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By Jackson Roberts
Contributing Sports Writer
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Every department under the New York Yankees' umbrella deals with constant pressure to deliver, and these days, the international scouting department is under a microscope.
The Yankees have missed on high-priced international prospects repeatedly over the last decade, and in October, international scouting director Danny Rowland was fired. That led to several youngsters abandoning their commitments to the Yankees, including prized Dominican teenage infielder Wandy Asigen, who defected to the New York Mets.
Mario Garza was promoted internally in January to replace Rowland, and everyone in the organization knew Garza was walking into the lion's den. So it has to feel good for the 44-year-old to receive some backing from his boss, general manager Brian Cashman.
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In a Tuesday piece from Brendan Kuty of The Athletic, Cashman spelled out why he believed that Garza, whose background was in player development and not scouting, was the right man for the job.
“He’s an amazing human being,” Cashman said of Garza, per Kuty. “Connect-ability is a really high character trait for him. So he’s a great baseball guy that has great personal skills. He is a great evaluator of talent.
"He already knows all the personnel that we want to have. You want evaluation. You want firehoses connecting to performance science and analytics. That will give him a head start as we try to relaunch that department and move forward.”
What seems to be motivating Garza, more than any sort of pressure to stop a negative perception of how the Yankees evaluate international talent, is the desire to get back to doing something the Yankees were once synonymous for doing.
“I’ve been here 16 years, and that hasn’t happened,” Garza told Kuty, referring to winning a World Series. “I think I have an opportunity to impact the organization in this area, and I think my skills line up for it.”
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