The New England Patriots’ newest senior analyst won’t have to relocate to switch teams — or leagues — to take on his new job.

Joe McDonald left his job as the Boston Red Sox’s director of baseball analytics in December, according to his LinkedIn page. Now he’s the Pats’ Senior Analyst, Football Strategy, a change first noted by Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com.

McDonald, a 2011 graduate of Boston College, has spent his entire career in Major League Baseball. After interning with the Red Sox, Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees, he was hired by Boston to be a baseball operations analyst in Oct. 2014.

In Nov. 2018, McDonald was elevated to Director of Baseball Analytics, the position he held until December.

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The Patriots are coming off their second consecutive 4-13 season, fourth place in the AFC East. Head coach Jerod Mayo was fired Jan. 5, and replaced with Mike Vrabel a week later. They have posted a losing record in four of the last five seasons after never finishing below .500 from 2001-19.

Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps not surprising to see the team go outside of the box to infuse the front office with a different perspective.

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McDonald is far from the first baseball decision-maker to jump directly to a different sport.

Former Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres executive Paul DePodesta, who rose to fame as the assistant general manager of the “Moneyball” A’s, joined the Cleveland Browns’ front office in Jan. 2016. DePodesta’s successor, Ned Colletti, joined the San Jose Sharks’ scouting department after his time as a Dodgers special advisor ended.

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Cotillo reports that “the Patriots have been known to be trying to beef up their analytics department under executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf. It appears the McDonald hire is an effort to that end.”

The Red Sox have methodically adjusted the makeup of their front office under Craig Breslow — the third baseball operations department head McDonald has worked under since he was hired by Dave Dombrowski.

Last October, Breslow hired Tampa Bay’s Taylor Smith to run the Red Sox’s analytics department. Like the Pats, Boston missed the postseason for the third consecutive season in 2024, going 81-81.

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