Sam Cho

4/5/24

RPTM 101

Jennifer Emigh

Career Report

Richard Grech is the Associate Director of Product Management for the Enterprise

Product Team of Major League Baseball. The interview was conducted on Friday, April 5th at

1:30 pm and went until 2:05 pm. I selected to interview Richard because he was introduced to

me by a family member and his current occupation offered me the chance to observe an aspect of

recreation that is unique and intriguing. I felt that choosing to interview him for this assignment

would allow me to explore what happens behind the scenes at sports games and the people who

put it all together. He has held a position in this agency for six years and held his current position

for four years, but he did not start his professional career with the intent on working in sports.

When deciding to leave his previous job, he applied to become a senior product manager at his

current agency, and his skills and experience happened to align with what the hiring staff were

looking for. He graduated from Fordham University with a B.S. in business administration and

marketing while also earning a degree in computer science. His early career included numerous

jobs where he worked on web development and technical support. He transitioned to product

management when it was a relatively new field and has stuck with that role for many years. He

has worked as a product manager in other companies such as Delivery.com and Everyday Health

Inc., where he worked for nearly six years.

The clientele served by this agency is unique to many other recreational companies. They

create programs and hardware used by Major League Baseball, so everything that they create is
used by the larger corporation of professional baseball. Looking into the demographics of MLB

fans shows that 53% of United States residents between the ages of 13 to 64 engaged with the

MLB in 2022, with the most engaged age group being 35-54 years old. 56% of engagers were

male. Other significant statistics included 87% of engaged residents being born in the United

States, 45% had kids in the household, 41% earned under $50,000 a year, and engagement

among 13-18 year olds had grown 5% from 2018-2022. (SponsorPulse, 2022)

The products and services provided by Richard’s team are used by Major League

Baseball to assist in tracking of statistics, umpire officiating and scheduling, gameday

preparation, and disciplinary actions enforced upon players and teams. Essentially, the programs

developed by his team make the processes that are necessary for running a professional sports

league more efficient. They have developed these programs to be used by MLB teams, and most

of their time is spent improving and maintaining these programs. They will receive requests from

the MLB, umpires, stat inputters, or their own staff to implement changes to the program, which

they will then send to their engineers to work on. Richard’s job is mainly to meet with people

who use the programs for weekly check-ins and to discuss the status of the programs they have

developed, meeting with his staff so they can update him on the progress they have made in their

assigned roles, and prioritizing tasks so they can work on the most urgent and important ones

first. He is managing over a dozen different applications used by the MLB, meaning he has an

extremely busy schedule, as he has to have meetings about all of them on a daily basis.

The staff that Richard is directly responsible for is around 20 people. This includes his

engineers and product managers. The larger department he is involved with, which includes

official scorers, field-time coordinators, and the rest of the stats and data operations team, is
estimated by him to have around 200 employees. Most of these employees are full-time, with

some being interns.

Funding for Richard’s agency comes directly from Major League Baseball. A portion of

the money made by the MLB, which brings in about 10.8-10.9 billion dollars in revenue per

year, goes to developing products and programs to improve professional baseball. This is what

Richard’s team does and how they are funded.

When discussing the challenges he faces in his current occupation, he displayed

frustration with the lack of potential for growth and promotion in his department. He mentions

how it is not standard in his field to be managing as many products as he currently is, and feels

that his work should be rewarded with a promotion, but the reality is that there is not much of a

path for this growth in his current position. He also states that his workload is heavy, especially

during the offseason where most of the big changes he is tasked with implementing are being

developed. Leading up to opening day of the season he is constantly in meetings and making

decisions on what they can or need to accomplish before the season begins. Conversely, there are

many things that excite him about his job. He expressed pride in seeing what he does have a

visible impact. He says in other jobs he has had, the work that he does is not always

acknowledged or noticeable. However, in his current role, he can see a measurable impact on the

game and the corporation he works for, such as faster replay systems and more efficient ways of

keeping track of stats. He even recently won an award decided on by senior leadership because

of his contributions in the category of product initiatives and collaboration.

Richard gave me insight on many behind the scenes operations that are necessary for

running a successful professional sports league such as the MLB. He has vast career experience

in numerous different fields and gave me perspective on the scope of what it takes for
professional baseball to function everyday. He was a pleasure to interview and I gained valuable

knowledge from him that I can implement into my future career.

 Works Cited

SponsorPulse. (2022, November 16). MLB Fan Demographics. SponsorPulse.

https://www.sponsorpulse.com/insights/mlb-fan-demographics-whos-engaging-with-the-m

lb-in-america