coach in High-A, and in addition I negotiated that I would be able to be a pitching coach during the off-season, so I went to the DR and worked the instructional league as a pitching coach. After that year, I transitioned into a Player Development Coordinator, I proved and helped the pitching and hitting coordinators, also merging into a pro-amateur scouting role. I did that role for two years and the Yankees then called out of nowhere and here we are. In my role as the Coordinator of Major League Information, my main task is to act as a bridge between the front office and the coaching staff.

BC: For people that don’t have any current baseball experience but want to work in the game, what can they do to gain some beginner level experience that would help their resume?

Ryan: The best advice I can give is two steps; the first being to READ EVERYTHING! Read all the books about baseball, fangraphs articles, read baseball prospectus; because the people who write those are around the game and know what information is valuable to teams today. Step two would be to do some of your own writing. Teams will hire someone who has played the game professionally or in college and assume they are able to communicate with players simply because they played; but if you do a good enough job of writing your own materials and writing information that is actionable and easy to understand, it’s effectively proving the same thing. Communicating topics and information simply to a player is what will help you stand out to a team and make you more likely to get hired, so it’s on you to prove you can do that.

BC: What did you learn from that first baseball job that ended up helping you move forward in your career?

Ryan: Trying to be as adaptable and helpful as possible has always been what’s most important to me. I first got hired to help with the hitting side, but our pitching coach needed an extra set of hands so I did that role. I saw areas of our pro scouting department that could be aided by a more seamless transition to helping players develop, so I tried to help there as well. I learned that it’s a combination of looking around and seeing where we could get better and if I had the skills to help us get better to take the initiative to go and do it, and that’s how I got to where I am today as I still operate that same way. Wherever I can help out with something, making the time for it. Get your foot in the door, meet people that you enjoy working with, and it works itself out a lot of the time.

BC: How important is specializing in one area of the game vs being able to add value in a number of ways?

Ryan: When you’re first starting out, I feel being more specialized will likely help you land an internship where you’re performing a specific task that requires that skillset. It’s interesting, because for a lot of those entry level positions that specializing may help you get the job earlier, where teams need help with x and hiring an intern to help with it is useful for them; i’ve found that for actually keeping a job and progressing throughout the industry, the people who have that wider range and skillset and can connect more big picture dots, that’s who that’s easier for.

BC: What are some areas or roles where Baseball is growing that might surprise some people that they can work on specializing in right now? (Data science, machine learning, biomechanics, mental skills, etc)

Ryan: I’d say the biggest thing that is changing in the game would be that teams across the board are more willing to allow a wider range of people to communicate and work with players hands-on. So the biggest skill that goes with that is the ability to simplify information into actionable content. Teams are more okay than ever with analysts coming downstairs to the clubhouse and talking with a player or coaching group more and more often, so the hard skills needed for that aside, those soft skills of simplifying information and communicating are the biggest areas opening up in the game.