Meet Matt Hyde, the Yankees scout to whom Ben Rice and Cam Schlittler 'owe' their careers

When Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice found out on July 4 that they were first-time All-Stars, one of the first to offer congratulations was the scout who both players believe made that achievement possible.

“Extremely proud,” said Matt Hyde, the Yankees’ lead Northeast-based amateur scout, who signed Rice and Schlittler as well as Anthony Volpe. “Just really excited for them. I mean, it’s just a testament to the work that they’ve put in to be at that level.”

Major League Baseball players can have selective memories, depending on the topic. But talk to just about any of them and there are things, or more specifically people, they never forget.

It could be a field coordinator from early in their minor league careers who they are convinced helped get them to the majors, or maybe a grizzled coach, known only to those in the organization, who did the same.

And they always, without fail, remember the amateur scout who signed them.

Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, for instance, up until his 20th and final year in the big leagues — and even in retirement — always respectfully referred to the scout who signed him, Dick Groch, as “Coach Groch” or “Mr. Groch.” (Groch passed away last October at the age of 84.)

And so it is with Schlittler, Rice and Volpe, each of whom, in separate interviews with Newsday,  broke into smiles and couldn’t say enough about Hyde, 52, who has been with the organization since 2005.

“I owe him. I owe him a lot,” said Rice, a 12th-round pick out of Dartmouth in 2021. “He was the biggest reason why I got drafted, why I got into pro ball. You can’t get to the big leagues without getting your foot in the door first, and he was the one who opened that door up for me.”

Schlittler, picked by the Yankees in the seventh round of the 2022 draft, said he will always feel a sense of “loyalty” to Hyde.

“Just knowing that this scout in particular, he had the faith in me to speak about me at a high level [in pushing the Yankees to take him], thinking that eventually I can help this team win a championship,” said Schlittler, whom Hyde first began scouting when the pitcher was at Walpole High School in Massachusetts before trailing him to Northeastern, radar gun in hand. “In terms of what I owe him is a lot. Just for him putting me in the situation to be a big-leaguer in this organization. And that goes for the other guys.”

Schlittler later added: “He’s a great man, dude. It takes a lot for someone to earn my respect, and he’s up there with certain people. I have the utmost respect for him and the faith he’s put in me.”

Hyde’s faith in Rice, who grew up a Yankees fan in Cohasset, Massachusetts (though playing hockey was his first love), started early as well, though scouting the then-catcher was complicated.

After Rice's 23-game sophomore season at Dartmouth in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic limited him to seven games in 2020, then wiped out  his 2021 senior season.

But for Hyde, it was love at first sight when he saw Rice’s smooth lefty swing and the consistent hard contact that resulted. That especially was the case during the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, a wood-bat league in New England that played its 2020 summer season even as the famed, and more prestigious, Cape Cod League shuttered operations that year because of the pandemic.

The typical reams of data for college players — exit velocity numbers, barrel rate percentage, etc. — simply weren’t available for Rice, who played all of 30 games for Dartmouth.

“For him to support me that way and just say, ‘Hey, this is just based on the eye test and this is based on the sound of the ball off the bat and what he looks like,’ it was really old-school scouting,” Rice said. “That definitely means a lot that he was willing to vouch for me.”

Many in the industry consider amateur scouting the hardest job in the game because of all the variables involved — projecting how not-yet-fully-developed teenagers or college players will perform at the game’s highest level, all while taking into consideration the quality of competition, or lack thereof, at the high school and college levels. As well as the simple fact that certain parts of the country (mainly the South, the Southwest and the West Coast) produce more players than others.

And the actual scouting part isn’t the entirety of it.

It is the job of the amateur scout — the good ones, anyway — to get to know the players, their families and friends, even their girlfriends.

It is all baked into the cake for one of the buzzwords in the sport — “makeup.”

All organizations do this to varying degrees. In the case of the Yankees, it is something relentlessly pushed by their director of amateur scouting, Damon Oppenheimer.

“It’s invaluable to me because there’s a trust factor,” Oppenheimer, who has run the Yankees' draft since 2005 and is in his 34th year with the club, said of Hyde’s ability to build relationships. “When he says he knows a player, their makeup, if they’ll sign, there’s trust. It’s huge to me.”

The serially upbeat Hyde excels at the relationship-building aspect of the job to the point that Volpe, Schlittler and Rice separately referred to the scout as someone who has become “a friend” over the years.

“Absolutely,” Rice said. “In the offseason, we always meet up for a lunch or two, and in spring training we always have dinner, and during the year, of course, when we play in Boston.”

In the case of Volpe, Hyde, a longtime resident of Canton, Massachusetts, started scouting the shortstop during his sophomore year at Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey.

“He’s still texting me now and is keeping up the same way he was when I was in Low A or rookie ball,” Volpe said. “I think over the years, seeing how much he truly cares about you and cares about your success and knows what you’re about, that he takes so much time to get to know you, means a lot. As a player and as a person, [he] knows how you tick and what’s important to you. I think having someone like that is everything.”

And it isn’t just the players.

“Whenever I meet up with him for lunch in the offseason, my dad usually comes, too,” Rice said of his father, Dan, who will pitch to him in Monday’s Home Run Derby. “And then he’ll bring Willy, his son. It definitely goes beyond baseball.”

Hyde has two children —  Maggie, 14, and Willy, 10.

“I’ll call them,” Hyde said of the in-their-20s players, “and they’ll all say, ‘Hey, can we talk to Willy?’ Which is cool.”

Hyde recently went to dinner with Dan Rice, Schlittler’s father, John, and  legendary Boston-based baseball writer Peter Gammons.

“He’s just a great guy,” Schlittler said of Hyde. “He gets along really well with my family, and that means a lot to me. My dad will still see him at a Northeastern game or a Yankees game. It’s great to have that relationship. I know it’s a relationship I’ll have the rest of my life.”