Tigers GM Greenberg at the Top of His Game

As children growing up three miles apart in Pittsburgh in the 1960s, Chuck Greenberg and Mark Cuban attended the same synagogue, Temple Emanuel of South Hills. Coincidentally, a half century later in 2010, the two Steel City natives and lifelong friends found themselves in a bidding war for the Texas Rangers, which Greenberg ultimately won by compiling an ownership group that put up $593 million. Though Greenberg’s run as managing partner and chief executive officer of the Rangers was short-lived as he cut ties with the franchise in March 2011, a year later, his son, Jeff, an alum of University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School, continued the family tradition of working in baseball by landing an internship in the Chicago Cubs baseball operations department.

Working under Jewish executives Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer, who in 2016 would shepherd the star-crossed Cubs franchise to their first World Series title in 108 years, Greenberg shot up the ranks of the Cubs’ front office to eventually become an assistant general manager. After taking a brief hiatus from baseball by joining the crosstown Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL where he applied his data analytical skills for another sport’s player personnel matters, Greenberg was hired as the Detroit Tigers’ general manager in September 2023. Since then, the surging Tigers have gone from perennial also-rans in the American League Central to being the unexpected odds-on favorites to win their first World Series since 1984.

In an era when playing deep into October seemingly hinges on shelling out the most money to free agents in December, the Tigers, who last season pushed the Cleveland Guardians to Game 5 of the American League Division Series, appear to be the exception. With a $156.2 million payroll — the 19th-ranked payroll for tax purposes and less than half of what the top-ranked Los Angeles Dodgers are spending at $405.4 million — the Tigers currently have the best record in baseball and the largest division lead of any club. No team has come close to doing more with less and Greenberg, as one of the stewards of Detroit’s cost-effective roster, stands as the latest baseball operations executive whose reliance on spreadsheets has transitioned to postseason berths.

When asked to explain the Tigers’ unexpected fast start during an interview last month with 97.1 The Ticket, the Tigers’ flagship radio station, Greenberg, who of course has the perfect surname for his post as Jewish Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg played nearly his entire career in Detroit, reasoned, “We’ve gotten really good starting pitching. One through five, we feel like every night we have a starter on the mound who’s going to give us a chance to win. Our bullpen has been really steady throughout, multiple guys who can finish out a game, multiple guys who can match up with different pockets of the opponent’s lineup. And as an offense, we’ve gotten on base, we’ve hit for damage, and we have versatility and depth.”

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Tigers are expected to be serious potential buyers at next month’s trade deadline (July 31). Aside from their lefty ace pitcher, the remarkable Tarik Skubal, the Tigers aren’t exactly stacked with household names — they just missed out on landing star Jewish third baseman Alex Bregman during free agency — and questions remain as to whether this run of success from a lineup of overachievers can be sustainable all summer long.

As an offense, we’ve gotten on base, we’ve hit for damage, and we have versatility and depth.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that our biggest improvements are going to come internally, like we’ve seen so far,” noted Greenberg. “We have a young team full of players who have made a ton of progress. That progress isn’t always going to be linear, but that needs to continue to be our focus. That’s the reason why we are where we are right now.”

For small-market teams such as Detroit that often are unable to re-sign their impending free agents and/or pay enough for current ones, the pathway to sustainable success is developing and replenishing a robust pipeline of young talent. Under the mentorship of Epstein and Hoyer, Greenberg excelled in this regard for the Cubs as he developed keen scouting strategies and data systems in the Cubs’ buildup to their 2016 World Series title before presiding over long-term player transactions and daily roster moves.

Another way that cash-strapped clubs have outperformed big-market teams this century is by subscribing to the “Moneyball” philosophy of leveraging data analytics to uncover the most overlooked — and thus least expensive — talent on the market. As a true “Moneyball” acolyte who relies on statistical information rather than high-level playing experience to make baseball operations decisions, Greenberg has joined the ranks of other Jewish baseball executives such as David Stearns, Chaim Bloom, Mark Shapiro, Jon Daniels, Epstein, and Hoyer who have had varying degrees of success with their data-intensive approach.

We have a young team full of players who have made a ton of progress.

“I went to law school knowing I wanted to try to work in baseball,” Greenberg remarked in a 2022 story for the Columbia Law School website. “I was lucky enough to get two summer internships for the Pittsburgh Pirates when I was an undergrad, and it took me, like, three days to realize, ‘This is what I want to do.’ This was in 2006, and … ‘Moneyball’ had been published a few years before. There were all these new ideas out there; Theo Epstein had won a World Series in Boston by incorporating a data analytics approach to managing the Red Sox. So, it felt like there could be opportunities for individuals like me, who didn’t necessarily play professional baseball, in a team’s front office. But it also felt like having legal training and that analytical skill set could be really useful.”

Indeed, one of the most profound changes to baseball in the 21st century has been many teams embracing a mindset grounded in quantitative reasoning that was rather taboo and considered wildly unconventional before it was popularized in a New York Times bestseller and later on the big screen. And it would certainly appear that Greenberg’s Tigers, poised to play in their second consecutive postseason, are a strong beneficiary of said development.