The Case for Ng

AZ Snakepit makes the case for hiring Kim Ng as the Diamondbacks general manager.

Ken Kendrick and Derrick Hall are quickly learning just how desirable their vacant General Manager actually is within the industry right now. Sure, as one of only 30 such positions in the game, there are still plenty of candidates, but the reality is, the team is preparing for its seventh General Manager in 13 years. The team also has started developing a reputation for having cheap ownership which likes to meddle, rather than letting the hired executives do the jobs they were brought in for. Unpopular moves by the front office and poor results in 2016 have caused the Diamondbacks to suffer a rather substantial public image problem. Kim Ng could be a very bulletproof solution to many problems.

If Kim Ng is brought on board, the public relations genius that is Derrick Hall (think what we will of his tenure in Arizona, there is no denying his savvy in that particular arena) will be able to feast on the opportunities provided by hiring the first woman General Manager for any of the big four professional sports in America. Hall won’t even have to make a big deal out of the fact. He can simply sit back and let the media do that for him. Have no illusions, the media coverage of the hire will be sky-high. The lovely part for Hall and the Diamondbacks is that Ng has already established herself within the industry as so highly qualified that the questions surrounding her hire will not focus on whether or not the Diamondbacks used Ng as a publicity stunt hiring to improve their image, but rather the questions will be about what took so long for a team to finally take a chance on her. There may be some who try to punch holes in hiring Ng, but those pundits will be drowned out by the cacophony of opinions coming from more positive quarters. Externally, Ng’s hiring is, as stated earlier, bulletproof. The beauty doesn’t stop there though. If hired on to be the new GM for the Diamondbacks, Ng is bulletproof from within as well.

Ng interviewed for four GM positions in the past, and was not hired for any of them. The positives for hiring a female GM were always there, but teams thought there were better qualified candidates. Going to the MLB office exposed her to the international side of the game, and that added experience and expertise may put Ng over the top. In her own words:

Coming here to the league office, people might have said it was an odd move, but I’ve made an odd move before, and it helped me get an assistant GM job.

This might be the right confluence of events to put her in charge of a team.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2daPujS