Around the corner from the general manager's office on the second floor of Citizens Bank Park, through the conference room where some of the franchise's most important decisions are made, is a place unlike any other at the ballpark.
Six adjustable desks are clustered near a flat-screen TV with a camera for long-distance video chats. Wooden slabs double as countertops at the nearby reading nook. Light enters from the windows that overlook the first-base gate. It resembles the modern offices found at ambitious tech companies, and that is because the man in charge of the room came from Google.