A Welcome Addition: Emily Glass’ Journey to the Rockies Scouting Department
By Jack Etkin
Her job title is curiously multifaceted and has historic overtones: scout/scouting operations administrator. Before the Rockies began play in 1993, they had a small scouting staff in place to prepare for the First-Year Player Draft in 1992. But over this span of three decades, the organization has never had a female scout.
Until now.
Emily Glass joined the organization in early November and holds that hybrid title. She is assisting Marc Gustafson, senior director of scouting operations, with the day-to-day tasks in the amateur scouting department. That will be the scout operations administrator component. But Glass, 28, will not be confined to a desk at Coors Field. She will scout Colorado and Wyoming. As the area scout covering that territory, Glass will frequent games, evaluating players in those two states and writing reports on them.
This being the dead of winter, it will be a while before Glass, radar gun and stopwatch in hand, sits behind home plate in her two-state area. But Gustafson is preparing her by having her spend time with other Rockies scouts. Glass and Gustafson traveled to Orange County earlier this month where they met the Rockies’ two area scouts in Southern California, Tim McDonnell and Matt Hattabaugh, and Mike Ericson, one of their national crosscheckers, to watch games.
Glass also just spent several days in Puerto Rico, where she joined Julio Campos and Rafael Reyes, who scout that island for the Rockies, and national crosschecker Jay Matthews. The first weekend in March, Glass will join Assistant Director of Scouting Damon Iannelli in Houston for an annual college tournament at Minute Maid Park.
They will watch three games daily for three days at 11 a.m, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Six teams will participate — Baylor, LSU, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and UCLA. Pitch after pitch. Inning after inning. Glass will be evaluating individual player’s tools. She will scrutinize the action and velocity of pitches and critique deliveries. She will gauge running times, bat speed, power and swing paths. She will judge the first-step quickness of outfielders and infielders, their arm strength and accuracy. How adept are catchers at blocking balls and setting up targets, and how quickly and accurately do they throw to second base on a steal attempt?
And with any player, in addition to grading current scouting variables, there is the matter of projectability. Glass must assess a player’s tools today and try to determine what they will look like in the future, a task more complicated with younger, high school players, whose bodies are growing. And while assessing a smorgasbord of skills with her new colleagues, Glass, best of all, will be able to talk baseball for hours on end.
She has already learned much about the pertinent office details that support the Rockies’ amateur scouting staff. “She hit the ground running, maybe sprinting. And it’s been great,” Gustafson said. Glass has gone over depth charts on draft-eligible players this year. She has interacted with the Rockies’ beefed-up research and development department that can provide analytical data on draft-eligible players. She is familiar with scouting reports from the area scouts, scouting charts the club uses, computer systems and video systems. She participated in regional Zoom meetings with the area scouts that spanned four days as they analyzed the best players in their territories. And she spent Jan. 11–13 in meetings the Rockies held here with all their amateur and professional scouts.
“She’s getting thrown in the fire quick,” said Vice President and Assistant General Manager of Scouting Danny Montgomery, the first person from the Rockies’ organization to reach out to Glass and begin the hiring process in late October. “But I told her that when I met her. I was like, ‘There is not a lot of nursing here. You got to get ready. You got to be able to stay flexible to a lot of different areas of the game.’ And she’s going to take it and run with it, because she’s got that high energy that we’re looking for.”
Montgomery was an original Rockies hire, joining the organization in November 1991. He is extremely close to General Manager Bill Schmidt, their Colorado relationship dating to when Schmidt joined the organization as director of scouting in October 1999. The two have mutual respect and trust and a joined-at-the-hip bond that is unbreakable. In Montgomery, Schmidt has a confidante. They are keen evaluators. Their titles have changed over the years, but they are scouts at heart, always looking to add talent to the organization. When Montgomery learned of Glass, he quickly contacted Schmidt, telling him the Rockies needed to pursue her and getting Schmidt’s immediate permission to do so. Indeed, when Montgomery sizes up Glass, it is through a scouting lens.
“Look, it’s better to slow a person down than speed ’em up,” Montgomery said. “And for me, she has every bit of the speed that we need to enhance her whole being in our industry. And if we don’t do it, shame on us, because this is definitely a prospect.”
The Rockies hired Glass to fill an opening in the amateur scouting department that occurred when Sterling Monfort, who had been the assistant director of scouting operations, was promoted to director of professional scouting. That role had been vacant since Jon Weil left the organization in June.
Glass was born in Oakland, Calif., and grew up in Davis, Calif., which is about 15 miles west of Sacramento, as a huge Oakland A’s fan. She said as a kid she watched SportsCenter on ESPN as well as Baseball Tonight and has “always had a passion for the game my whole life.” She played baseball with her brother on youth teams until switching to softball in high school and college.
Glass graduated from Pomona College in 2015, majoring in public policy and politics with a minor in Spanish. The bilingual Glass was primarily a catcher — the brains on the field — and has always enjoyed the art of pitch calling and reading swings and has been attuned to defensive positioning.
For her senior thesis, Glass wrote about the changing demographics of Major League Baseball. She analyzed the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) youth program, her work dealing with the decrease in baseball participation by African-Americans and the increase in Latin American participation. The RBI program was started by the late John Young, who played briefly in the Majors and was a scout and scouting director and who Glass interviewed Young in the hospital late in his life.
Glass was awarded a prestigious Watson Fellowship, a one-year grant given to graduating seniors for self-designed research and exploration. Her baseball-oriented project examined international player development systems. She traveled to Aruba, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Chile, Australia and Japan. During her time in the Dominican Republic, Glass interned with Major League Baseball International. And in Japan, she worked alongside the MLB office in Tokyo to investigate their infrastructure, while also coaching a Little League team in Tokyo, an experience that proved daunting.
“I failed on a daily basis,” Glass said, “because culturally I couldn’t accomplish what I wanted to and connect with those guys.”
In Australia, Glass played baseball in a men’s league, “mostly second base just because of my arm strength.” But she also caught as well in Australia.
After her Watson Fellowship ended in August 2016, Glass reached the final round of interviews for a baseball operations assistant position with the New York Yankees but wasn’t hired. She ended up working for the Acme Smoked Fish Corp. in Brooklyn as an assistant to a sales executive. Glass worked at the firm for a year and a half. But with an interest in how certain pitches moved rather than how fish were smoked, she left and returned to California to work for a sports agency. Glass interviewed with several more clubs without getting a job offer.
“It was hard because I’d never really been rejected from anything before,” she said. “And it’s just hard to break into baseball.”
She discovered different teams are on different hiring schedules. And sometimes teams interviewed for a position that hadn’t been approved yet. The inner workings of baseball job seeking were a bit of a mystery. She was an outsider, nose pressed against the window. Not surprisingly, Glass experienced “some discouraging times.”
She was teaching skiing at Kirkwood, a resort about 40 miles south of Lake Tahoe, when the Miami Marlins reached out to her. The initial call came from a Marlins player development staff member. Other Marlins officials soon followed.
Surprisingly, the industry door was ajar. That had happened before, to the point where Glass had glimpsed the finish line but never quite got there. But this time the process ended well. She began working as the Marlins’ education coordinator in April 2018 and moved to Jupiter, Fla., site of Miami’s Spring Training complex.
Glass started a department to teach English to young Spanish-speaking players from Latin America. She hired teachers to work with the various Marlins farm teams and coordinated the instruction. Spanish was also taught to players who spoke English.
Language proficiency in baseball included a component that involved the player development staff. Glass and the team of people working with her made sure coaching instruction imparted to a player, baseball X’s and O’s, could be understood. What good would it do a player getting one-on-one teaching from a coach to partially grasp the coach’s suggestions? Similarly, when it came to developmental objectives set forth for each player, Glass made certain the player fully and clearly knew what they were to work on. In 2021, Glass began helping to ensure the players in the Marlins’ system understood and were able to use the analytical tools that could benefit them.
Glass traveled to each of the affiliates in the Marlins’ farm system. At the lower levels, a lot of her work was with Latin players, perhaps still learning and polishing their English. Additionally, training for dealing with the media was done with all the players. Glass made at least a half dozen trips yearly to the Marlins’ complex in the Dominican Republic, where she helped build the first computer lab at the complex and alongside the staff there helped rebuild their player development education programs.
With the Rockies, she has moved from the cultural education to the scouting side and, quite simply, has entered an area that always interested her.
“I’ve always been passionate about player evaluation,” Glass said, “and just looking out on the field and seeing what athletes stand out, even when I was a player and soon after. In my trips to the Dominican over the last few years, even though it wasn’t my role, if I’m watching a game, I’m going to be looking for those things. I was close with a lot scouts with the Marlins, and I tried to learn from them, definitely.”
Late last season, Glass’ time with the Marlins ended abruptly and rather surprisingly. In the third week of September, the Marlins informed her they were eliminating her position.
“There was no notice,” she said. “I got a phone call. I didn’t see it coming. There was some confusion or surprise about it. But I’m from northern California originally, and living in Jupiter, Fla., was very far from where I’m from. So I almost saw it as the end of a chapter.”
Glass went through a lengthy application process and was accepted in Major League Baseball’s first annual Diversity Pipeline Scout Development Program, which was held in Phoenix for a week in October. There were 29 people in the program, including 15 women.
There was daily classroom instruction, the opportunity to scout Arizona Fall League games in the Phoenix metro area and scout a college game between Arizona State and Long Beach State. Some of the report writing came after scouting an AFL night game and meant meeting a 2 a.m. deadline to turn in the report.
The attendees were divided into small groups. Glass and three others were in a group led by Jalal Leach, a Marlins pro scout. Glass was close to him during her time with the Marlins.
“We ran into each other in the Dominican a lot,” she said, “because I used to travel to the Dominican between six and eight times a year. I worked with him in the D.R. In the program in Phoenix, I was with him multiple hours a day, watching the games, breaking down hitters, breaking down pitchers, breaking down (batting practice).”
This scout development program was created by MLB and spearheaded by Tyrone Brooks, who is MLB’s senior director for front office and field staff for the diversity pipeline program. The Phoenix program also was created in partnership with the Buck O’Neil Professional Scouts and Coaches Association. Montgomery is vice-president of that group, and Fred Wright is a senior advisor.
Wright, a retired scout who once worked for the Rockies, was also an instructor at the Diversity Pipeline Scout Development Program.
Montgomery and Wright are from Charlotte. Montgomery considers Wright a mentor. When the program ended and Wright was back in Charlotte, Montgomery, knowing the Rockies had an opening in their amateur scouting area after Monfort moved to the professional scouting side, called Wright to ask about some of the more impressive and qualified candidates in the Phoenix program. Immediately, Wright tossed out Glass’ name.
“I mean, it was like a no-brainer,” Montgomery said. “That was the first person he brought up. Fred’s very detailed. He’s a very organized guy. I started taking notes and listening to him talk. He gave me three or four other names. I said, ‘Well, Fred, who’s the star?’ He said, ‘I just got through telling you the star.’ It was Emily.”
Montgomery was traveling at the time and asked Wright to get Glass’ number from Brooks and have Brooks send Montgomery some of her scouting reports from the Phoenix program.
“I’m not lying,” Montgomery said. “When I read the stuff, I was like, ‘Wow, this is like (the reports of) a 20-year veteran.’ It was very impressive, very thorough, very on point.”
Montgomery quickly called Schmidt, who Montgomery said “gave me carte blanche” to interview her. Montgomery also told Gustafson about Glass and wanted him to talk to her. Other calls were made to get other opinions about Glass. Schmidt was the area scout who signed Leach for the Yankees after they drafted him in the seventh round out of Pepperdine in 1990. Schmidt spoke to Leach, as did Montgomery.
Leach’s glowing comments mentioned Glass had a keen eye for talent, was comfortable writing scouting evaluations, comfortable with the scouting lingo, comfortable around scouts and executives in the game and very organized, very articulate.
Glass had planned to leave Jupiter before she was accepted in the Phoenix program. When she returned to Jupiter she was in “pure packing mode” when Montgomery called. “Immediately we kind of clicked,” Glass said.
She planned to take the southern route on her cross-country drive. But Montgomery asked if she could drive to Atlanta where Montgomery was covering the World Series, just so they could meet face-to-face. They had what Montgomery called “a great meeting” for about 45 minutes in a hotel where Montgomery was staying near the Atlanta airport on Oct. 30.
“Prior to even meeting her, I knew she was a strong candidate for any position,” Montgomery said. “I was like, man, her horizons are just as broad as you can ever get for an individual trying to get to the next level.
“But after meeting with her and realizing the upside she had and what she could do for us in a variety of roles, it was a no-brainer. She’s got upside and big-time upside.”
Montgomery asked Glass to stop in Denver where, among others, she could meet Gustafson, Schmidt, Vice President and Assistant General Manager of Baseball Operations and Assistant General Counsel Zack Rosenthal, Director of Player Development Chris Forbes, Assistant Director of Player Development Jesse Stender and other members of the front office.
Just as she did with Montgomery, Glass clicked with Gustafson in their initial conversation. She mentioned her father, Richard, had gone to Michigan, and they had repeatedly talked about The Team, The Team, The Team, drawing on a famous speech in November 1983 by legendary Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler to his Wolverines before a home game with hated rival Ohio State, a game Michigan won 24–21.
In his address, Schembechler told his players, “No man is more important than The Team. No coach is more important than The Team. The Team. The Team. The Team. And if we think that way, all of us, everything that you do, you take into consideration what effect does it have on my Team?”
“The big thing for me is there’s no task too small,” Glass said. “‘Gus’ and I kind of talked about that and team mentality and servant leadership in our first conversation. That’s kind of how it felt off the bat just gelling with the people here and talking about similar things.”
Maybe Glass was destined to work for the Rockies and get hired at the time she did. That’s not as cosmic as it sounds. Former Rockies manager Clint Hurdle has returned to the organization as a special assistant to the general manager. And Hurdle and Glass have had a connection for several years with Glass considering Hurdle a mentor.
“He’s like, ‘I can’t believe we work for the same organization,’” Glass said. “And I’m like, ‘Me neither, yeah.’”
Hurdle emails a daily message of encouragement, something he began in 2009. Glass was receiving those emails, and she and Hurdle began communicating by email. They first met on a back field at the Marlins’ complex in Jupiter when both were volunteering at a fantasy camp for children with special needs. Hurdle said Glass shared “some of the things on her job that she was trying to navigate through.” Hurdle said he shared some things he had experienced, including “some things I knew that wouldn’t work, because I got a lot of things I can tell you about that I know won’t work. Just stay away from those.”
After that initial conversation, Hurdle said he and Glass “just carved out time where we were talking weekly. The emails and texts continued to play out. It got to the point where we were probably touching base six, seven times a week but (with) one real phone conversation, (lasting) anywhere from half an hour to an hour.”
With Christmas approaching in 2020 and the pandemic raging, Glass was unable get home to California and had nowhere to go for Christmas. Hurdle, who lives with his wife and two children in Anna Maria Island off the west coast of Florida, said Glass reached out about coming to the beach.
“And I just took it to another level and said, ‘We got a property over here that nobody’s in right now. Come on over and spend Christmas with us.’ She came over and spent a week with the family.”
In mid-January 2021, Hurdle got to see Glass in her work element for the first time. Pete Mulry is a friend of Hurdle’s, a former baseball coach and a very successful one at Tampa Catholic High School. Tino Martinez and Luis Gonzalez played there for Mulry before going on to long Major League careers. Mulry founded the Peter J. Mulry Foundation, whose staff, according to the foundation’s web site is “dedicated to the education, training, coaching and teaching of life skills and core values to young people. Through our efforts we hope to increase awareness and to teach the core values we deem necessary for successful achievement.”
Hurdle and Glass participated in a Mulry Foundation panel discussion in Tampa that an audience watched via Zoom. It was an opportunity for Hurdle to watch Glass navigate questions and express her thoughts.
“I was picking up on things all the way along,” Hurdle said. “Very sharp person. Good listener. Creative lens. Lots of energy, which you’d expect.”
Hurdle said he gave Glass guidance after her Marlins job suddenly ended. And an upbeat, enthusiastic Glass contacted Hurdle after attending the program in Phoenix.
“It was encouraging to hear that excitement and thrill back in her voice, because the game can take it away from you from time to time,” Hurdle said. “So there was a new fresh opportunity, and she didn’t know where it was going to go. But she plugged into it. She gave it everything she had.”
Glass told Hurdle she had learned a lot and would love to apply the scouting skills she had learned. She received overtures from a couple organizations but not for positions that would put her on the path she desired.
“Then out of nowhere she said, ‘I got a call from the Rockies,’” Hurdle said. “I said, ‘Awesome.’ She goes, ‘I’m going to be talking to Danny Montgomery.’ I said, ‘Awesome.’”
Glass asked if Hurdle knew Montgomery. Hurdle said he knew “DMont,” as Montgomery is best known, very well. Hurdle said that perhaps in the course of her chat with Montgomery, Glass “can say I spent some time with Clint or he’s one of the guys I talked to about whatever.’ Let it happen organically, Hurdle stressed. It’s a guiding principle of his.
Gustafson reached out to Hurdle to get his thoughts and perspective on Glass.
“She said she knows you,” Gustafson said. “Does she really know you?”
“She’s been at my house for Christmas. I’ve known her for three years.”
Hurdle said, “If something that good is supposed to happen, this is how it happens. They were all on top of it, and I had nothing but good things to say.”
“She’s authentic, and she gets stuff done. That’s what I found out about her over time. And she’s not afraid to make a mistake. She’s transparent. There’s a high degree of accountability and ownership in things that she’s done.”
So how high is up for Glass?
“She’s going to have the opportunity to continue to grow within the game,” Hurdle said. “And I wouldn’t put a ceiling on her. I just wouldn’t put a ceiling on her.”
As the season unfolds and the first-year player draft in July nears, Gustafson plans to have Glass spend time with various area scouts to watch them work, learn from them, and again best of all, talk baseball. Montgomery said he intends to spend time in the field with Glass whether she’s with another scout or in her own territory. A grateful Glass was offered a job with the Rockies on Nov. 5 and began work on Nov. 8, choosing to learn as much as much as possible as soon as possible in the office. She said Sterling Monfort “has been extremely gracious in training me while he starts his new position. He has been fantastic.” She had similar praise for Gustafson and all his help.
“We’ve thrown her in the fire,” Montgomery said. “I mean, she’s not sitting there holding a pen. She’s working, and she’s doing a helluva job. You can tell that’s Emily; she has to be busy. She is very, very high energy. And again, I’d rather have somebody that you have to slow down than speed up. And that works in her favor.”
Glass said after her initial conversation with Montgomery, she wanted to learn what she could about the Rockies, the way any job seeker would research a potential employer. So she reached out to, among others, former Marlins co-workers with Rockies ties, to Brooks and to Wright to find out “what their sense is of the pulse here.”
“The one thing that continued to come out was just the positivity about the people here,” Glass said.
That feeling was reinforced earlier this month shortly after she spent three days here in meetings with all of the Rockies’ pro and amateur scouts.
“It was an amazing time meeting these guys, who care so much about this organization and what we’re building,” Glass said, “and also (care about) one another just as people and as Rockies family. The bond that I was folded into and the ones I was able to see were really unique. I’ve seen strong bonds in this industry, but the ones I was around the past few days and some of the guys I got to meet were just genuine, authentic people who care and want to help and want to build this thing and who really bleed purple.”
