This story was excerpted from Aiden Stepansky's Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
PITTSBURGH -- Justin Newman began a formal interview process for the Pirates' director of amateur scouting job around mid-September. But with a decade of experience already in the organization, he’d been informally working toward the position for years.
“It's always something that I had my eye on to some degree, and I think it maybe came more into focus for me over the last year or so,” Newman told MLB.com Monday.
Newman, 31, was promoted in October to lead the Pirates’ Draft process. Assistant general manager Kevan Graves filled the role in 2026.
With a background in quantitative analysis and research and development, Newman brings a unique perspective to the position. He now leads a team with recent success stories in the Draft, from adding cornerstones like Paul Skenes and Konnor Griffin along with up-and-coming prospects like Seth Hernandez (the Pirates' No. 1 prospect and No. 9 in baseball, per MLB Pipeline) and Murf Gray (Pirates' No. 4, MLB No. 89).
“I think to get to lead a group of people that are already operating at such a high level, not everyone stepping into these kinds of roles gets that opportunity,” Newman said. “A lot of times, you might get this kind of opportunity because something wasn't going well before. And we're starting off at such a high point, a high standard for me to live up to.”
Newman joined the Pirates in 2017 as a baseball informatics intern after graduating from the University of Rochester. His various posts in the organization have given him different angles on the Draft process, moving closer to the decision-making each time.
Pittsburgh interviewed external candidates for the position before landing on Newman. The conversations focused less on getting to know Newman and more on how he would approach a role with significantly different responsibilities. Newman’s most recent job as the director of player analysis put him in charge of a “handful of people.” He now oversees more than two dozen.
“I think for me the biggest change is I've been super involved in the Draft to date, but now it's a totally different vantage point of trying to think about how we best develop our people and bring in really good people and set up a process that allows us to have sustainable success, as opposed to being an input to the process or a part of the process before,” Newman said.
Baseball’s evolving scouting landscape has changed the role of traditional scouts, but Newman still considers them essential.
He described the scouts as “the core of what we do,” while noting the job is different than when he broke in. Newman pointed to several times over the past few years when a scout’s relationship with a player allowed Pittsburgh to sign a player that other teams had thought unsignable.
“My lens isn't in scouting, so I'm not going to be on the road constantly the same way that maybe some or most scouting directors really are,” Newman said. “... So I think leadership for me looks a little bit different in this role. And I think as much as I'm not going to be mentoring our scouts in the kind of eyeball-evaluation piece of it, I'm going to be learning from them as much as I'm probably giving them on that side of it, [while] trying to get to a spot where I can help grow their understanding of how we're making decisions and the broader evaluation space and what we're valuing at the Major League level.”