Athletics Hire Taylor Smith As Next President of Baseball Operations

The wait for the next leader of the A’s is over. We have our guy. The organization has named Red Sox assistant General Manager Taylor Smith as the newest President of Baseball Operations, per a team announcement:

The A’s had been connected to Smith for the past few weeks, with the team first interviewing Smith almost exactly a month ago. There’d been other names connected to the A’s job (most notably Sam Fuld, who rejected the Athletics’ gig) but Smith’s name continued to be brought up as a real possibility. Jon Heyman recently reported that the A’s were “focused on” Smith after getting rejected by Fuld, and now they have a deal in place for him to lead us into the next era of A’s baseball.

Smith comes with fresh ideas but not a lot of experience. Still in his early 30’s (still waiting for exact confirmation on his age), he first began his baseball career with the Tampa Bay Rays, joining them as an analyst in their research and development department after graduating from the University of Georgia in in 2018. He spent the better part of the next half decade rising up their system. By the time the Red Sox poached him from their division rivals in 2024, he’s risen all the way to director of predictive marketing in Tampa. Over the past two years he’s been one of Boston POBO Craig Breslow’s lieutenants, in charge of their analytics department.

What Smith lacks in experience, he should make up for with fresh ideas for an organization that hasn’t had an outside hire like this in decades. Smith now has a couple of weeks to get his sea legs under him and prepare for his first offseason running the Athletics. He’ll need to staff his front office (presumably with former Red Sox and Rays staffers) before deciding whether or not he wants to stick with incumbent manager Mark Kotsay. There’s been no indication one way or another but for what it’s worth Kotsay is signed through 2028.

After all of that, Smith’s biggest challenge will begin: fixing the A’s pitching staff. The core of a playoff team is there on the position player side of things, but the pitching has been a major problem for the past two years and that has to be the immediate focus for Smith. Jury is still out on how the new ballpark in Las Vegas will play, but Smith has the ability to shape this team to how he sees fit. Let’s hope this is a home run hire!