Smart Baseball, Smart Business
With his work in the front office, Galen Carr ’97 helps lead Los Angeles Dodgers to the top of the game
Galen Carr ’97 found a familiar spot leaning on the fence along the third-base line at Coombs Field during a recent Mules varsity baseball game. As vice president of player personnel for Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers and a longtime talent evaluator, Carr has spent a lot of time during his 25 years in professional baseball leaning on fences watching games.
Carr’s job involves evaluating on-field talent, and he and his front-office colleagues are among the very best in the business, evidenced by the two World Series titles the Dodgers have won in the past five years and the team’s standing as baseball’s premier franchise. Including the 15 years he spent working in the front office of the Boston Red Sox before joining the Dodgers, Carr has helped shape five World Series champions.
Put simply, Carr’s job is to work with others in the Dodgers’ front office to evaluate a player’s talents, determine that player’s financial value to the team, and then devise a plan to convince that player to sign a contract.
Lately, the Dodgers have figured out how to do that better than other teams in baseball.
Carr, a lifelong baseball fan who grew up in New Hampshire cheering for the Red Sox, is quick to credit others for the Dodgers’ success, including his boss, President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman. “Obviously, everything’s a team effort and by nature our organization is super collaborative,” he said, pausing to watch the action on the field. “No one in our organization would ever claim to be responsible for any one player acquisition.”
True.
But it’s also true that Carr has played a key role in the Dodgers’ recent efforts to scout, evaluate, and sign the top players from Japan and Asia, an area where the Dodgers have excelled. Since relocating from his home in Vermont to Los Angeles in 2020, Carr has made near-monthly scouting trips to Asia during a time when the Dodgers have signed the top ball players from the Pacific Rim, including Rōki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and others.
It’s been smart baseball and smart business.
The Dodgers have become the most popular MLB franchise in Japan, and that global reach has allowed the franchise to increase its financial resources, expand payroll, and sign the best players regardless of their country of origin. In addition to being seen as a successful franchise on the field and in business, the Dodgers are also considered the most innovative in their willingness to get creative with player contracts.
In 2023, the Dodgers signed generational superstar Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year, $700-million contract in which all but $20 million will be deferred over 10 years, beginning in 2034.
“Being a part of the Dodgers organization has been a lot of fun,” Carr said. “It’s a special place to work. Among other things, the Dodgers’ player acquisition history is something that we’re all proud of. There are so many talented people working on both the baseball and business sides, the opportunities to continue to learn and grow every day are endless. And ownership’s unwavering support of our baseball operations department has been pretty extraordinary.”
American studies and Spanish
Carr, who was a starting pitcher for the Mules under longtime coach Tom Dexter, was back in Waterville to watch a few games. His son, Miles ’28, plays for the Mules as a reserve second baseman. Carr watches most of the games on a live feed from California or wherever he is traveling.
Carr majored in American studies at Colby, which he loved, and took a few Spanish courses, as well. During the fall of his junior year, he spent a semester abroad in Spain, which expanded his perspective on the world and helped him gain confidence with another culture and language.
Those life skills, along with the competitive edge of being a student athlete and learning to overcome challenges and confront failures while depending on the support of teammates, have helped him repeatedly rise to the top of a hyper-competitive field.
On the diamond and off, Colby was central to Carr’s success. Growing up, Carr loved baseball but never envisioned a career in baseball beyond his youthful dreams. His Colby experiences shifted his perspective.
The idea of a non-playing career in baseball began during the summer between his junior and senior years, when he interned for a minor league baseball team, the Vermont Expos, in Burlington. Soon after, he met a couple of Amherst College graduates who worked for the Montreal Expos, now the Washington Nationals.
‘When I’m at Dodger Stadium, or in our major league clubhouse, sometimes I’ll just step back, breathe, and appreciate how fortunate I am to be so connected to a sport that has occupied such a big place in my heart since I was a kid.’
Galen Carr ’97
If they could do it, why not him?
“I don’t think there was ever any kind of vision about what a potential career looked like. I was just of the mind, ‘If I have the chance to be part of the baseball industry and get paid for it, I can’t possibly imagine anything cooler than that,’” he said. “When I’m at Dodger Stadium, or in our major league clubhouse, sometimes I’ll just step back, breathe, and appreciate how fortunate I am to be so connected to a sport that has occupied such a big place in my heart since I was a kid.”
‘My favorite place in the world’
As a senior at Colby, he checked in with a couple of contacts in the industry and followed up on the advice of his parents, “who strongly suggested that reaching out to network and ask questions was a good place to start.”
After he graduated, Carr worked for one year as a humanities teaching and coaching intern at Northfield Mount Hermon, a preparatory school in western Massachusetts, then moved to Boston, where he “dabbled” in finance for another year at Salomon Smith Barney. All the while, he worked the baseball angle, reaching out to anyone in the industry who was willing to chat.
In 1999, he landed an interview with Ben Cherington, then an assistant director of player development for the Red Sox—and one of Amherst graduates he had met previously—for a front-office internship. Cherington is now general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“Walking into an empty Fenway Park, which was undoubtedly my favorite place in the world, to talk about an internship opportunity was a surreal experience,” he said.
Carr got the internship, landed a full-time job a year later, and then ascended the ranks, becoming advance scouting coordinator and a major league scout before serving as a special assignment scout. Prior to joining the Dodgers, his duties with the Red Sox involved evaluating Boston’s minor league affiliates as well as assignments in Asia and Latin America, where his international experience at Colby and his ability to speak Spanish proved helpful.
During his time with the Red Sox, he worked closely with another Colby graduate, Brian O’Halloran ’93.
If landing an interview felt surreal, working for the Red Sox was a dream come true, and being part of the front office that built the franchise’s first World Series team in 86 years in 2004 was something “I could have never imagined,” he said. The Sox won World Series titles again in 2007 and 2013.
In 2014, the Dodgers hired Carr as director of player personnel, and he became vice president of player personnel in 2019.
Carr said it was surprisingly easy to leave the franchise he grew up loving and that fueled his lifelong passion for baseball. The Dodgers seemed to want him more than the Red Sox did, and there was more opportunity for growth.
With the Dodgers, he provides input on all major and minor league player acquisitions with a current focus on the international markets. He spent his first 10 years with L.A. overseeing professional scouting, the department that assesses other teams’ major and minor league players. He regularly visits the Dodgers’ minor league teams to watch games, and continues to travel internationally across Latin America, as well as to Asia.
And occasionally back to Waterville.
