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Earlier this week, the Diamondbacks ownership pulled the plug on the Tony La Russa/Dave Stewart/Chip Hale regime after a 69-93 season. With an entire clean slate, the first thing the Diamondbacks need to do is figure out who runs the personnel department. With La Russa no longer having final say and the next GM free to run the team as he or she (this might spoil things) fits. The Diamondbacks want to have their next GM in place by the end of the World Series and their next manager set up by the Winter Meetings because you don't want to have a baseball team without a direction by that point.
Nick Cafardo, from the Boston Globe and a major MLB insider, tweeted out this as it relates to the early set of candidates for the job.
Source: Bryan Minniti, Mike Bell, Ray Montgomery, Peter Woodfork and Kim Ng are all in the running for D'Backs GM job.
— Nick Cafardo (@nickcafardo) October 6, 2016
Diamondbacks fans should be familiar with all of these candidates since they've been previously linked to the Diamondbacks in some capacity. Minniti is the current Diamondbacks assistant GM after being hired away from the Washington Nationals. Ray Montgomery was the Diamondbacks scouting director and key decision maker in terms of the draft. Montgomery has drafted multiple Diamondbacks contributors such as Jake Lamb, Archie Bradley, Jake Barrett, and Braden Shipley. Ng has been rumored for GM jobs for the past 7 years, including the last two times the Diamondbacks searched for a GM before hiring Kevin Towers and Dave Stewart. Peter Woodfork used to be the AGM for the Dbacks during the Josh Byrnes era. Bell is the Diamondbacks current farm director, holding that post since the 2011 season when the team overhauled its scouting department after Tom Allison's departure.
In terms of the hiring process, all five candidates can be interviewed immediately since they are either a part of MLB operations or in the Diamondbacks organization already. Ng is the only candidate that wasn't a member of the Diamondbacks front office at some point. This isn't going to be the final list as more candidates put their names in the hat. The Diamondbacks have lagged behind in the analytics department, hiring front office types that place almost all of their scouting in the traditional process. In Monday's press conference, President and CEO Derrick Hall did mention that the team would place a higher emphasis in analytics with their next hire.