Courtesy of the Giants
In describing the friend he knew, Giants scout Mike Kendall had to stop himself, his mouth overrunning his brain.
“He was a very unique guy,” Kendall said of former Giants scouting director Matt Nerland, before pausing. “I hate to say it in the past tense.”
For so many around the Giants, the reality is both stunning and crushing. The 53-year-old Nerland died this weekend after being diagnosed with a liver condition in June. A few of his former organizational colleagues reached out to him around Thanksgiving, when he was in good spirits, but his condition deteriorated in the past few weeks.
It’s a loss of a 31-year Giants presence, who started as a fresh-faced intern in baseball ops out of San Francisco State in 1989 and rose to be the Giants’ scouting director from 1998-2006.
It’s the loss of a rarely seen figure in baseball: a person who’s seen everything. Nerland touched the administrative side and baseball side, an area scout for years, evaluating talent in the majors and minors, assessing the Giants’ own players and potential trade chips from other teams, able to joust with Brian Sabean behind closed doors or make scouts laugh in Arizona Fall League.
“He saw the game in so many unique perspectives. We fight in this industry obviously to win a World Championship, and he was able to see three World Series champions,” Kendall, still a Giants pro scout, said over the phone Wednesday before listing Nerland’s roles. “… To have that experience is extremely unique in this job.
“I don’t know of anyone who had those kinds of points of view.”
Being his own man and an everyman helped the Modesto native fit in everywhere he went. With wide eyes he joined the Giants in ’89, and watched Sabean land in San Francisco in 1993 for a team he would later run.
The two hit it off quickly, Nerland described by several as a non-stop worker who would always speak his mind. He did not rise by being a yes man, but by being smart and dedicated and able to make others comfortable in areas that can be easily uncomfortable. Being a scouting director is a high-pressure job, but it rarely seemed that way with how much fun was had under his watch.
“We got really close not only in the workplace but as friends in general,” said Sabean, the team’s GM from 1997-2014. “And Matt was incredibly loyal. Very much proud of his association with the Giants and would help the organization in any way. He had a real attractive personality — I never really saw him have a bad day. He was always in a good mood and quick-witted. A real workhorse; he loved being on call 24 hours a day. He would volunteer for a lot of assignments he didn’t have to work.”
As scouting director, he didn’t have to be at Arizona Fall League and the instructional leagues after stacking impossible amounts of hours during the Major League Baseball season. But Nerland did because it’s what the job called for, and it’s what he loved to do.
He could not put in enough time at the field and was the type whose presence was welcomed in the stands. Someone who grew up in the front office, as Nerland did, might have invited eye-rolls.
“He was never disrespectful or tried to make [longtime scouts] feel that he fit in. He would just meet them and listen to them and talk and greet them, and they would come to like him,” was the scouting report from Lee Elder, a longtime Giants scout who is retiring in the coming weeks. “In a quiet way, that was his strength: He never tried to big-league anybody even after the steps he took up the ladder. He was always the same guy.”
That guy was remarkably successful.
He is credited for signing major leaguers such as Kevin Frandsen and Nate Schierholtz, which does not begin to describe the influence he had in acquiring both current and future big-leaguers. As scouting director, he ran drafts that spanned from nabbing Ryan Vogelsong in ’98 to Tim Lincecum in ’06.
Kendall is the scout officially given the hat tip for landing Brandon Crawford, but only after he got a tip of his own.
“I was the Southern California area scout,” Kendall said, while Nerland had been a Northern California area scout, who saw Crawford star in baseball and football at Foothill High School. “And I remember Matt telling me, ‘Hey, I’m not going to be able to sign this guy, but he’s coming down to UCLA — target him. Make sure that you keep your eyes on him.”
Elder is the scout officially given credit for signing Matt Cain, but he, too, said Nerland had an influence because the entire group had an influence.
“We all just told Brian what we thought. And I’ll tell you what Matt was good about: He didn’t sugarcoat anything. He didn’t like a player, he’d tell you, even if everyone else in the room was for the player,” said Elder, who said he was “floored and devastated” upon hearing of Nerland’s passing.
As a scouting director who loved one-liners — Elder remembered a particular fondness for Rodney Dangerfield — and could coexist with everyone, Nerland helped found the culture that brought three World Series titles in five seasons. He was let go in 2019 amid the changing regimes, but his legacy was secured.
“You want scouts that are opinionated and can fight for their opinion or certainly be in a position to defend their position. But he did it in a way that only was comfortable and somewhat diplomatic,” Sabean said. “He didn’t get too uptight if it fell on deaf ears or he was a contrarian. He was true to what his convictions were.”
Few fans had heard of Nerland before he was gone. But Giants fans could see the results: The club reached five World Series in his tenure, and his drafts brought 44 players to the majors.
The scouting group emphasized that so much of the work was group-based, their successes and failures falling on the team and not a person.
Still, as Elder said, “I don’t think that we could have won three [World Series] without his participation.”
