Jon Meoli: All the ways new Orioles GM Jared Banner can make an early impact

The last time we heard from Mike Elias, the Orioles’ president of baseball operations promised that the background and expertise of his chosen general manager would reveal which areas needed the most help.

By announcing Jared Banner as the executive who will “lead the organization’s player development, coaching and performance efforts, while also partnering ... on strategy, staffing, and talent acquisition, among other duties,” Elias and the Orioles gave us an answer that many could have predicted.

Banner, the former assistant general manager of the Cubs who previously worked for the Mets and Red Sox, brings plenty of experience to the role.

But with Banner joining a front office full of established figures, it will be interesting to see where he looks to make an impact first. There are some simple places to start.

In a strange way, that I’m even writing about this hiring for The Banner has a lot to do with Banner himself and the work he did with the Red Sox at the beginning of his career.

Rather than spending my college summers back in Connecticut doing fun things with my friends, I typically packed it in early and fell asleep to Red Sox games so I could be up before dawn to work on a tree crew. The more invested I got in the team, the more I wanted to learn, and some strange internet rabbit holes led me to a site called SoxProspects.com.

It introduced me to player development as a concept, and that’s where I eventually began writing the same kinds of stories I still pursue all these years later.

Banner, who began in player development with Boston in 2007 and went on to hold various scouting and player personnel roles, worked alongside executives who helped build several World Series champions by doing two things the Orioles need to do: push boundaries and spend well.

We know that the Red Sox were early adopters of the “moneyball” practices made famous in Oakland, and they had far more resources at their disposal. But those early-2010s Red Sox prospects I wrote about were also exposed to data and technology that felt like it was part of a new frontier. I remember waiting to speak to Xander Bogaerts for an interview when he came through Frederick. He told me he had to do his vision training first.

All the hitters used a laptop program to train their eyes. A dot moved across the screen toward a rectangular strike zone, and hitters had a fraction of a second to tap the space bar — roughly the time they’d have to make a swing decision in a game. It was crude, especially compared to the modern six-figure pitching machines that can throw a pitcher’s exact pitches from a video of their delivery. But it always struck me as evidence of a willingness to try new things, even as very traditional coaches oversaw the rest of player development.

That’s a balance Banner will have to find with the Orioles — how to push those boundaries in player development while also keeping the foundations that lead to winning baseball intact. And that’s where, perhaps, the other part comes in: capital allocation.

Those Red Sox teams always had high payrolls, yes, but they also pressed their advantage in other ways. Before MLB instituted a bonus pool system for the amateur draft, where teams have allotted amounts to spend on signing bonuses, the Red Sox often led spending on draft signings because they were willing to take chances on high school players with strong college commitments and pay them large bonuses. Some teams would walk away from the draft with maybe one seven-figure signee, while the Red Sox would add several, because no one was stopping them and the reward of a major league star was well worth the initial outlay.

That’s no longer allowed. Teams can still spend on major league talent, but Banner will also have a role in deciding how else the Orioles should deploy the money of owners David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti.

Elias has said he wants to expand the team’s baseball operations department, and a World Series that will feature two teams who heavily invest in data analysts and technology gives a natural blueprint for where the Orioles can add. Baltimore could also invest more heavily in emerging tools and technologies. Even with the Orioles’ state-of-the-art technology in their player development facilities across Maryland and in Sarasota, Florida, those components are now standard across the industry. Other teams invest more aggressively in speculative, early-stage technologies that could give them an edge if deployed effectively.

Those reaction-time exercises Bogaerts was doing all those years ago reflected an area in which Boston was an early adopter: using neuroscience to assess reaction time and other mental skills in scouting and player development. Banner, working with Elias, assistant general manager Sig Mejdal and the rest of the front office, will have to identify areas where the Orioles can plant a flag, be first and win.

The Orioles ran a familiar rebuilding playbook to acquire their top prospects through high draft picks in the early years under Elias, and it worked until it didn’t. Banner joins a front office trying to identify how to win a different way, and his perspective and experience have to be part of the solution.

Thinking back to his roots, and concurrently mine, has me remembering all the distinctive aspects of that time on the Red Sox farm that made it work so well and supported so many championship teams.

Banner will help determine what, two decades from now, we might look back on as distinguishing factors of the Orioles’ success. Only he knows what they might be. But we all know he better figure it out soon.