A & Q with Eve Rosenbaum Orioles’ Assistant General Manager

by MARISSA RANCILIO

Eve Rosenbaum is the Assistant General Manager for the Baltimore Orioles. Rosenbaum grew up playing baseball and later moved to softball during both high school and college. She graduated from Whitman in 2008 and then went on to attend Harvard University. While in college, Rosenbaum earned an internship with the NFLʼs commission office and then later worked in international scouting for the Houston Astros. She transferred to the Orioles in 2019 as the director of baseball development and was recently promoted to Assistant General Manager.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

The Black & White: When did you first know you wanted to work in the sports industry, and what encouraged you to follow that path?

Eve Rosenbaum: I am so used to being on the field and seeing the impact that sports have both on and off the field. It takes whole communities to rally around teams, and I just wanted to continue being a part of sports really any way I could when I knew that my playing career was eventually coming to an end. It was more than just being an athlete and being a fan; it was really loving the impact of sports.

I remember having conversations with Mr. Kenah. He was my AP Gov. teacher and then he was the JV coach for the softball team. I remember him talking about various career paths and suggesting that working in sports would be a good job for me.

The B&W: How did you begin working with the Orioles?

E.R.: When I was in college, I interned for the Red Sox, then for Major League Baseball — and then I went to work for the NFL. At the NFL, someone who I interned for at MLB wanted me to come work for him in international scouting at the Houston Astros. It was in Houston where I met Mike Elias, who is now the General Manager of the Orioles. I spent a couple of years working for him on the Astros before he brought me over with him to the Orioles.

The B&W: If there were any challenges getting the job, how did you overcome them?

E.R.: The main thing that’s challenging about the sports industry is stress. Thereʼs so many people who want to work in the sports industry because thereʼs so many people who are sports fans and sports fans are so passionate. Everyone thinks, “It would be so fun to work in sports. Why would I want to work in a real job when I could work in sports?” Itʼs the basic laws of supply and demand: thereʼs so much demand for the jobs but thereʼs a limited number. Itʼs really hard for anyone to break into the industry. I was fortunate in that I was a college athlete, went to a good school and got a job at the NFL. And I was especially fortunate that someone who I interned with remembered me and called me up because, without that, although I knew I wanted to get back into baseball at some point, I didnʼt know exactly how to do it. I probably would have been calling up my connections or applying to jobs online, but it can be a very difficult industry to break into. Once youʼre in, you want to do the absolute best that you can.

The B&W: What responsibilities come with being Assistant General Manager for the Orioles?

E.R.: The specifics of my job are different every day because I have so many different things going on. But a huge part of my day is focused on player evaluation, which is a big part of running any baseball team. How good are our players and how good are players on other teams? Thatʼs a lot of watching videos, looking at statistics and calling our coaches from the major leagues, minor leagues and talking to them about the players. Whatʼs this guy working on? What do you think heʼs going to be in the future? Whatʼs holding them back from being successful? Itʼs just evaluating the players. And then when youʼre dealing with other teams, or youʼre dealing with free agents, what would be a good trade to make? What do we think is a fair value exchange? What players do we like on the other team and we want to ask for? If we were to trade one of our players, how much money are they worth? Whatʼs a good contract structure? Itʼs a lot of doing that individually and then getting together with other co-workers and discussing to hopefully come to a consensus.

Thereʼs also a portion of the job thatʼs helping to run the full department. Thereʼs a lot of work that goes into our own employees. What should their contracts look like? How long should the contracts be? Which departments should we have? Who do we want to promote? We need to talk to our PR team about publishing an article or our IT team because weʼre setting up new cameras and technology systems. I also tend to requests that the coaches and players have in the locker rooms and clubhouse too. Itʼs high level departmental management.

Thereʼs a lot of travel involved in my job as well. When I scout players for the draft, I am flying across the country to go watch players in high school and college. Soon, Iʼm going to the Dominican Republic. Iʼm traveling with the big league team as well, and actually sitting down and watching the team play because that is really what the job is about, player evaluation and watching our team to help them improve.

The B&W: How about during the off-season?

E.R.: Sports tend to be non-stop, and baseball in particular is. We have the longest season: we play 162 games a year. Football plays 18. Baseball spring training starts in the middle of

February, and if you’re in the playoffs, playoffs go all the way to the end of October. So youʼre playing almost year-round, and then in the few months when youʼre not playing, youʼre working on trades and trying to sign free agents. So it really is non-stop. We have games on holidays, games on weekends. Iʼm pretty much always thinking about the team and always thinking about work. I usually get into the office at nine or ten in the morning. If we have a game, I donʼt get home until after the game, around 11pm.

The B&W: Were there any experiences you had that you feel prepared you to work in the sports industry?

E.R.: In college, I learned basic statistical tools which are obviously huge in baseball, and they’re huge in any industry, really. Itʼs just being able to have a fundamental understanding of statistics and scientific studies and what to do with significant data and significant results. Also much of any industry is being able to communicate well. I took AP English Language in 11th grade, and you had to learn how to write timed essays. I remember it was so stressful. You had to learn how to write really clearly and really concisely — and that is the most important skill of any, constantly emailing and presenting. For us, we make presentations for our owners if we want to offer a player or an extension, and we have to get our thoughts across to persuade. People struggle with that immensely, but I think Iʼm good at it. It goes back to learning how to write really well in high school and then in college as well. You spend so much time writing papers and just figuring out how to communicate. I think I had a leg up on that in college because of the education I got at Whitman.

The B&W: What is something that surprised you about working in the sports industry?

E.R.: I was sort of surprised at first about the demands on your time. I do remember when I first started working for the NFL, I actually had a more balanced life. I went home on the weekends and didnʼt have work. I was so used to constantly having work or constantly having something to do in both high school and college, and I thought, “Oh—this is nice.” I lived in New York City, and I had my weekends. I could take trips and go see friends, and that was actually kind of shocking at first. But now Iʼm sort of back to my natural state, which is just working all the time. I think regardless of what industry youʼre in, when you get your first job, your whole lifestyle is just shocking.

The B&W: What challenges have you faced once you were locked into the industry, and how did you work to overcome them?

E.R.: A business aspect thatʼs somewhat unique to the sports industry is that you’re public. Your fans follow everything that youʼre doing and everyone has an opinion, which can make the job very high-pressured. I canʼt think of many other industries where people go into work and have people on Twitter talking about if they are doing well. That doesnʼt happen for most people. Most of my friends who go to work and come home have their own lives. I couldnʼt tell you what my friends are doing on a day-to-day basis, whereas when you work in sports, you have a record which can tell how often you won and how often you lost, a scoreboard. That can make the job stressful because when a team goes through a losing streak, everyone knows youʼre failing at your job. You quickly have to come up with ways to make the team better, and sometimes itʼs out of your control.

Sometimes youʼre getting nothing but bad luck, sometimes your players are underperforming and you have to make a trade for someone from the minor leagues. Fans often can get really mad about the things that weʼre doing, and then sometimes they love what weʼre doing — thereʼs this constant feedback. You always have to stay within yourself and know, “I have this job for a reason, I have a certain skill set, I have information at my fingertips. This is why we as a team are doing what weʼre doing even when people donʼt agree or have their opinions.” You have to learn how to separate that. So itʼs a very public job when we work in sports. Thatʼs another reason why I think about it all the time: itʼs constant.

The B&W: What are the greatest accomplishments that you have had in your career so far?

E.R.: When I was with the Astros, they won the World Series in 2017, so thatʼs pretty hard to top when youʼre in sports — winning a championship. So that was super exciting. Also, some of the players who I signed when I was in international scouting for the Astros were pitching in the world series last year. Thereʼs nothing like being a scout and seeing your players get to the majors and then succeed and win a World Series. So being part of the team that won a World Series was an amazing accomplishment, but seeing the players I signed win their own World Series was also super rewarding.

The B&W: What is some advice you would give to someone whoʼs interested in working in the sports industry?

E.R.: For a lot of people who want to work in the sports industry — and this is based on a lot of conversations that I have with people who want to get into sports, reading résumés and going through cover letters — a lot of people will say, “Oh, I love sports. Iʼm a huge sports fan, so please let me come to work.” And I will say, “Everyoneʼs a huge sports fan. I canʼt just hire you because youʼre a sports fan. You have to have something that sticks out.” If youʼre in high school or youʼre in college trying to build up your budget, you want to focus on doing the things that youʼre passionate about so you can really learn from it, and then you can talk clearly about why something is on your résumé. For me, I played softball, so I was able to talk about what I learned on the field, what I learned off the field, what it meant to be a teammate and how I had to figure out how to balance the tough academics of Harvard with being on the softball team. I did things I was very passionate about so that it was very easy to build up my résumé and to stand out as a candidate. So that can be something to focus on when youʼre trying to build up your résumé. In terms of hard skills, these days, itʼs a lot of technical skills. So, learning how to code, learning SQL, which is a language that you use to collect data and analyze players and contracts, are things that I look at when Iʼm going through résumés and talking to people. Having technical skills will definitely give people a leg up.

The B&W: What is your favorite part about working for the Orioles?

E.R.: The Orioles are my hometown team, growing up in Bethesda. I know the Nationals are in town now, but they didnʼt exist until I was in high school. So when I was growing up, everyone was an Orioles fan, and Iʼm hoping we can draw some people back. Itʼs really cool working for my hometown team and getting to help build this team that I grew up rooting for. I grew up going to Camden Yards and watching games as a fan, and now Iʼm getting to build that team. Weʼre still in the same ballpark. We still have a lot of the same traditions. We have people who have been lifelong fans of the Orioles. Itʼs just really cool working for my hometown team and bringing the team back into relevance.

When every semester ends and a new one begins, within a year or between, a lot has to shift for students — teachers, classmates, schedules, extracurriculars, you name it. One of the most jarring shifts for students, though, is the switch in classroom structure, particularly the possible shift from a traditional classroom to a flipped classroom.

Flipped classrooms operate on modern educational theory. Within one, students study the material at home and teachers provide guided, supplementary classroom activities. Designed to end both lectures and quiet class study alike, the idea of a flipped classroom is one that more and more teachers are finding ways to implement in their subjects.

The pandemic largely tainted the reputation of flipped classrooms, though. Even in subjects that didn’t always fit the model, and with teachers who hadn’t developed plans to segue, flipped classrooms suddenly became the digital norm by default. The active Zoom breakout rooms never seemed to catch on.

We shouldn’t let those experiences taint what the idea promises. Teachers should incorporate more elements of flipped classrooms, if not fully adopting the structure into their classes to ensure equality between students whilst also making the material more accessible and providing students with a deeper understanding of the course.

In a system where most teachers have at least two different periods of the same course, it’s impossible to teach the material in the exact same way for all periods. That’s where flipped classrooms can help to ensure a more equal, level way of learning between students.

Flipped classrooms exist at Whitman now, though there aren’t many. Classes like AP Chemistry and AP Calculus AB are fully flipped, while others incorporate bits and pieces of such a structure, like AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics and AP U.S. History.

If more teachers were to adopt more of the flipped structure, more students would receive the same instruction regardless of their period, meaning any educational discrepancies between periods would be largely eliminated.

On the other hand, traditional classrooms often perpetuate these disparities; inevitably, one period will get cut short or held late, allow- ing the learning gap between periods to widen. And, to be frank, teachers are bound to miss a piece of material or explanation in multiple live lectures, so the use of flipped classrooms could potentially lessen the impact of many otherwise unavoidable obstacles.

Class size also changes how long it takes for a teacher to cover the material. A classroom of more students typically means more questions and deeper explanations, while fewer students might correspond with a faster-paced class, allowing the teacher to cover more material in a given period. Flipping classrooms would ensure that all students in the course receive the same lessons at the same pace, removing this disparity.

by Jacob Cowan

By translating the content into students to learn the material at home, at their own pace, students can mold their classes to fit personal needs. For instance, if one student falls sick for a few days, they’d typically have to try to meet with their teacher to cover the material they missed outside of regular class time. This game of catch-up causes them to fall even further behind as the teacher moves forward. Flipped classrooms, however, allow students to learn the material at home even when they can’t attend class on a given day.

This accessibility extends beyond just sickness, though. If a student has a doctor’s appointment, college visit, family conflict or can’t attend class for any other reason, they won’t need to worry about falling behind. Additionally, students can replay videos endlessly should they need to hear concept explanations more than once. The accessibility of flipped classrooms is only one part of the argument, however. Accessibility means nothing without quality, and contrary to popular belief, flipped classrooms can enable teachers to delve deeper into the content of their courses.

Since in a flipped structure students learn the foundations of each unit at home, teachers can spend their 45-minute periods answering questions and providing practice for the students instead of teaching the foundations during class. Students come to class ready to enrich their understanding of a concept rather than to learn it for the first time.

Nevertheless, it’s essential to recognize that flipped classrooms are not 100% beneficial. Naturally, solely lecturing students is detrimental to student morale and comprehension. However, by the same token, never teaching lessons live, or placing the entire learning burden on students is equally stressful.