Mets hire Jared Banner as farm director

Yesterday, Dave Dombrowski, president of baseball operations for the Red Sox, announced that Jared Banner, who had been serving as VP of player personnel, was leaving the organization. Today, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the Mets have hired Banner to be their new farm director, as Brodie Van Wagenen continues to shape his front office. Banner is the second Sox executive the Mets have brought into the fold this winter, following his mentor Allard Baird, who the Mets recently hired to be VP of player development and scouting.

Banner is a Brooklyn native and grew up a Mets fan. An Amherst grad, Banner earned a full-time position as a low-level front office staffer with the Red Sox in 2007 after a completing an internship with the team. In 2010, Banner got his break when he was asked to join Northeast Regional Scouting Supervisor Ray Fagnant scouting local prospects ahead of the 2011 draft, wrote Evan Drellich in a profile of Banner back in April of this year. Banner impressed the Red Sox executives with his work ethic, including Theo Epstein.

“You just have to crank it out and have a major-league work ethic,” Epstein said of Banner. “And then I think an important one, too, is investment in the group instead of personal ambition. I think a lot of first-, second-year employees in baseball ops, if they too much focus on themselves and their careers and where they’re going, and not enough on the people around them and the success of the group, they tend to get weeded out. Jared was certainly qualified in all those areas. Great passion for the game. He worked his ass off. He proved himself on a couple of occasions, that he wanted what was best for the team on the field, the organization, winning.”

Banner has been on the ascent ever since, taking on a variety of front office roles with the Red Sox before serving as VP of player personnel, overseeing the scouting in international leagues. Constantly working to improve himself and those around him, the 32-year-old Banner was viewed as a rising star within the Red Sox organization—one that many executives saw as a future GM. He’s been a right-hand man for Dombrowski, participating in the arbitration process the past two offseasons and taking part in the managerial interview process that ended with the hiring of Alex Cora.

The Mets’ front office overhaul is beginning to take shape, as Brodie Van Wagenen seeks to fill positions with experienced baseball executives.