From the mail room to the boardroom, a look at how the three co-heads of CAA Baseball modernized the operation for the 21st century.
As Major League Baseball and the world at large adjusted during rapidly changing times in 2020 into 2021, CAA set out to bring its baseball division into the modern era.
Longtime agents Ryan Hamill and Andrew Nacario were named co-heads of CAA Baseball in January 2021, while Matt Ricatto joined them two months later. All three began their careers in CAA’s mail room in 2006 and 2007 and worked their way up through the ranks, putting them in a position of unique expertise on what the baseball division needed to ensure sustained success during changing times.
The prior regime, Hamill said, operated in a certain way that was well-suited for 2009 or 2010. By 2021, the new leading trio knew things needed to operate differently. MLB front offices were now loaded with dozens of analysts and specialists, and CAA had to follow suit to stay ahead of the game and be more than just transactional agents.
“Just as front offices evolved over the last two decades, we had to do the same thing with our own agent employee development to keep pace with the Moneyball revolution,” Nacario told Boardroom. “Our hires over the last five years have reflected that.”
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With corporate trusting the trio’s vision, the staff bulked up to more than 30 staffers across offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Nashville in digital, analytics, marketing, and player development, crucial new areas for the 21st century. It allowed CAA to better serve its clients by utilizing resources in the same way MLB teams do to take advantage of the latest technological advancements.
This year, CAA led all agencies by representing 12 MLB All-Stars, led by Shohei Ohtani and Trea Turner, and had 10 clients among the first 62 Day 1 selections in July’s amateur draft. That success is led by three homegrown talents who got their start at the very bottom of the CAA corporate hierarchy.
Hamill was a 25th-round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2000, a catcher who had the unfortunate timing of coming up in their farm system at the same time as Yadier Molina. He enrolled in law school at the University of San Francisco in 2003 and joined CAA as an intern in 2006.
Nacario played baseball at Dartmouth at the same time Theo Epstein led the Boston Red Sox to World Series titles in 2004 and 2007. Feeling inspired, he emailed CAA co-head Mike Levine congratulating him on being on a 40 under 40 list. Vino connected Nacario to the baseball group, where he started from the ground up at the agent trainee program.
Ricatto had just finished grad school at Chapman University in California and went to the MLB Winter Meetings in Nashville looking for a job in baseball. After interviewing with a few teams, he ran into longtime CAA agent Nez Balelo and landed a six-week unpaid internship to run a player development camp for the agency. Two months later, he met Hamill and Nacario in the mail room.
After about 15 years each at the company, Hamill, Nacario, and Ricatto had extensive insight into company culture and the type of people that would fit the mold and develop internally just like they did as CAA Baseball entered a new age.
Sydney Chance moved through CAA’s ranks from 2019 on and is now an executive helping players with their digital media and off-field brand strategies. Lillian James works in client services, a priority area for the division. L Grant Davis specializes in brand partnerships and client management, and Jack Freedman now runs the amateur draft. Agents like Chris Amezquita, Nolan Fontana, Jack Freedman, Ruben Noriega, Mike Nickeas, Joe Urbon, Tom Hagan, and Mark O’Brien help ensure the agency is properly servicing its current clients while actively recruiting new ones. Elevating women like Marissa Dishaw, Julia White, Jennifer Brasile, and Amber Sabathia in major client facing roles is another way CAA embraced the future while building from within.
“There are other agencies out there that go out, and they buy other groups and other agents,” Hamill said, “and we really haven’t done that. The crux of this job is being able to be available 24/7, and we’ve really done a good job of vetting the right people.”
Being available 24/7 doesn’t just factor in the quantity of time on call for clients but also in the quality and variety of the services on offer. While athletes are inherently motivated to improve as players on their own and teams are incentivized to develop the talent they’ve invested time and money in, CAA Baseball claims to be the first agency to focus on player development, with staff devoted to making clients better independent of who they play for.
Each of the 30 MLB teams has 250 players in their organizations, and individual players can get lost in the shuffle. Ricatto has seen players not receive the medical attention and devotion they need because of this, which is why CAA uses blood work, movement, and other professionals to help players get individualized focus where a team may have him fall through the cracks.
In this new information age, players now seek out data and ask more questions than ever before to gain even the slightest age. They’re part of what Nacario called the Driveline Generation, named after the data-driven performance training company that first opened a biomechanics lab in 2008. It pioneered using high-speed cameras to track pitching mechanics, spearheading a culture where players and teams began using technological data points to improve both hitters and pitchers. It helped usher in the Statcast era, where launch angle, exit velocity, and spin rates became regular parts of the baseball fan’s vocabulary.
A major catalyst of CAA Baseball’s modernization efforts, Nacario continues, was that this new generation wants to be educated and given tangible data during every step of their careers on and off the field. From the run-up to the amateur draft, through the minor leagues, and throughout their big league career on and off the field, the agency now crafts personalized plans for each player. That includes everything under the sun, from improving fastball velocity to helping navigate a client through salary arbitration, a contract extension offer, or free agency.
CAA is not there to sugarcoat things for their clients either, Hamill said. A player’s chance at MLB success is extremely low, and sometimes agents have to have some tough conversations with guys.
“There’s a group of agents out there that will tap their player on the butt and say, ‘You’re doing a great job, and you don’t need to change anything,’” Hamill told Boardroom. “That’s not us. Our job is to show them how to make them a better baseball player.”
How CAA stays one step ahead and helps open doors off the field when players have so few days off during the season is thanks in large part to Dishaw and her staff. They compile a calendar many months in advance of how they want to best serve clients, whether through player appearances, trading card and memorabilia deals, equipment and other sponsorships, and media. These personalized plans are then implemented in collaboration with the client’s team of agents to make sure he only has to focus on his on-field performance over the long grind of the season.
No baseball player has ever exemplified dominance both on and off the field like Ohtani. After signing an unprecedented $700 million contract, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar became the first player to ever hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season as he reportedly approaches $100 million in annual endorsement earnings negotiated by Balelo and his CAA team.
But they also had to navigate the illegal betting scandal earlier this year, in which Ohtani was cleared of all wrongdoing, but his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, pleaded guilty to federal bank and tax fraud charges. It’s an unprecedented 9-10 month story arc of highs and lows.
“Nez is a longtime veteran CAA agent and leader who works tirelessly on Shohei’s behalf each day,” Nacario said. “He’s been a mentor and support system to so many in our group since day one, and we’re thrilled for the success that Shohei is having and the fact that he’s an icon of the sport.”
Whether it’s an All-Star level player like Ohtani or a player just scraping to get by, Nacario, Hamill, and Ricatto’s CAA Baseball vows to provide Tiffany-level, 360-degree service and representation to its clients and their families. No matter which teams their playing careers may take them, CAA strives to be its clients’ most reliable, stable fixture.
“The most consistent jersey that a player may wear throughout their career is CAA’s,” Nacario said. “So we really strive to be that presence with them and their families and be a true extension of them.”
No matter how much the agency grows, Ricatto said, CAA’s secret sauce is how small it makes everything it does for its clients feel as it has adapted to baseball’s modern era over the last few years. It’s one of the key principles the baseball department now embodies under the leadership of three agency lifers who slowly developed and grew from the mail room to the C-suite.
In an industry where there’s constant turnover, recruitment, and poaching, all three hope that the partners and friends can spend the rest of their careers together.
“We built it slow, we built it right, and we’ve done it right,” Hamill said. “And I’m really proud myself and my two colleagues are keeping our heads down and waking up in 2024 being in this position.”
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