Former O's ticket holder will try to help team become a winner again

She is Harvard-educated and Bethesda, Md., born and raised. Her impressive resume at a young age includes time in both Major League Baseball and the National Football League.

As a kid, she spent hours upon hours attending games at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and now Eve Rosenbaum has an office in that warehouse she used to look at from the stands.

On Nov. 25, the Orioles hired Rosenbaum as director of baseball development. She worked with executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias in Houston and is the latest to leave that club, head east and join the Orioles.

She's a 2008 graduate of Walt Whitman High in Montgomery County. She's a 2012 graduate of Harvard, where she was a catcher on the softball team.

She once spent time at Cal Ripken Sr.'s baseball camp and now she's the highest-ranking female executive with the Orioles.

The press release announcing her hire stated that "she will oversee the alignment of methods across baseball operations, while also enhancing coordination between the scouting, player development and analytics departments."

It's simplistic, but she did not disagree with an assessment that one big element of her role would be to keep everyone on the same page.

"On the one hand I'm working with Mike and Sig (Mejdal) and kind of whatever they want to focus on right now," Rosenbaum said in a recent interview. "On the other hand, most of my work will be as the link between our research and development department and then our scouting department and player development as well.

"What that means is that our research and development department - which Sig did a great job over the past year adding some really smart people and they are digging into the numbers and building models and building projections - my job is to talk to them to find out what they've learned in that research and make sure we are using their research when we are signing players or acquiring players via trade or on the waiver wire. Making sure that the research being done by all these smart analysts actually leaves the research and development room and is applied to the decisions we make on a daily basis when we sign or acquire players.

"Overall, I've been impressed with what I've seen in terms of there is a really solid groundwork that's been laid here to have a very progressive player development department and a very progressive scouting department as well."

In college, Rosenbaum interned with the MLB office in New York and also with the Boston Red Sox. Right out of college, she was with the NFL for two years before being hired by the Houston Astros in 2015. She was named the club's manager of international scouting in August 2017. She worked closely with Elias and considers him a mentor.

Now she wants to help the Orioles make good baseball decisions that are based on what happens leading up to those decisions.

"It's all about having a good process when you make decisions," she said. "Utilizing all the information available to you. Understanding small sample sizes, large sample sizes. Getting opinions from multiple people and then ultimately making a decision with as much information as you can. At a high level, that can lead to success for any organization. We want to have very sound, efficient processes that lead to our decision-making."

Her role, being active with so many people and departments, is sure to provide numerous challenges.

"So much of what gets done in research and development these days is so technical, and I'm by no means a wizard with the data, but I have an appreciation for numbers," Rosenbaum said. "And I think I do a good job thinking through how the numbers actually apply to what happens on the field. We're not just looking at the numbers in a vacuum. One thing that Mike and Sig have always been so good at is being very pragmatic and very practical with how we explain the findings from R&D. So, I try to do that as well. Even if I don't understand every input and formula, making sure I'm talking to the analysts and we are speaking the same language and we understand what the numbers mean at the end of the day."

Rosenbaum said being the club's highest-ranking female executive is a distinction to be proud of.

"Sure, it's nice to hear. But at the same time, I'm just trying to do a good job," she said. "And if I'm the highest-ranking or the lowest-ranking or, hopefully one day it's one of many, that is really what I care about. Is doing a good job, and that distinctions don't matter as much as long as I'm doing a good job and I'm contributing to the team, then I'm feeling good about my place here."

So the kid who spent a massive amount of time watching the Orioles play will now try to help them return to previous glory.

"I love talking about this," said Rosenbaum. "In some ways it is so surreal for me to be back in Camden Yards. Because I grew up with Orioles season tickets. When I was growing up as a toddler and then elementary school and middle school, we must have come to 60 Orioles games a year.

"Honestly, looking back, I had no idea how my parents juggled the time and sat in traffic driving up round-trip from Bethesda to Baltimore so many days each week. No idea how they had that energy, but they took me and my twin brothers as well, a family of five, coming to all these Orioles games. But I remember being at Cal's 2131. I went to Cal Sr. baseball camp growing up. I'm sure my mom still has that shirt somewhere. I did Kids Run the Bases. So many memories here and it's very, very cool to be back."