Blue Wave alums make it to The Show

With the Major League Baseball draft in full swing, two Riverhead graduates are hard at work for their respective clubs. Twins Tyler and Connor Carroll cracked the ranks of professional baseball following their years at Farmingdale State College and now, eight-plus years later, hold prominent positions for MLB teams.

Tyler, a Northeast area scout for the Texas Rangers, handles the evaluation and drafting of players and Connor, a minor league technology assistant for the Colorado Rockies, works on the player development side.

“We both always knew we wanted to get into sports,” Connor said. “Through college we had opportunities with different teams, different events with different organizations. The way it worked out, however, a lot of it wasn’t baseball. Obviously baseball is something we grew up playing and had passion for so trying to step into the baseball world was our main focus out of college.”

But it didn’t come easy. The Carrolls had to grind their way up the ladder. They scattered applications across the country and both got interviews with Inside Edge, a data and analytics company focused on baseball.

“It ended up being a major stepping stone in our career,” Tyler said. “We both got hired and had to report to Bloomington, Minnesota. What we would do is sit in the office and get a game every day to chart. They have an extensive charting process. It’s grading out plays and pitch types. It was like what Statcast is now. But before that, it was all manually done.”

The duo spent the 2016 season with Inside Edge and then with the points of contact they made with that company, began looking for jobs within Major League Baseball. During the winter league meetings in Washington, D.C., they went on the job hunt.

“I think we each interviewed with 15 or so teams,” Tyler said. “It seemed like the easiest way into a team was applying for a minor league video technology position. We were basically interviewing for the same position so we knew we would have to go our separate ways.”

Tyler was offered a video coordinator position for a minor league affiliate of the Texas Rangers and Connor was hired with the Tampa Bay Rays to also work with a minor league affiliate. It was a foot in the door for the twins in a very competitive space usually designed for Ivy League graduates and those who played baseball at the highest levels.

“It’s hard to break into this industry,” Connor said. “We played baseball but we didn’t play at some big Division I college like a lot of these guys. There aren’t a ton of people with our background that break through and get an opportunity. So from that point on, we put our heads down and relied on our work ethic to move up the ladder.”

Early on for the two, they did a lot of listening and spent time learning from those around them. There were people with 30 years of experience and gems of knowledge just waiting to be discovered by the most eager of learners.

“The reason we’ve had success is that we were the ones in the room actually listening and learning,” Tyler said. “Instead of being the voice right away and acting like we knew it all. I’ve seen that fail with a lot of people over the years when it comes to the game. Those guys that have been around for 10, 15, 20 years have stuck around for a reason. Neither of us feared that we weren’t going to make it. We just wanted to be patient, keep our head down, learn and eventually good things would happen.”

Tyler has stayed in the Texas Rangers system his entire career thus far and is now a key piece in the evaluation puzzle when the team sits down and decides who they’re going to draft. The three-day draft takes a lot into account: finding those high schoolers who will sign with a pro club instead of going to college, figuring out the makeup of a player and assessing the talent level through analytics and other tools.

“The draft is our World Series,” Tyler said. “All your work leads up to these three important days. We begin with our evaluation a year before the draft even begins. You go into the high school summer circuit and you create a follow list of the guys you like. You also see the best college players in the country, like Team USA and the Cape Cod league. You go to all these scout days in the fall for all the colleges. You go to all the big high school travel ball tournaments. But the real work starts in November.”

At that point, talent gets you on the map. But the way Tyler sees it, talent is only one piece of the puzzle for athletic success.

“There’s three parts to the scouting process,” Tyler explained. “There’s talent, skill and makeup. And oftentimes that makeup is the make or break point for an athlete. You essentially try to figure out who this kid is and what they’re about. You talk with them, with their parents, with their coaches, their teachers. And you have to determine if they have the makeup to play pro ball. Baseball is a sport of failure and a lot of these kids will never face it until they get to the professionals. How they go about their sport shows a lot about these players.”

Tyler takes pride in the later round draft picks and even those players that didn’t get drafted and yet find success in professional baseball. It’s finding those diamond-in-therough type of players that show the ability of a scout.

“I love to see the success of some of the guys we signed for a $1,000-signing bonus,” Tyler said. “And over the years a lot of the guys I recommended really put together some solid professional seasons thus far.”

In 2022, Tyler was based in the Georgia area and identified players like Josh Hatcher, who was drafted in the 10th round by the Rangers, and Jackson Kelley, who was drafted in the 12th round. Hatcher has produced a .287 batting average in the minor leagues and Kelley has pitched to an ERA of 2.81 this year. With Connor being more of the player development side of things, his work starts more post-draft. He was recently hired by the Colorado Rockies after working for both the Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies. He had moved up substantially within the Phillies organization from working with just one affiliate to then the entire minor leagues.

“From the player development side it’s exciting to see who the team is drafting because you’re going to meet with them the next few days,” Connor said. “Within a week of being drafted and signed, the team will bring the players down to their complex, starting with paperwork and medical stuff but eventually playing and getting in front of all the higher-tier coaches in our organization.”

The scouting department works hand-in-hand with the player development department during this transition because the scouts have determined what the players’ strengths and weaknesses are. Connor and the rest of the development team then tries to work on those weaknesses and amplify their strengths. They tailor a development plan to essentially build a major leaguer.

“The first couple months of pro ball we kind of just let these kids play ball,” Connor said. “Let them get acclimated. We’re not going to do major swing changes or going through pitch design. For us it’s just about getting them into the organization, get familiar with the staff and maybe some of the college guys can go right into the affiliates and others go into the instructional league.”

After growing up all of their lives together, spending their professional careers apart in different organizations has been a challenge because they’re so close. They hope one day to cross paths and work for the same organization. They do like to brag and show off here and there, like most brothers do. Tyler received his first World Series ring after the Texas Rangers won last year. The Phillies were close a few times with Connor on the staff, but never won it all.

“I got some bragging rights,” Tyler joked. “Being part of a championship winner is what you work so hard for your entire career.”