Long Island's Matt Daley grateful to be running Yankees' scouting department

DUNEDIN, Fla. — In September 2014, Matt Daley received a call most major leaguers get at some point.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman called to tell the righthander, a product of Garden City High School who was born in Flushing and moved to Long Island at the age of 11 and who had pitched a combined 20 games for the club from 2013-14, that he was being released.

It is the kind of call Cashman has made hundreds of times as GM.

But while Cashman was done with Daley the baseball player, that didn’t mean he was done with Daley.

“We were having a conversation, and he was great about it, he does this with a lot of different players, obviously. He asked me, ‘Do you want to keep playing?’” Daley, the Yankees director of pro scouting since 2021, told Newsday. “I said, ‘Yeah, I do want to keep playing.’ He said, ‘OK, if that changes let us know because we might have something for you.’’’

Daley, who won a state baseball title in 2000 at Garden City under longtime coach Rich Smith, didn’t know it at the time, but the initial groundwork had been laid for him becoming, fairly quickly, a respected-across-the-game executive.

Hanging up that day, though, nothing of the sort was on Daley’s mind. An undrafted free agent who signed with the Rockies in 2004 out of Bucknell and grinded his way through the minors before making his major-league debut in 2009, Daley wasn’t ready to give up on his in-uniform dreams.

“I went the entire offseason working out like I was going to keep playing,” Daley said.

But only one team, the Astros, showed an interest and they soon “medically red-flagged me.” Daley would need thoracic outlet surgery, and it was then, having previously had surgeries on his right shoulder and right elbow, he decided his playing days were over.

He circled back to the Yankees.

After multiple conversations with the Yankees’ then-director of pro scouting, Billy Eppler, who later served as GM of the Angels and Mets, Daley signed a one-year contract as a professional scout.

“(As a player) he was very thoughtful and inquisitive about process and the game and the intricacies of the game,” Cashman said. “He projected to be someone that could easily transition and be a contributing force as a non-player. Some players just play to play because they’re talented and physically gifted. With Matt Daley, obviously, we saw he was not just gifted physically but also came with a deeper side of intellect, and we felt he would benefit us in the front office in some capacity.”

Daley’s first-year assignments included the Mets and Blue Jays organizations, and he approached the inexact science that is scouting humbly; not always the case with former big-league players.

“The biggest thing is, a former player, going into any other role, whether it’s a coaching role, a scouting role, whatever, they have to be ready and willing to go back into the trenches,” said Tim Naehring, the Yankees vice president of baseball operations who has been with the organization since 2007. “It’s like starting your career over again. It’s like the first time you’re getting on a bus in Single-A.”

Naehring, though not taking the same journey as Daley, experienced a similar one as he earned, after a major-league career that lasted from 1990-97, an industry reputation as a top talent evaluator.

Daley, who from the start picked the brains of Naehring and another well-respected evaluator, longtime Yankees scout Jay Darnell, instantly embraced his new profession.

“I loved going to a ballpark and trying to figure out how a player could help impact the Yankees,” Daley said.

His superiors noticed.

“His demeanor, his work ethic, his evaluation abilities, how he framed his opinions, how he listened, his commitment, all those things,” Cashman said. “A lot of boxes getting checked.”

Daley soared up the ranks, serving as a pro scout from 2015-17 before becoming assistant pro scouting director in 2018. Daley was the co-director, along with Dan Giese, from 2019-20 and assumed his current duties in 2021. It was, to say the least, a fast rise from the aluminum bleachers scouts often sit in at minor-league ballparks to department head.

“If I have internal candidates that have put forth the time and effort, I like to promote from within,” Cashman said. “He was a logical, kind of automatic, choice because of who he was and what he was providing already.”

Daley oversees a staff of 17 as the Yankees have one of the largest such groups in baseball. That makes them stand out in an era that has seen, over the last decade-plus as more and more clubs are run strictly by analytics, a steady erosion of the number of pro scouts employed (make no mistake, the Yankees analytics wing wields its share of power).

In addition to the Yankees, the Royals, Rays, Padres, Phillies and the Dodgers also have large pro scouting departments. That’s about it.

For many teams, pro scouting director has become somewhat of an empty title, the position sometimes filled by those with a spotty at best scouting background or, worse, someone who simply doesn’t believe in scouting.

“Very well respected in our industry,” one veteran National League scout said of Daley. “He backs his guys. That’s the kind of guy you want to work for, especially in this environment.”

The 43-year-old Daley, who lives in Hoboken with his wife, Clare, and 11-year-old son, C.J., and soon-to-be-8-year-old daughter, Quinn, remains very much in touch with his Long Island roots as his parents, John and Lynn, still live in Garden City.

He said it is not a stretch to say he pinches himself, as someone who grew up in the area, when considering the position he has and where he has it.

“I do not take this for granted. At all,” Daley said. “I know how extremely lucky I am to get to do what I do on a daily basis. To be paid by the best organization in the history of this sport, to help us try to win a world championship and to get to watch baseball for a living. Just extremely lucky.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.