Recently retired five-time Gold Glove outfielder Jason Heyward is joining the Dodgers’ front office as a special assistant. Wednesday was his first day on the job at Dodger Stadium, but he said he officially started at the beginning of the month.
“I asked for an opportunity,” Heyward said. “I asked for an opportunity to learn. I have a goal of potentially one day being in the front office. But I understand there’s a lot I have to learn on this side of things. It’s great to be a player, it’s great to have that experience. I think that will help me along the way. But at the same time, I knew it was important to learn to scout, how to evaluate players, learn the R&D, analytics, terminologies and things like that.”
Heyward, who played for the Dodgers in 2023 and part of 2024, said he started reaching out to teams during spring training about his career pivot.
When he retired from playing, announcing the decision in March after a 16-year major-league career, he was never planning to fully walk away from the game. This role gives him the opportunity to explore different departments before eventually committing to a specialty.
Heyward expects player development to come naturally. He was essentially already functioning in that kind of role for his younger teammates in the late stages of his playing career. But he’s excited to develop his player evaluation skills.
“What I appreciate is, they don’t want to just say, ‘Alright J, come on in here, and you have to go do this, you have to enjoy it and be good at it,’ without me having a chance to really see what it is I want to do,” Heyward said. “So right now, everything’s on the table, but it is a process, starting from the ground up.”
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