From what I can tell, despite being a former D-I college pitching coach at St. Bonaventure, Stark never played college baseball.
http://gobonnies.cstv.com/sports/m-basebl/mtt/stark_kyle00.html

"Kyle Stark inherits a strong returning core of pitchers in his first season as the team’s pitching coach.

A native of Bradford, Pa., Stark graduated from Ball State in 1999 with a degree in Sport Administration. In 2002, he graduated as valedictorian from Toledo University’s law school. While at Toledo, Stark served as a volunteer assistant baseball coach for three years, working primarily with the pitchers.

At Ball State, Stark played a year of volleyball and served for three years as an administrative assistant to the athletic department.

Stark played four years of baseball at Bradford High School.

Stark also directs Larry Sudbrook’s Top Gun Summer Baseball Camp.

Stark is currently working toward a master's degree in business administration at St. Bonaventure, and has aspirations to work in the front office of a major league team."

From a track record perspective Greg Smith isn't much of a choice. Here's the positive spin from the press release:

Serving as the director of scouting for Detroit from 1997-2004, Smith oversaw eight different First-Year Player Drafts, which have so far produced 40 Major Leaguers. Those players include Brandon Inge, Curtis Granderson, Joel Zumaya and Justin Verlander.

Reality is quite a bit harsher. Here are the notable players from his drafts with Detroit.

1997

Matt Anderson at #1 overall

1998

Jeff Waever, 1st
Brandon Inge, 2nd

1999

Eric Munson at #3 overall
Cody Ross, 4th
Jason Frasor, 33rd

2000

Matt Wheatland at #8 overall

2001

Kenny Baugh at #11 overall

2002

Granderson, 3rd
Zumaya, 11th

2003

Kyle Sleeth at #3 overall

2004

Justin Verlander at #2 overall

Smith was given a lot of very high picks and was responsible for some pretty notorious busts a couple of them soon to be injured college pitchers that would look very well next to the Pirates collection of the same.

Note that Dombrowski was hired prior to 2002. In the last 3 years under Dombrowski Smith drafted Granderson, Zumaya and Verlander. In the previous 5 years his notable successes were just Weaver and Inge in the 1998 draft.

I don't know what this kind of track record analysis of a scouting director really means, but this isn't the kind of record that should make Pirates fans think their draft problems are solved.

Smith was given a lot of very high picks and was responsible for some pretty notorious busts a couple of them soon to be injured college pitchers that would look very well next to the Pirates collection of the same.

I think if you look at any team's draft record over 6-7 years, there will be a couple of high round busts. I don't think Smith's track record is great, but I wouldn't conclude he's "not much of a choice." I don't think you can totally ignore that he drafted Verlander, Zumaya and Granderson, yet give him the blame for drafting Anderson, Baugh and Sleeth.

Its a mixed bag - maybe some Tigers fans can shed more light.

Re: #2:

Smith was not a confidence building choice. At best one can say that Smith was hamstrung by Dombrowski's predecessor. Yet....

Its a mixed bag

I think it's worse than a mixed bag and I don't see where you can interpret my post to say that I'm ignoring that he drafted those good players after I brought them up as part of Smith's record.

What the record boils down to is 3 very good players in Verlander, Granderson and Weaver and one solid player in Inge and who knows what from Zumaya due to injury.

I guess you can argue that the top line talent is reasonable although with the high draft position it's not a very strong argument imo.

But what's really noticable is a real lack of depth. Arguably Cody Ross and Jason Frasor are the 6th and 7th best players from his eight years of drafting. That's a problem for an organization that really needs to both provide stars and bulk cheap players like the Pirates.

Director of baseball operations at age 27? Are there people in other organizations that are that young in the same role?

I'm not in love with the Smith pick.

I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Director of baseball operations at age 27? Are there people in other organizations that are that young in the same role?

Jeff Kingston, the Padres Director of Baseball Operations is 27 and he was hired 3 years ago. It's not baseball, but the Minnesota Wild hired a 24 year old sportswriter as their Director of Hockey Operations a year ago. Common, no, but not unheard of. I guess hiring recent college grads to upper management is the new market inefficiency.

Common, no, but not unheard of. I guess hiring recent college grads to upper management is the new market inefficiency.

How many married men (or Kim Ng) over 30 with kids can keep working the 120 hr weeks required to keep these jobs?

Not many.

Not to mention the ones from the top schools probably make a lot more money than these front office positions pay.