BREAKING NEWS:

Cardinals Director of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz has been named the new Assistant General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, replacing Farhan Zaidi.

In 2001, Kantrovitz was drafted in the 25th round by the Cardinals out of Brown University. Depending on how you look at it, his playing career fortunately or unfortunately did not last very long and he entered into a role in the Cardinals front office. From 2004 to 2008, Kantrovitz was the Assistant Scouting Director and the Director of College Scouting. During this stint, he helped create the Cardinals' computer system, Redbirdog. From 2009 to 2011, he joined Billy Beane and friends with the Oakland Athletics as the head of international scouting. After his stint with the A's, he returned home to the Cardinals and took over as Director of Scouting after Jeff Luhnow left to become the General Manager of the Houston Astros. Now, it appears he is following the trend by returning to Oakland to rejoin forces with Billy Beane.

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For those of you that do not know, Kantrovitz was my first big, and quite honestly, probably best Q&A back in my stlcupofjoe.com blogging days. Immediately prior to exchanging responses for the Q&A, I remember getting a follow from @dkantrovitz on Twitter, who, at that time, had a bio of "director of scouting, st louis cardinals." At that stage in my blogging "career" (I had written maybe 40 or 50 posts), I had no fear and sent him a direct message to make sure it was really him because I thought it was pretty cool that someone of his importance would follow me.

Sure enough, it was the real Dan Kantrovitz, and though he has been relatively inactive in terms of public tweets, he reads his timeline, checks his messages, and has provided me with thoughts on many of my posts, especially considering many have pertained to MLB draft previews and subsequently many of the prospects he eventually drafted. I likely would not be where I am today (an editor at Viva El Birdos) without Dan. When the SBN turnover occurred with the site, I approached Dan and asked him what he thought of the idea of me applying for a position. It is my understanding that he openly supported me for the position to SB Nation, and I cannot thank him enough for that as I am lucky to be here.

Much more to come later.