There is an interesting study floating around out there conducted by Glenn Wong, and Chris Duebert. They are taking a look at how the job and the people hired to be General Mangers of MLB teams have changed over the last 10 and 20 years. Of course hardcore baseball addicts now hat the book Money Ball, and the career of Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane has changed the way a MLB Gm does their job, but this stud unveils a litany of other changes to the role of a MLB GM.

Their findings are pretty interesting, they have found that over the last 20 years actual GM’s with baseball playing experience has gone down from 27% in 1989 to just 10% in 2009. The academic achievements of current baseball GM’s has gone up some 11% since 1989. Today 80% of baseball GM’s have a college degree, and four of them graduated from an Ivy League School. They also find that many of these men played college baseball (60%), but just 33% of them currently have any minor league experience.

It also seems that the average age of baseball GM’s has gone down, but the 2009 numbers show a higher age that is reflected by many baseball GM’s are still on the job since 1999. First time GM’s have been hired at an increasingly lower age, the average age now is 39.7 years for a first time GM. The new trend, over 90%, of current GM’s have some experience as a scout or in a talent evaluation position.

However the most interesting numbers seems to be the level of outside baseball business experience. Currently only 3% of MLB GM’s have extensive business experience outside of baseball. That is down from 23% in 1989. It seems based on these numbers that the baseball GM of today must have a good mix of baseball knowledge and academic success along with experience at evaluating talent. Good to know if anyone out there dreams of being a baseball GM in the future. I of course dream about that, and would jump at the chance should it ever arise. Maybe my degree in Sports Management will pay off one day.

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