Statcast innovator joins Rangers' front office

The Rangers announced the addition of Daren Willman to the front office Friday. Willman is joining the organization as the senior director of research and development and applications for baseball operations.

Willman has worked on staff at Major League Baseball since 2016 as the director of research and development, where he spearheaded the development and creation of Statcast, Baseball Savant and MLB.com’s Prospects stats section.

Per the press release, Willman will be responsible for “the development and expansion of the Rangers’ baseball information systems. He will oversee a team of developers in the continued growth and improvement of the organization’s information infrastructure.”

Rangers president of baseball operations Jon Daniels said that the organization made Willman an offer before he joined MLB, but he ultimately accepted the offer with the league.

“A number of people in the office have maintained contact with him over the years,” Daniels said. “Obviously his skills and his resume are pretty apparent from a very public standpoint with Savant and all the work he's done with the league and all the resources that a lot of us in the game use.”

Daniels emphasized how important it is that Willman is able to take that information and present it in a way that everybody is able to understand it. With the Rangers, Willman will be able to work with the leadership team on Draft meetings and with the coaching staff to inform decision-making processes.

Daniels hopes that Willman’s work can streamline a lot of those decisions.

“Daren's very innovative, cutting edge and very creative in the way that he can use or take information and repackage it in ways to help a variety of end users make the most of it,” Daniels said. “I think it'll help us coming in and help us utilize information in a variety of decision-making processes. I think it'll help us in preparing information in a way that our players, coaches and scouts and other end users can utilize the information to help them prepare better. We’re really excited about it.”

Other hires and promotions

• Vinesh Kanthan is taking an expanded role in baseball operations in his third season with the organization. He joined the club in 2019 as a junior analyst and he has been promoted to manager of sports science and baseball operations.

• Minor League hitting coordinator Cody Atkinson has been promoted to director of hitting. He’s been with the organization since 2019 and spent the ‘20 season at the alternate training site.

• Taylor Cameron has been hired as a professional scout for the Rangers. He has previously worked as an area scout in Southern California for the Minnesota Twins. He was most recently with Seattle as a West Coast crosschecker through 2020.

• Graf Reiner and Ryan Stoll have both been added to the Baseball Systems department as data engineers. Reiner has worked with the Rangers before as a consultant and he has more than 25 years of experience working in information technology. Stoll comes to the organization after spending four years at Canon U.S.A. as a business intelligence analyst.

• Kawika Emsley-Pai has been hired as a coach at Triple-A Round Rock. Emsley-Pai was most recently the head baseball coach at Centralia (Wash.) College.

• Angel Peguero was promoted to the coaching staff at Double-A Frisco. He had been set to serve on the Arizona League Rangers staff in 2021. He spent '19 as a graduate assistant at his alma mater, Grambling State University.