MILWAUKEE – If you have the constitution for it, running a team in one of baseball’s smaller markets can be a really good time. Sometimes there’s a Nintendo.
The 2026 World Series features presidents of baseball operations – the Brewers’ Matt Arnold, 46, and the Rays’ Erik Neander, 43 – who go back all the way to 2007, when Arnold took a job with Tampa Bay as a pro scout and Neander started as an intern. Over the following years, Arnold recalls early mornings in the office at Tropicana Field, sitting around a big table sipping coffee with a group of eager executives that included Arnold, Neander and their boss, Andrew Friedman, plus Chaim Bloom, James Click and, starting in 2009, Peter Bendix, all of whom would someday run their own baseball ops department.
Arnold once described the office, complete with a Nintendo gaming system, as “the kids running the asylum a little bit.”
Or maybe more than a little bit. Neander recalls late nights at the Rays’ Spring Training complex in Port Charlotte, Fla., where both had to get their ID checked by the overnight security staff to ensure they weren’t intruders. They probably didn’t help their cause by attempting to scare each other.
“You can imagine the offices of Port Charlotte late at night get very quiet. It’s very dark outside,” Neander said Thursday. “And it leads to opportunities to rattle someone’s cage, should you be so immature to choose to do such things.”
“He’s constantly messing with you,” Arnold said. “He would literally crawl on the floor under my desk and grab both of my legs and shake them. When you think there’s no one else in the building, that is absolutely terrifying.”
It’s all out of love.
“He’s got a huge head. Like, you can put the 8 1/4-sized cap on him, literally, an actual giant head,” Arnold said. “But it’s filled with a lot of good stuff.”
The word both men often use when looking back on that time is “freedom.” Without the crushing pressures felt by their counterparts at American League East powerhouses like the Yankees and Red Sox, they could try things and see what worked.
A lot of it worked. Arnold and Neander were part of Tampa Bay’s first World Series appearance in franchise history in 2008, and the team reached the postseason three more times in the following five years.
“We were able to run the Rays like an Etch A Sketch, a little bit,” Arnold said. “You could shake it up and say, ‘Let’s try this.’ We were the Devil Rays, you know what I mean? It was like, ‘We haven’t been very good, so let’s try something new.’”
Given their history and their similar markets, is it a surprise that their teams look so similar today?
The Brewers and Rays were the Majors’ top two offenses this season in batting average, hits, infield hits, bunt hits and sacrifice bunt attempts, and they were top five in stolen bases. On the flip side, they were both in the bottom 10 in home runs. The Brewers won 103 games, most in the Majors and a franchise record. The Rays won 98 games, tops in the AL.
“Incredibly fortunate to be around just a vast group of talented, driven, curious people,” Neander said. “That kind of mentality is well-established throughout the entirety of our organization, and presumably the same thing has taken place in Milwaukee.
“I mean, if you aren't getting better being surrounded by people like Matt and many others, then that's on you. I don’t know how you couldn’t. Just a great environment to learn, to learn, to grow, to have the creative freedom to find ways to do things better.”
• • •
Arnold’s baseball journey began in his grandfather’s 1977 Chevrolet Cheyenne.
Born in Oxnard, Calif., west of Los Angeles, Arnold was working toward his economics degree at the University of California-Santa Barbara when he scored a sit-down with then-Angels farm director Tony Reagins to talk about a career in baseball. Reagins asked Arnold what exactly he wanted to specialize in. Arnold didn’t have an answer.
“I didn’t even know there were different verticals within the baseball operations department,” Arnold told MLB.com in 2022, when he was promoted to the top of Milwaukee’s baseball ops department. “I was like, ‘I will do anything.’”
Arnold’s first job was in the Dodgers’ front office in 2000, mostly on the business side. Every day, Arnold commuted 100 miles each way between Santa Barbara and Dodger Stadium in his grandfather’s old truck to shuttle players around, interact with fans for in-game scoreboard features and generally help wherever needed.
That was fun, but baseball operations called. Arnold spun that experience into a job with the Rangers in 2002, and when he went to the Winter Meetings that December looking for a job, a rising front-office star named Jon Daniels was kind enough to let Arnold sleep on his hotel room floor. Daniels is now a Rays senior adviser.
It paid off. Arnold got a full-time job with the Reds as assistant director of pro scouting, moved to the Rays five years later as a pro scout and then director of pro scouting, and was involved in interviewing then-Brewers special assistant Craig Counsell for the Rays’ managerial opening that ultimately went to Kevin Cash in 2014. Arnold was impressed by Counsell and liked what he had to say about the Brewers, so when an opportunity came along in Milwaukee in October 2015, Arnold was the first hire of new Brewers GM David Stearns as vice president and assistant general manager.
And in October 2022, when Stearns transitioned out of the role, Arnold ascended to the top of the Brewers’ baseball operations department. The club has won the NL Central every year since, and it has baseball’s best regular-season record over the past three years.
• • •
For all the brilliant baseball minds who have come and gone from Tampa Bay, spreading the Rays’ influence throughout the industry, Neander is different in one way. He never left.
Neander has essentially never worked anywhere else in his professional life. After graduating from Virginia Tech, he spent a summer working as a data-collecting intern for Baseball Info Solutions, and he used that as a springboard to a baseball operations internship with the Rays in January 2007.
Neander has been there ever since, serving two decades for the same organization. He has gone from intern to full-time hire in October 2007, to manager of baseball research and development in 2009, to director of baseball operations in 2011, to vice president of baseball operations in 2014, to senior VP of baseball operations and general manager in 2016 and, finally, to president of baseball operations in September 2021.
Neander worked under Friedman and team president Matt Silverman, who oversaw the club’s baseball operations department for three years between Friedman’s departure for the Dodgers and Neander’s ascension. Neander was here when the club emerged from the Devil Rays days to become a regular contender under manager Joe Maddon. He was here when the club was rebuilt under a young Cash.
And Neander is still with the club, having guided the Rays to six postseason appearances – and two trips to the World Series – over the past eight years.
Speaking Thursday, Neander was reminded of something he said when he was promoted to his current role: “It started as a four-month internship, and somehow I'm still here. Love for the game led to a career. It was a dream opportunity then, and it's a dream opportunity now.”
Five years later, Neander said it’s still true. There might not be a Nintendo in the office anymore, and he might not be jump-scaring his colleagues quite as often, but this franchise still means everything to him.
“There's no organization that I'd rather work for than this one, and it has so much to do with the people that are here, their love of this game, their love of this organization and the belief that we can win here,” Neander said. “Each win here, whenever they take place – a regular-season win to a run like this – the satisfaction that comes with it is just far greater than I think it would be anywhere else.
“I’ve always found that kind of satisfaction multiplier here and meaning, and it’s something I don't take for granted, for the opportunities that I've received here, that others have received here. Winning is obviously the goal, but when you can load it up with the amount of meaning that comes with doing it here, there's nothing like it – not just for me, but for many of us – and we want to find a way to get it done. And we’re close.”
That never changes. There’s a text chain with Arnold, Neander, Friedman, Bloom, Bendix and other former Rays execs, and it lit up when the Rays won the ALCS and set a date in the World Series with the Brewers.
“I had an incredible run down there for almost 10 years with great people who are now scattered all over the industry,” Arnold said. “A lot of my good friends are still over there. I think the No. 1 thing I learned over there is to make sure you’re surrounded by good people and have a really good process, and hopefully results will follow.”