Tufts alumnus Peter Bendix (LA’08) does not have a fixed job description. As the president of baseball operations for MLB’s Miami Marlins, Bendix’s work spans across the organization and involves numerous aspects of the team, from player development to creating a successful culture within the clubhouse.
“I don’t know [if] I have an average day,” Bendix said. “You have different phases throughout the year.”
For Bendix, those phases can range from spending his day in an assortment of phone calls and meetings to traveling with the team’s minor league affiliates. One week he was “hunkered down,” focusing on the MLB draft. He described the days prior to the annual MLB trade deadline similarly.
“It really varies, but I think a lot of my role is really trying to put other people in a position to succeed, because I can’t do everything,” Bendix said.
If there is anybody who knows the intricacies of off-the-field teamwork within an MLB organization, it would be Bendix. After becoming an intern for the Tampa Bay Rays following his graduation from Tufts in 2008, Bendix worked in numerous baseball development and research roles before being promoted to Rays general manager in 2021.
Interestingly, as a first-year at Tufts, Bendix said he wished to be a general manager in the MLB, but for his hometown Cleveland Guardians, formerly known as the Indians.
“I had no idea what I was saying when I said that,” Bendix said. “I didn’t have the slightest clue what it meant to be the general manager or in any leadership position of a baseball team.”
Growing up in Cleveland, Bendix said he’s always been a sports fan. But with the Browns having relocated to Baltimore and the Cavaliers playing out of the Richfield Coliseum — about 30 minutes away from downtown Cleveland — the Guardians were the team most accessible to him as a young fan.
“My first formative sports memories are of one of the best baseball teams ever, in the 1995 Cleveland Indians,” Bendix said. “It was hard not to be a baseball fan at that point.”
Historically speaking, Bendix’s claim is completely valid, as the 1995 Cleveland team boasted 100 wins in a 144-game season fueled by a statistically dominant offense. Unfortunately for Bendix, however, the team would eventually lose in the World Series to the Atlanta Braves.
Even still, Bendix recalled falling in love with baseball through his early connection to the Guardians and their success at the time.
“I’m a huge fan of every sport, but the intricacy, the nuance of baseball, all of the different storylines of baseball, the romanticism of baseball, it’s all special,” Bendix said.
Nearly two decades into his baseball career, Bendix always returns to his childhood fandom as a core part of his work.
“The idea that I can help influence some 10-year-old kid to become a Marlins fan because the Marlins are good and fun and they’re gonna be a baseball fan for the rest of their life … that is so exciting,” Bendix said.
In his first year at Tufts, Bendix enrolled in a class on sabermetrics, a statistics-based baseball evaluation system most famously depicted in Michael Lewis’ bestselling book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” and its 2011 film adaptation.
“The class itself was incredible,” Bendix said. “[Sabermetrics 101] really propelled me on this path.”
Bendix said he appreciated the trailblazing nature of the course — the concept of mainstream sabermetrics was relatively novel to the baseball world — as did other students and baseball fans like himself who’d taken the course in the Experimental College.
“It solidified my interest in the analysis of baseball [and] … my desire to learn more about it and to pursue it further,” Bendix said. “It really led me to where I am right now.”
Bendix laughed at the comparison to Billy Beane, a figure in “Moneyball” who served as the Oakland Athletics’ general manager from 1997 to 2015.
“I wish that was what it was like,” Bendix said, referencing a scene during the film in which Beane completes a trade with only a handful of phone calls.
However, Bendix credits Beane and the Athletics for pioneering alternative paths to success in baseball that gave people like himself, those with close to no prior high-level baseball experience, a chance to work in the MLB.
“The bravery of somebody like Billy Beane to go against the grain, especially given his background and all of that? All of that, I think, is really real,” Bendix said. “You would never mistake me for a major league shortstop, and the fact that someone like me can run a team … 20 years ago, I think that was just not a thing.”
Bendix looks back on his time at Tufts as fundamental to his development into the front office executive he is today. He cites his major advisor — and fellow baseball lover — Professor Steven Cohen as highly influential to his journey.
“I had a hard time picking my major because I was interested in a broad number of things,” Bendix said. “I realized, alongside him with his help, that my skill … was synthesizing information across domains, departments, et cetera. Reflecting on it, I think that’s my biggest skill within baseball as well.”
After graduating in 2008 with a degree in American studies, Bendix quickly found himself working in a Major League organization as an intern for the Rays. Bendix recalled his path into the internship as both fortuitous and rewarding. In the winter following his graduation, Bendix travelled to Las Vegas in order to attend the MLB’s annual winter meeting, a large-scale event in which representatives from each team convene to discuss trades, rule changes and other offseason talking points.
“I got a hotel room at the Excalibur at the very end of the [Las Vegas] Strip for, like, $30 a night,” Bendix said. “I walked to the Bellagio where the winter meetings were happening and literally hung out in the lobby and sent emails to a whole bunch of people beforehand.”
Bendix said he got “a surprising number of responses” to his inquiries, which allowed him to set up meetings with a handful of organizations. Bendix eventually decided to work in Tampa Bay due to the team’s relatively small front office and their recent postseason success. He interviewed with James Click, Erik Neander and Chaim Bloom, each of whom would later ascend to executive front office positions themselves.
Nearly 15 years after his start with the Rays, Bendix was officially named the president of baseball operations for the Miami Marlins in November 2023 — a contentious hire following the departure of previous general manager Kim Ng (who had led the team to its first full-season playoff berth in 20 years).
Reflecting on the hire, Bendix said his transition to Miami was initially like “drinking from a firehose.”
“You’re taking in so much information, you’re learning so many things all at once, and understanding what needs to be done and then trying to figure out how to do it,” Bendix said.
He added that his lengthy career with the Rays allowed him to navigate his own direction and philosophy for the Marlins.
“I had a really solid understanding of what a good culture looks like [and] how it contributes to winning games … especially [for] a lower revenue team,” Bendix said. “Having that vision, having both seen it, lived it, tried to enhance it myself, being able to understand what good looks like and what elite looks like — all of those things provide the vision and the guidance that allowed me to come here and understand what it is that we need to do.”
Bendix credits his time in Tampa as being central to his understanding of good leadership, team culture and player evaluation.
“There are multiple different ways to be successful,” Bendix said. “If you can be successful and enjoy the job at the same time, that’s ideal.”
During Bendix’s second season at the helm of the Marlins’ front office, the team rallied to win an additional 17 games from the previous season — nearing a franchise-record single-season improvement. Bendix said the team’s continued success lies in their ability to remain disciplined.
“People mistake discipline for not trying to win. That’s not at all the case,” Bendix said. “Discipline is understanding what it is that you are building, what you are attempting to achieve and what the steps are along the way to achieve [them].”
Even as Bendix sits at the helm of baseball operations for a multi-million dollar professional sports organization, in actuality, he’s an effortlessly normal guy. Rather surprisingly, Bendix said early on, he had developed doubts about moving forward with a career in baseball.
“It was very, very long hours for very, very little money, and a lot of it was enjoyable, but also it was frustrating and … could be disheartening at times,” Bendix said. “As I learned more, it became far more fulfilling and gratifying.”
Bendix added that he felt the uncertainty of the job and its direction caused him to feel uneasy about his future in baseball.
“There wasn’t a path to follow,” Bendix said. “That uncertainty of not having a vision for what exactly this could look like, it was exciting because you could make it your own, but it was difficult. … Ultimately, that idea of helping the team and adding value … is what keeps me going.”
Bendix told a story about how he’d once asked then-Rays employee Bloom for advice on getting into an MLB front office. Bloom purportedly responded by telling Bendix to figure out what separated him from others with the same dream of working in baseball.
“I’m not done developing that answer,” Bendix said. “I’m always trying to figure out what separates me.”
