Maddox Ruch Hawken Projects 2025

 Overall, Grant and I’s experience with the Guardians exceeded expectations completely. We learned so much about what goes on in the drafting department, what goes on behind the scenes for games, met players, and met some really awesome people. Having the chance to sit in on meetings with the general manager and listening to zoom calls with scouts about players we see everyday on TV was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. Going in each day really didn’t feel like work it just felt like another chance to learn and work for my favorite team in the world. We learned so much about how high schoolers stats are found, how to grade prospects, how different teams value different players in such a large draft, new information about the different leagues within the MLB such as the Arizona Fall League, the Dominican Winter League, and more. CZ and Pete, our bosses, were always open to answering questions and explaining different processes and how things worked around the Guardians. It was als...

 One of the coolest things Grant and I had the opportunity to do while working the Guardians was move to another department for a day game to get a behind the scenes look at the media department. We were surprised with a field trip to clubhouse at around 10 am where we got to see all the players getting ready before the game. I looked to my right and saw Luis Ortiz and Jose Ramirez, on my left Tim Herrin, and Jhonkensy Noel and Nolan Jones walking through the locker room to get breakfast. We got to tour where the players ate as well and saw a number of players and coaches including Steven Vogt and Sandy Alomar Jr. After our tour we got to meet up with Bo Naylor and talked to him on the elevator on the way to his Q and A with season ticket holders. He told us an awesome story about where he got his shoes and we told him about driving to Pittsburgh and seeing one the longest home runs of his career. After that, we sat in on Steven Vogts press conference where we learned a ton about t...

 In our final days we got to work on doing journal entries and scouting reports for the scouting department on different high school and college prospects. We did the top five hundred prospects and got information from a number of data bases and websites. The scouting department uses a wide variety of rankings to see how other people are evaluating players. This is important so the Guardians can see if they missed something with one player or if another organization has an idea about a player or a nuance that has yet to be considered. Though the work got monotonous it was very interesting read the variety of evaluations on each player. I never considered that one team would get information from outside sources to get new ideas. We got through over one thousand scouting reports over two days and were told that we saved them upwards of two millions dollars in potential signing bonuses for a number of players. It was very cool to do work that was important to the organization rather t...