From Lorain to Lake Erie College to a World Series championship and now general manager of the Athletics.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the route Cam Castro has taken to the top one of the elite positions in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
On Nov. 4, Castro was named GM of the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Taylor Smith took over two weeks ago for the A\u2019s as the franchise\u2019s President of Baseball Operations, and his first major decision was to hire Castro as GM from World Series champion Milwaukee.<\/p>\n
Castro, 36, was the Brewers\u2019 senior vice president of player development and performance and was with the club for eight years. He was the liaison between the front office and the coaching staff regarding player development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe A\u2019s are a historic franchise with an incredible legacy,\u201d Castro said in a statement. \u201cI look forward to being a part of the next chapter of A\u2019s baseball and developing a team, culture, and organization that our fans will be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The A\u2019s, who went 64-98 this season, are rebuilding their front office in anticipation of the organization\u2019s planned move to Las Vegas in 2028. They are scheduled to play their third and final season next year at a Triple-A ballpark in West Sacramento, California.<\/p>\n
That transition will be headed by Smith and Castro.<\/p>\n
\u201cCam will be an awesome addition to the front office and a great partner to me in running this organization,\u201d Smith said in a statement. \u201cHe has experiences and skill sets that will complement me and the very talented people that we already have in the organization. He\u2019s one of the best development minds in the game with a proven track record of building the systems and processes that develop a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Castro prepped at now-closed Southview High School in Lorain before embarking on a college baseball career at Lake Erie College. After LEC, he had coaching stints at Defiance and at Division II Augustana College in South Dakota before returning to his alma mater as head coach of the Storm\u2019s baseball team in 2016.<\/p>\n
Before that, he was a trainer at Driveline Baseball in Seattle, a data-driven training center for pitchers founded and operated by Kyle Boddy, a Parma native and former Baldwin Wallace University student-athlete.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout the time at Driveline and the experiences I had there, my transition to professional baseball might not have turned out the way it did,\u201d Castro told The News-Herald in 2021.<\/p>\n
While at LEC, Castro was determined to upgrade the baseball program, and eventually the Storm\u2019s home games were moved from Painesville Recreation Park to Classic Auto Group Park, home of the Captains.<\/p>\n
In December 2018, Castro emerged as a candidate for a job opening in the Brewers\u2019 minor-league system. He said a friend in Milwaukee\u2019s front office recommended him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not something I was looking to do,\u201d said Castro in 2021. \u201cI was focused on what we were doing at Lake Erie College, building momentum in the program and working toward being the kind of coach I wanted to play for. When this came up, I guess you could say I was surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n
While coaching at LEC, Castro secured grants to purchase a Rapsodo radar system and Edgertronic SC 1 super-slow-motion video camera. He used those tools to bring the Storm into baseball\u2019s data mainstream.<\/p>\n
Castro believes his familiarity with state-of-the-art baseball data-gathering tools and the ability to communicate with players were key factors in his making the jump from Division II college coaching directly to the professional ranks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came in with a pretty good understanding of where Major League Baseball is going (with data),\u201d Castro said in 2021. \u201cAs a coach, the most important things you bring to the table are reliable information and the ability to make that information digestible to individual players.<\/p>\n
Castro spent 2019 to 2026 with the Brewers, and within the organization had stints as a Single-A pitching coach, minor-league pitching coordinator, director of pitching development, vice president of player development, and finally Senior Vice President of Player Development and Performance.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Lorain to Lake Erie College to a World Series championship and now general manager of the Athletics.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137,241,1423,726],"class_list":["post-321299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}