Apple hires Toronto Blue Jays assistant GM with a penchant for stats and software to manage the App Store Sports section

Apple has hired Toronto Blue Jays assistant GM Jay Sartori to manage a sports section of the App Store, according to a number of reports dating back three days (via MG Siegler). Sartori a numbers guy who can effortlessly crunch statistics according to a bio from 2011, but he also has some experience in software development. He previously created some stats software for the MLB commissioner and has a background in finance and management information systems…

Of course, Sartori also brings management experience to Apple, having spent around three years as an assistant manager for the Blue Jays. In this role, he was responsible for making deals with players and many of the other business-related aspects of managing a team—skills that could be useful in bringing new sports-related software developers to Apple’s platform.

While it may seem like an odd choice to hire a sports manager to run part of a software storefront, the move doesn’t seem all that out-of-character for Tim Cook, who has an unfortunate history of hiring managers from ‘not quite the top of their game’ organizations. The almost universally-hated John Browett, formerly head of Apple retail rings a bell. Hopefully Sartori will have more success than Browett in his time with Apple.