Christmas carols played in the gift shop of the Cracker Barrel as Jack Zduriencik walked in on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He has a history with the restaurant. In the mid-70s, when he was the wide receivers and tight ends coach at Austin Peay, another coach on staff told him to skip breakfast before their drive to North Carolina for a recruiting trip. They would eat in Lebanon, Tenn., where the chain’s first restaurant opened in 1969.
“I’m dying here,” he told the coach after they passed Nashville. “I have to eat.”
He was reassured. “You’re going to love it.”
Before a career as an MLB scout and executive that spanned three decades and reached its apex with seven years as the general manager of the Seattle Mariners, Zduriencik, a New Castle native, was a coach. After Austin Peay, he returned to Western Pennsylvania, coaching football and baseball at Clairton. Coaching in Florida led to his introduction to scouting and the beginning of a career that included a stop as the Pirates’ scouting director. Now Zduriencik, 67, is back in his hometown, working as a pre- and post-game radio analyst for Pirates games on KDKA-FM for the past three seasons.
“I’m not a talk-show host. I don’t want to be controversial,” Zduriencik said. “I just want to analyze what’s going on and give the people insight.”
At present, Zduriencik’s right arm is in a sling, the result of recent elbow surgery. The heavy-lifting portion of his preparation for the 2019 season begins after New Year’s, when he’ll read everything he can — Baseball America guides, the Bill James handbook, magazines, with an emphasis on the NL Central — but already, he has begun. He watches MLB Network, follows the Arizona Fall League and occasionally calls friends in other front offices to ask about a player or team, though he does less of that these days.
“Just stay abreast,” he said. “ Try to stay ahead of the curve.”
He doesn’t know if the bone chips in his elbow resulted from time spent on the golf course in recent years or his past athletic career. After playing quarterback for New Castle in addition to baseball, he played at California (Pa.) and signed with the Chicago White Sox. After two seasons in their minor league system, he came back to Cal and got his bachelor’s degree in 1974. An old friend connected him with a coach at Austin Peay, and two days later he was in the car, headed to Tennessee.
His coaching career led him to Clairton and later to Tarpon Springs, Fla., where New York Mets scouting director Joe McIlvaine recruited him to be a scout. “‘You’ve got a good background for it, you’ve played at all levels, you’ve done enough, you’ve coached, you’ve got your college education,’” McIlvaine told him.
“Try it. If you like it, you might be something good in the game. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to coaching.”
In the fall of 1982, Zduriencik married his wife, Debbie, and moved to Oklahoma to become an area scout. The first player he signed, Scott Little, reached the majors with the Pirates. He moved back to Florida, Debbie’s home state, in 1989, when he became a national crosschecker. Four months later, the Pirates called.
“It was interesting because there was a huge transition that happened while I was there,” Zduriencik said. “They had just made the playoffs in ’90. Now I’m there in ’91, we make the playoffs again, ’92, we make the playoffs again. But it was interesting because Larry Doughty, who was the GM who hired me, got fired the next year. We made the playoffs, he got fired that winter. Ted Simmons came in, took over, so I worked for Ted. And then in ’93, they said to Ted, you’re breaking up the club. That’s when he had to get rid of everybody.”
After Cam Bonifay took over as Pirates general manager, Zduriencik returned to the Mets before joining the Los Angeles Dodgers as the director of international scouting. He spent nine years with the Milwaukee Brewers as scouting director and special assistant to the GM. He became the first non-GM to win Baseball America’s executive of the year award, and in 2008 Seattle asked for an interview.
“The thing you learn is, you don’t know anybody,” Zduriencik said of being a first-time GM. “You know them, maybe, from over the years. You bring a few people with you, but for the most part, everybody else is foreign. Who are your good scouts? Who are your good minor league people?”
Having served as a scouting director and minor league director, he realized the priority both positions held in the baseball operations hierarchy. But the two need analytics to function, forming what he referred to as “the three branches of government.” He pointed to new Baltimore Orioles GM Mike Elias’ recent hiring of Sig Mejdal, formerly a special assistant with the Houston Astros, as assistant GM as evidence of the importance of analytics, which help confirm or rebut what the scouts see.
“In this day and age, the way the game is going, the way it’s been for the last several years, analytics are interwoven into everything the scouting director does or the farm director does,” he said.
Zduriencik served as Seattle’s GM from 2009 until ’15, when the Mariners fired him in August. They did not make the playoffs in any of his seven seasons there but finished a game out of the wild card in 2014. Zduriencik understood the circumstances around his dismissal.
“I’d always looked at it as, I was appreciative of the opportunity,” he said. “It didn’t work out like I hoped it would. My expectations were considerably higher than what they ended up there.”
His nights are committed to the Pirates, but he spends time with family when he can. His daughter still lives in the area, and he still has family in New Castle. Zduriencik worked about 140 games last year, bringing his experience at every level of baseball operations to the booth.
“I understand what a manager can say, what he can’t say,” he said. “I understand what a GM can say, what he can’t say. I get it. So as a result, I don’t have all the answers and I’m not always right; I just try to give insight.”
Bill Brink: bbrink@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrinkPG.
First Published: November 30, 2018, 12:00 p.m.
