Gonzales: Early intro to baseball fuels the fire for new Cubs scout

While pursuing a master's degree in sports management and learning about alumni relations, fundraising and business at Coastal Carolina, baseball kept tugging at M'Lynn Dease.

"That was my motivation after graduation, getting back into the baseball world," Dease said Thursday.

So Dease, 23, the daughter of a successful high school baseball coach in North Carolina, resumed the knowledge she absorbed while operating a radar gun, charting pitches and listening to scouts while pursuing her bachelor's degree at North Carolina-Wilmington.

A challenging one-week course in the first Diversity Pipeline Scout Development Program presented by Major League Baseball last fall fortified Dease's confidence she could become a major league scout.

"It was truly a life-changing experience," Dease said.

The Cubs thought highly enough of Dease's skills and her recommendations that they hired her two months ago as an amateur scout covering the entire state of South Carolina.

"I don't have any doubt she has a good feel for the territory, where to go and who to talk to," said UNC-Wilmington coach Randy Hood, who gave Dease more responsibilities during her four years with the Seahawks program.

Dease is the latest female to be hired in the Cubs' baseball operations department. Prior to the 2020 season, Rachel Folden was hired as lead hitting lab tech and fourth coach for the Arizona Complex League team.

"It's very encouraging to see an organization that supports women and trusts us," Dease said while driving to Campbell University for a scrimmage. "Dan Kantrovitz (Cubs vice president of scouting) told me, 'We hired you because we believe you can scout and have the knowledge and experience. We know you're capable of being successful in this position.'

"I'd like to think I was hired for my skill set versus just being a woman and (the Cubs) trying to diversify. A lot of teams are hiring women because they deserve to be hired. It's really encouraging to see."

Dease was grateful to be hired by the Cubs after sending resumes and scouting reports to organizations after completing the MLB program, which was conducted at the Arizona Fall League.

Dease said longtime area scout Billy Swoope recommended her, and Bobby Filotei, the 2021 Cubs' Stan Zielinski scout of the year recipient, has lent support.

Dease's background should help her get acclimated quickly to the demands of an area scout. Her father, Dean Dease, won 506 games and one state title during 34 years as coach at Orange High School in Hillsborough, N.C., where she quizzed scouts about the nuances of their duties and projecting the talent ceilings of players.

At UNC-Wilmington, Hood recognized Dease's "smart acumen for baseball" that allowed her to gain experience in all facets, including recruiting and technology.

Prior to evaluating AFL players, Dease covered the Coastal Plain League (a college summer league) as an intern for Baseball America and wrote reports for Prep Baseball Report.

Those experiences provided a balance of writing stories about players (for BA) and reports and profiles for PBR's database. But it didn't prepare her entirely for the MLB scout program.

"I had a rude awakening," Dease recalled. "I didn't know it all. It was humbling experience at first."

Nearly one dozen scouts and officials from MLB teams would quiz the 29-member class, 15 of which were female, without advance notice on what they saw or what they were looking for in a player.

In addition, Dease wasn't familiar with writing reports in the standard MLB format and its 20-80 grading tool.

"That was truly a pivotal moment for me as far as learning and my knowledge of the scouts as far as writing reports and knowing what to look for communicating and confidence in what you see," said Dease, who became acclimated by the end of the week. "I started reaching out to scouts I knew and got lucky and got my dream job."

Dease gained some wisdom from her parents. Whether it was watching her father's games in person or viewing games on television, Dease would ask her father about projecting players out of high school as opposed to gaining more seasoning in college.

Dease's mother Jan possesses a knack for "figuring out a person's character and makeup. We've all seen more baseball games than I can count," M'Lynn said.

The transition to a new organization has been aided by a Microsoft Teams network for the Cubs' female employees in the front office. During the scout program in Arizona, Dease admitted she was "star struck" after meeting Rachel Balkovec, who will become the first female to manage a team in affiliated baseball for the Yankees' low-Class-A Tampa affiliate.

"It's nice to have that support for one another, seeing the women being hired and Rachel having a strong voice is very encouraging," Dease said.

"It's about time, right?"

@MDGonzales