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Yesterday, the Cardinals announced one of the most open secrets in baseball and fired GM Walt Jocketty, probably leading to the eventual release of manager Tony LaRussa. This now means that three general managers have been fired out of one of the most embarrassing divisions in baseball this season (Tim Purpura and Dave Littlefield were the others).

This all represents a shift in the philosophy of baseball, as the Astros hired an old-school baseball guy in Ed Wade in a hire that was roundly criticized while the Pirates hired a baseball guy in Neal Huntington who also plays a large hand in scouting while Jocketty’s firing seems to have been directly precipitated by the hiring of Jeff Lunhow as scouting director. Outside of the Astros, teams seem to be willing to take chances on inexperience so far as Huntington has no experience running a team and Jocketty’s firing seems to have a lot to do with strife based around Lunhow.

Teams are no longer looking to the good old boys network for their GM and other hires, instead taking chances on the many fresh-faced, well-educated people out there looking for a career in baseball. These people, like Lunhow, Huntington, Paul DePodesta, and Chris Antonelli, have ideas about the game and team building that have yet to be proven wrong and are, therefore, worth trying just in case some new and different positive result comes from them. The experienced guys, meanwhile, have generally been proven wrong already and are, therefore, not receiving the chances they may have received in the past.

This is actually bigger than baseball, as it represents the static of the world (and globalization) in general as the game becomes more focused on international scouting and more dependent on technology. No one quite knows how to work this system for the best success yet, but everyone seems to believe that the solution will eventually be a new idea and not the way things have been done for decades, meaning that young blood is gradually moving its way up from scouting director and grunt work to computer whiz and general manger.

Opinions are being replaced by hard facts and new ideas are becoming more prevalent. They are being given the chances that ideas that once-failed ideas will not receive, especially if it is a second chance (see DePodesta, Paul). It is all about what is new, different, and potentially successful; not what is old, consistent, and potentially failure.

And that’s why Walt Jocketty got fired. He didn’t have ideas that went along with what the rest of baseball was doing because the front office is quickly becoming a young man’s world while a man who has guided teams to six division championships and one world series championship obviously didn’t build his roster to properly whether the death of a player (the second in five years), injury, and general misfortune. And he obviously should have been prepared for all of these things or should have had a Macbook preparing the scenarios for him.

Eventually this ridiculous tide will shift back to the baseball side of things, but right now the game is about the Jeff Lunhows and the Neal Huntingtons, not the Walt Jockettys and Tony LaRussas.

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