Why Jeter feels Kim Ng had a ‘head start’ compared to him with learning Marlins system

Derek Jeter knows what Kim Ng is feeling right now. Ng is in her second week on the job as the Miami Marlins’ general manager, and there’s still a lot to learn.

She’s familiarizing herself with an entire organization of players, the colleagues she will collaborate with in baseball operations to make decisions, the South Florida community she hopes to embrace.

“It’s information overload,” Jeter said.

Just three years ago, Jeter was in a similar position. He had just taken over as CEO as part of the Marlins’ new ownership group, one tasked with putting the franchise through yet another rebuild, one yearning for sustained success, one prepared to endure a couple more bad seasons as a sacrifice for long-term stability. Those moves began to pay off last season, with the Marlins reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2003 and reaching the National League Division Series.

Can Jeter’s experience, having gone through what Ng is beginning to go through with the Marlins franchise, serve as a jumping-off point to potentially shorten Ng’s learning curve?

“I hope it does,” Jeter said. “I like to think she’s gotten into a situation where it’s a much stronger organization now maybe than when we got here three years ago, so she’s got a little bit of a head start.”

Jeter said when the new ownership group took over at the end of 2017 he “quite frankly didn’t know much about the organization” when it came to players beyond the big names on the MLB roster — most of whom were gone before the first game as he and the baseball operations staff began infusing the franchise with needed depth in the minor leagues. The Marlins now have a top-five minor-league system according to MLB Pipeline after being ranked toward the bottom of the league.

“I didn’t know what we had in the minor-league level,” Jeter said, “and I think it’s the same thing for Kim. You can learn from afar, but ultimately, you have to have the conversations with our scouting department, our player development, our analytics department. There’s a learning curve, but that’s why we’ve built up a very good baseball operations department, and everyone’s here to help us. We make decisions in a collaborative manner, and Kim obviously is trying to get up to speed as quick as she can.”

Ng said during her introductory news conference on Nov. 16 that her initial conversations with baseball operations members “felt incredibly comfortable.”

“I think that is a huge, huge factor in this,” Ng said.

Her three-plus decades of experience in baseball operations, including 21 years in MLB front offices with the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, will also help. She was an assistant general manager from 1998 to 2001 in New York (overlapping with Jeter’s rise as a player) with three World Series titles and held that title with the Dodgers for 10 years while also holding the title of vice president and also serving as Los Angeles’ farm director for a year in 2004.

“I’ve obviously had a long history [with Ng]. I’ve known Kim for a long time, and her resume speaks for itself,” Jeter said. “I mean, she’s someone that’s done everything that you can do.”

She spent the past nine years as the MLB’s senior vice president of baseball operations, primarily responsible for handling duties regarding international baseball operations.

“I knew it was gonna be a good fit for us,” Jeter said, noting that Ng was the first person he called when the general manager search began and that the decision became apparent after a couple conversations. “It was just a matter of if she wanted to get back into working for an organization. She hasn’t been in an organization for a few years now, but she was excited at the opportunity and we couldn’t be more excited.”