Assistant GM Jared Banner Leaves Cubs for GM Role in Baltimore
As first reported by Jeff Passan, the Orioles have hired Jared Banner to be their new GM. No relation to the gamma-irradiated scientist who turns into a green rage monster, Banner rose to the role of assistant GM with the Cubs after joining the organization as VP of special projects in 2021. He was subsequently promoted to farm director and was named AGM in 2023 following Craig Breslow‘s departure to run baseball operations in Boston.
Prior to joining the Cubs, Banner served as the Mets’ farm director for three seasons. His career in professional baseball began as a fellow in Boston’s baseball operations department in 2007, and he rose to the rank of player personnel VP in 2017-18. In that role, he oversaw professional scouting in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico. This will obviously create a void in the Cubs’ front office, though that also means new opportunities for at least one person.
Under Theo Epstein and now Jed Hoyer, the Cubs have maintained something of a “flat hierarchy” that eschews the idea of strict roles or specialties. While they obviously want their execs to lean into their individual strengths — like Tyler Zombro with pitching or Dan Kantrovitz with amateur scouting — they’re not trying to silo anyone. Kantrovitz has turned down opportunities with other organizations (like the Orioles) and Zombro has spoken about wanting to be upwardly mobile, so both could be in the running for a promotion.
It’s also possible that Banner’s duties could be divvied up among more than one person via title inflation, a common practice for the Cubs and other orgs. Think of it like Carter Hawkins holding the title of GM even though he doesn’t hold the same decision-making power you’d expect from that title. Or, rather than simply shuffling responsibilities, the Cubs could look to bring in someone else from the outside to help their ongoing philosophical recalibration.
Like interstate construction, it’s a never-ending project that doesn’t seem to have yielded much improvement despite all the apparent effort. Despite repeatedly admitting to faulty practices in talent evaluation and development, particularly on the pitching front, the Cubs have not kept pace with the Brewers and other forward-thinking organizations.
That may be less about the title on the office door and more about the size of the team’s research and development department, which has come under recent scrutiny. Sports analyst Amrit Vignesh has the Cubs in the middle of the pack, and former Mets acting GM Zack Scott likewise has them well below the leaders when it comes to their full-time analytics staff. A lot of that is guesswork since the information isn’t publicly available — and could even be obscured — but it’s clear that the Cubs have been losing ground for years.
This could be a chance for them to start gaining again, whether it’s with an entirely new voice or by giving more responsibility to some of those who are already in the building. We’ll have more on this as we learn it.
