This gay physics major and ‘Jeopardy!’ champ has helped the Dodgers win two World Series

In modern day Major League Baseball, a team encompasses much more than just the nine men on the field or the staff in the dugout.

Operating behind those players and coaches are data analysts, engineers and strategists looking to give their team an edge over the rest of the league.

Los Angeles Dodgers Senior Director of Baseball Systems Platform John “TK” Focht has spent the past decade as a prominent member of that legion, lending his tech expertise to one of MLB’s most decorated franchises. 

For a lifelong baseball fan like Focht, working for an organization that has won two World Series and helping megastars like Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman become their best selves on the field has been immensely rewarding.

On top of that, as a gay front office employee, Focht has also been able to derive tremendous personal satisfaction working for one of the most LGBTQ-uplifting organizations in sports. Focht is among the Rising 50 LGBTQ people in sports as part of our Power 100 (the list will be published Oct. 14).

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His job description gives an indication of how far baseball teams have come over the past decade in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Essentially, Focht oversees a team that develops new technology in order to provide Dodgers baseball operations with the support they need to put a winning team on the field.

“It’s like there’s a little software company inside of Dodgers baseball,” he said.

That software company assists a multitude of departments within the Dodgers organization from scouting and player development to day-to-day strategy.

All of this is done with the goal of giving Dodgers a leg up on their competitors when considering players to add to their roster and making the adjustments those players need to perform at their highest levels. The infrastructure Focht has built affects everything from defensive positioning to where hitters set up in the batters box.

“Our goal is only what’s on the field. And our measurement of success is in wins. Wins today, wins in the future,” he said.

From physics to baseball

Originally from Texas, Focht split his childhood between Austin and El Paso, growing up a huge fan of the Houston Astros. Remembering the 2017 World Series, he was quick to deadpan, “I no longer follow the Astros.”

Focht followed baseball throughout his childhood even as he gravitated toward the sciences academically, never conceiving that the game would one day create the kind of job that was perfect for someone with his background.

He graduated from MIT with a degree in physics in 2004. Shortly after moving to Washington, D.C., from college, Focht realized that this fresh start afforded him an opportunity to begin life in a new city as his authentic self and came out as gay to his friends and family. 

The coming out process went well and Focht found the love and support he needed from everyone closest to him, beginning a productive professional and personal life. He married his husband, Jeff Marman, in 2010 and eventually landed in Seattle working as a software development engineer for Amazon. 

While there, one of his co-workers connected with the Dodgers about a job in their front office and referred them to Focht, knowing of his passion for baseball. 

Eventually, the Dodgers offered Focht an opportunity to join their R&D Department in 2015 and that sparked a serious conversation with Marman about what it would mean to uproot their lives and move to Los Angeles. After some soul searching, Marman decided to say yes and take a chance on that his husband could find professional happiness in baseball.

Focht recalled thinking, “If this is something worth pursuing, it has to be done now in this situation. If it doesn’t work out, I’m willing to give a year or two of my life to figuring out that this doesn’t work.

“And that was 10 years ago!” he said.

It’s difficult to consider from the perspective of the current era where the Dodgers are a juggernaut, but when Focht joined Los Angeles a decade ago, their front office had fallen behind others in baseball’s data revolution.

With then-new President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman taking the reins after a successful run with the Tampa Bay Rays, Focht was hired as a software engineer for the team’s newly invigorated Research and Development Department.

The idea was to catch up technologically to teams like the Rays as quickly as possible and eventually surpass them while adding in the Dodgers’ significant financial advantages in order to stay ahead.

It took a number of years but Focht could feel a change taking place and eventually realized that the Dodgers had become the kind of cutting edge team that the rest of baseball was chasing.

“A lot of the problems that we were trying to solve then are ones that we would work with much more easily now,” he said.

His 2020 and 2024 World Series rings would indicate that this analysis was correct.

A ‘Jeopardy!’ run

Those were far from the only nationally televised triumphs that Focht got to experience over the past half decade.

In December 2020, the former high school quiz bowl member was booked as a contestant on “Jeopardy!” and went on a run reminiscent of his team’s during that postseason.

As Focht explained his process, he realized that it echoed the atmosphere surrounding his job.

“You’re prepared as much as you’re prepared. You sit down. You lock in. You get your focus ready and you go,” he said, “The people that I’ve talked with — particularly here — about that are like, ‘Oh wow, that is what athletes do!’”

Focht truly was locked in, winning four games in a row before dropping the fifth, with earnings of $103,800. With “Jeopardy!” taping an entire week of shows on one day, that meant his entire run was over in less than 24 hours. Furthermore, as 2020’s social distancing rules were in effect, that added to the surreal aspect of it all.

“It was just a weird out-of-body mental experience and I can’t really tell you any more than that because it’s so strange,” he said.

Since then, Focht has been invited back twice to compete in the show’s Tournament of Champions and has found it a much more relaxing experience.

“I don’t go into those with a lot of expectations for myself,” he said. “When you get invited back, everyone is an elite competitor. Anyone can beat anyone any given day. So you can go in and say, ‘Here’s what I want for myself.’ But if it doesn’t happen, you’ve got to be cool with that and just play the best you can. Which I feel like I’ve done every time that I’ve been there.”

Between remaking the Dodgers tech side and showing off his game show prowess, Focht’s time in L.A. has been very professionally satisfying. But when he initially decided to take the Dodgers job, he was also focused on something more personal. 

While researching the Dodgers’ commitment to their LGBTQ employees, he recalled initially being a bit apprehensive. During his interview, Focht was very forthright about being gay and mentioning his husband in order to test how his potential employers would react.

Proud of Dodgers Pride Night

After observing how the Dodgers people took in that information and conveyed that he and his husband would be accepted and welcomed, it was enough to convince him that this would work. 

Once he came on board, Focht got to witness the Dodgers’ connection to L.A.’s LGBTQ community grow firsthand. He recalled attending his first Dodgers Pride Night as an employee and being impressed by its feeling of authenticity.

“The program put together, the events of the day, what was happening on field [were] specifically geared towards an actual community with actual thought put into it,” he said.

Then in 2021, his experience with Dodgers Pride became even more meaningful. Emerging from 2020 restrictions, his parents decided to make the trip to Dodger Stadium from El Paso for Pride so that they could see a night that had become so important to their son.

Pride 2021 was one of the first Dodgers games where attendance restrictions had been lifted and the ballpark was full and buzzing with rainbow revelers who had been waiting for years to let loose and enjoy themselves.

“My dad said he had never really seen the LGBTQ community in large enough numbers to act as a community anywhere before,” Focht said.

The night enabled his parents to see their son fully immersed in that community and to understand why the concept of chosen family is so important.

“It was really an experience for them to see [LGBTQ] people being people being comfortable. And to see me and my husband as part of that and to understand. Not saying they needed understanding, but [it was] something that feels more intuitive now that you’ve actually seen it,” he said.

Focht’s decision to pursue his own happiness and join the Dodgers has proven to be a wise one in every aspect — partly because for him and his family, a night at the ballpark in June was every bit as validating as one in October.

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