As a senior at Wesleyan in 1996, Jed Hoyer sent his resume to all 30 professional baseball teams, hoping to fulfill his lifelong goal of working in a major league front office. When no offers came, he moved in other directions, spending time as an admissions officer at both Kenyon and his alma mater before finally settling in Boston in 2001 with a job at a consulting firm. But Hoyer’s dream of a job in baseball never died. When the Red Sox changed owners in 2002, a friend put the former Wesleyan baseball star in contact with the team, and he was hired as an intern for the club he had grown up idolizing as a New Hampshire native.
“I always wanted to work in baseball, but the hardest thing is to get the job,” Hoyer said. “When I got the opportunity I seized it. For me, it is the perfect job because my hobby and passion for baseball is now my career.”
In the first weeks after starting with the Sox, Hoyer immediately bonded with Theo Epstein, then the new Assistant General Manager, who needed help with research on opposing players.
“No one in the office was doing the quantitative analysis that Theo needed,” Hoyer said. “He grabbed me to help him out and we hit it off right away.”
Since then, Hoyer has been with Epstein, now the General Manager for the Sox, every step of the way. Hoyer moved up in the ranks first to baseball operations assistant, and is now Assistant to the GM. He has established himself as one of the rising stars in the business, as well as joining the likes of Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick ’75 and Defensive Coordinator Eric Mangini ’94 as Wes alums who play essential roles for New England sports franchises.
In his current role, Hoyer is responsible for aiding Epstein in contract and trade negotiations. If another GM calls about a trade, it is Hoyer’s job to make sure that the Red Sox have all of the information needed for a quick response. But he has also been given the freedom to explore all facets of the organization, including the minor leagues and scouting.
“In a lot of ways I have had the perfect baseball grad school,” Hoyer said.
At the same time, it has been an interesting shift from being a die-hard Red Sox fan to a role where his passion is his job.
“I can’t watch from a fan’s perspective anymore,” Hoyer said. “The job has taken that out of me. Getting emotional is a useless operation. I do miss it sometimes but I have become a bigger fan of other sports because of it.”
Hoyer attributes much of his personal growth during his tenure to the great work atmosphere in the front office, where most people are between the ages of 25 and 35, as well as to Epstein’s tendency to engage his assistants in debate.
“It is a great dynamic,” Hoyer said. “Theo creates a pretty flat hierarchy and wants to hear from everyone. Some GM’s have very few people that they listen to but Theo gives us the chance to voice our opinions on decisions. We work long hours but the group we have is great.”
This past October, all of the hard work paid off, as the Red Sox ended their infamous 86-year drought by winning the World Series. Hoyer has numerous incredible memories from the Red Sox playoff run, including the clinching game in St. Louis, but it was actually a moment after the Game 6 ALCS win in New York that stands out.
“A lot of people forget how close that game was,” Hoyer said. “Tony Clark [of the Yankees] was the winning run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth. After we won, I remember running down from our seats to the clubhouse. I was really excited and expected the team to be as well, but the focus of all of the players was incredible. There was no celebration going on and all they were saying was, ‘five more wins, five more wins.’ That was the moment that it hit me that we were going to win.”
While Hoyer and his co-workers are doing their best to turn the page and focus on this season, he still often thinks back to last year.
“It does hit me sometimes how great it was,” he said. “I think that it is probably the most special championship in all of sports. It is certainly something that I will never forget and will never be able to duplicate in the rest of my career.”
While it is his boss, Epstein, that has garnered much of the credit in the months following the Red Sox win, Hoyer doesn’t mind continuing to do his work behind the scenes.
“There are a lot of people who deserve credit for what is going on,” he said. “We take pride in the fact that Theo has gotten such great press. We are part of that, but he is that one we are trying to make look good all the time.”
Although he has seen much success in his first few years with the Red Sox, Hoyer credits his days at Wes, where he led the baseball team to the Division III national championship game, for teaching him how to handle his current job.
“Wes makes you think critically,” he said. “Everyone has a lot of opinions and there is always a forum to debate and discuss ideas. That aspect was more important than anything I learned in the classroom.”
After that senior spring at Wes, where he got shut out by all 30 major league teams, Hoyer’s persistence paid off, and he now has a good chance to someday be a GM in Major League Baseball.
“I am happy where I am now,” Hoyer said. “There are only 30 [GM] jobs. If you get the chance you don’t want to screw it up. But I would be disappointed if I spent my whole career in the business and never got a chance to run a team.”
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