MLB's new Advancing Bases event aims to add diversity around baseball

Since Tyrone Brooks joined Major League Baseball in 2016, he’s seen countless changes in the teams’ hiring practices. As senior director of the Front Office and Field Staff Diversity Pipeline Program, his team has been involved in the hiring of nearly 600 diverse applicants to the 30 Major League teams and MLB itself.

Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn., marked a new chapter for the program as it kicked off the first annual Advancing Bases, a two-day event during the Winter Meetings that seeks to add diversity to front offices and coaching staffs around baseball.

Building off the success of Take the Field, a similar program established in 2018 for women interested in baseball positions, MLB, in partnership with the Buck O’Neil Professional Scouting & Coaches Association, brought in representatives from all 30 clubs to provide continuing education, networking opportunities and career advice for nearly 80 participants.

“The one thing about this game is that you can’t do it by yourself,” Brooks said. “There has to be someone along the way who sees something in you, pours energy and time into you and also just that knowledge and sharing. And that’s what this opportunity with Advancing Bases is providing, an opportunity for individuals to learn from other experienced professionals.”

Day 1 of the event began with several notable speakers, headlined by a keynote address from Dana Brown, the only active African-American general manager in baseball. Attendees also heard from a diverse panel led by MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds that included managers Ron Washington (Angels) and Craig Counsell (Cubs) as well as assistant general managers Jared Banner (Cubs) and James Harris (Guardians).

The participants then broke down into smaller groups based on their interests, whether that be scouting, baseball operations, coaching, analytics or more, for more in-depth conversations.

"I wish I had Advancing Bases 500 years ago when I was starting in the game,” said Michael Hill, MLB’s senior VP of on-field operations who helped organize the event with Brooks. “For me, it’s one of those things that’s near and dear because I look out into the crowd and I see myself. I see a younger version of myself. I see young people with that sparkle in their eye and that passion for the game. It’s incredibly important for me to try to feed that passion and that desire and give them every opportunity to build and learn and grow and hopefully have long, successful careers in our game.”

MLB has made an effort to make the game more diverse for decades now, a process that was led in the late 1990s by then-Commissioner Bud Selig, whose eponymous rule required teams to interview minority candidates for high-level positions such as manager, general manager, assistant general manager, scouting director and Minor League director. The league made changes in recent years to address internal promotions as well.

Before the Selig Rule, front offices were approximately three percent women and minorities. There’s still work to be done, especially at the highest levels, but in 2023, people of color make up 21.1 percent of senior administrators, while women make up 27.4 percent. At the professional administrator level, those rates rise to 30.3 percent and 29.0 percent, respectively.

Brooks and Hill aspire to add more diversity to the game’s ranks so that it can better reflect the communities in which they play. Helping quality candidates connect with teams can only help the game grow, and as Banner pointed out, research shows that diverse groups of people lead to better ideas and outcomes.

Bringing together a front office with different backgrounds can take many forms. Harris knows that well as someone who didn’t even come from baseball. He played college football at Nebraska and Oregon before starting his career in NFL front offices. Harris joined the Pirates before heading to Cleveland in 2016. Five years later he worked his way up to assistant general manager and hopes that many more can follow in his footsteps.

“Everyone has something that they can add,” Harris said. “It’s not just diversity of culture, it’s diversity of thought, diversity of experience. Everybody can bring value to raise the tides for the rest of the group. Hopefully, a situation like this can help people acknowledge that and see how they fit in.”

Advancing Bases is just in its first year, but Washington sees it as a key way to grow the game. The more MLB invests in itself, with a growing array of programs, the more it will benefit in the long term.

“It's important because it gives these people, women and men, an opportunity to see that you can make an opportunity to the top,” Washington said. “But to do that, you have to be available to give yourself, give of yourself and understand that nothing, trying to make it to the top, is easy.”