“This should have happened five or 10 years ago,” Marlins assistant GM Oz Ocampo said of Ng getting a chance to lead baseball operations. “She’s got so much feel for the game but also respects what she doesn’t know. She’s relentless in trying to figure out how to continually improve and get smarter and bring in people who can help her along the way.”
Ocampo, who was hired in November, wasn’t looking to leave Houston, an organization fresh off the World Series and one he returned to after spending the better part of the last decade helping turn the
Astros into a juggernaut. And Ocampo wouldn’t have left if he didn’t know how competitive Ng — who he worked with previously at the Commissioner’s Office — and first-year manager Skip Schumaker were.
“We are all obsessive and crazy,” Ocampo said. “We want to win.”
It’s the offseason in sunny San Diego and Schumaker is meeting Ng for the first time. She has been in baseball since 1990 and was passed over for several general manager jobs. Surely Ng has “her people” like any baseball executive, but she also doesn’t want to just hire a friend or someone she’s known for years. She wants to get it right. So Ng calls around and asks people she trusts whom she should be considering.
When Schumaker interviews, there is not an immediate consensus that he’s the top pick. Ng makes more calls to friends in the game, people who know Schumaker. They all tell her the same thing: Schumaker is a winner. An obsessive one.
He’s got a good engine, as people in baseball like to say.
She makes the hire.
Later that winter, Ng brings in Ocampo and begins to talk about how Schumaker and Ocampo can expedite the Marlins’ trajectory. People often say they want to seek out different perspectives when making decisions, but Ng goes out of her way to find as many as possible.
“We went from rigid-control B.S.,” said one longtime baseball operations employee, “to a place of ‘we need ideas!’ It’s a breath of fresh air.”
Ng told Schumaker the same thing she told Ocampo: Not only are they going to win in Miami but they’re going to have sustained success. And that, she believes, starts with a winning culture.