The Angels are set to hire former Tigers skipper Brad Ausmus as a special assistant to GM Billy Eppler, reports Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register. In further Angels news, George A. King III of the New York Post tweets that they’ve also settled on Yankees minor league catching coordinator Josh Paul as their new bench coach.
Ausmus, 48, spent the 2014-17 seasons as the Tigers’ manager but was let go at the end of the ’17 season as the Tigers sought a new voice for their rebuilding club (ultimately settling on longtime division rival Ron Gardenhire). Fletcher notes that Ausmus will assist the Angels in scouting and evaluation of in-house players, amateurs and players in other organizations.
Ausmus recently had a lengthy Q&A with Katie Strang of The Athletic in which he explained that he plans to take a year off from the rigors of serving as a big league manager. Ausmus acknowledged that he did interview with the Red Sox, but did so due to the unique appeal that the opportunity held with him as a childhood Red Sox fan with a house in Cape Cod and other family nearby. (He reportedly drew interest from multiple other organizations but turned down the opportunity to interview.)
Paul, 42, spent the 2004-05 seasons playing for the Angels under manager Mike Scioscia as part of a nine-year big league career as a catcher. He’s managed in the Yankees’ minor league system and is a know commodity to Eppler, who served as an assistant GM in the Bronx prior to being hired as the Angels’ general manager. He’ll be replacing Dino Ebel, who was moved to third base coach after Ron Roenicke left the organization to join the Red Sox’ new coaching staff under rookie manager Alex Cora.
xscalabr
Paul should be the manager after Sosh is done
angelsfan4life
No Molina or Darren Erstad
Dock_Elvis
I’m guessing his replacement is still in Little League. The guy is bomb proof like NORAD.
calibearwaltzer
assistant TO the GM or assitant GM?
padam
It’s like dialogue out of a Seinfeld episode.
thegreatcerealfamine
It’s Dwights title in the Office…
calibearwaltzer
it seems only you understood my reference haha
dugdog83
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
gorav114
Assistant to which means that he only answers to GM and owners but is also not boss of coaches. Like Brady Anderson in Baltimore. He’s supposed to be like a right hand man though in the orioles case, reports are him and Duquette don’t get along so well.
Mark from CT
Does anyone get along with Dan Duquette?
Tahoe725
“To GM”. GM can’t be everywhere so asst to GM helps cover scouting and eval of minor leaguers
Dock_Elvis
Precisely. I actually ran into and spoke with Scott Servais at a minor league game when he was in the same capacity as Ausmus with the Angels.
Rob L. 2
You spoke with him too?! Well ermahgerd!!1!
BlueSkyLA
The real news here is about George King III. That guy must be nearly 300 years old now.
hk27
Didn’t he go mad?
Cat Mando
Couldn’t hit the curve, drove him nuts.
BlueSkyLA
He was designated for assignment in 1784.
Dock_Elvis
Its hard to ship guys back to the minors when the British have cannons blocking the roads.
xscalabr
A barbarian encampment was discovered near the minor league stadium
Disco Dave
Great for you Brad!
100% class act
padam
Translation: Mike, we have your replacement waiting.
cmancoley
No Ebel is going to replace Scoscia 100%
cmancoley
No Ebel is Mike’s replacement
angelsfan4life
Ausmus had more talent on the Tigers, than Scioscia has had on the Angels since 2009. Yet Ausmus couldn’t do anything with the Tigers.
angels fan 3
I guess ausmus/ any kind of coach can somehow make players perform better?
Tahoe725
No manager can keep players from getting older and lazier. It’s up to players to keep their performance sharp
madmanTX
“Taking a year off from managing” is a kinder way of saying “I got fired and no other team wants me to manage.”
JKB 2
No actually its not like that at all. Many teams wanted to talk to Ausmus about managing their team and more in the future will as well.
And getting fired as a manager means nothing at all. Almost all managers get fired. Then rehired.
AJ Hinch is the manager of the world champion Astros but he was fired as manager in Arizona. So what. LaRussa was fired in Chicago. So what? Girardi has been fired twice. So what? Terry Francona has been fired twice. So what? How many times was Billy Martin fired
fox471 Dave
So what.
padreforlife
Girardi contract expired he wasn’t fired from Yankees
Tahoe725
Same for Ausmus. So technically, he wasn’t fired either.
Dock_Elvis
I aasume Steinbrenner has fired Billy Martin and rehired him atleast 50 times in the great beyond.
Disco Dave
weak position with no basis
Tahoe725
At least 4 other teams wanted to interview him and he turned down all but 1. He interviewed there bc of some personal ties with area. So no, he was very popular since all teams with vacancies wanted to interview. Yankees were very keen to talk to him, but he declined. He had already made his decision to sit out to spend more time at home with his daughter who is graduating HS this yr. Very admirable reason. He will be back n 2019 managing somewhere.
Mark from CT
How’s it going, Brad?
outinleftfield
Looks like the Angels have found their manager when Scioscia’s contract is up.
Cardinals17
Fantastic! He’ll do well!
stymeedone
So… what exactly does an assistant to the GM do, and how do you tell if he’s doing it well?
Tahoe725
He does scouting, looks st how minor leaguers are doing, makes evaluations, sometimes assists in spring training w/ coaching. The GM can’t be everywhere so asst helps with this. Plus it’s mostly part time and they don’t have to go on team road trips, so less travel
dugdog83
Ausmus was given a World Series caliber team and couldn’t do anything with them. He’s awful guys, you gotta face it. You Angels are getting the Tigers cast off like it’s a tv show.
Ausmus put nothing of creativity into his managing style. Boring. Bland. He only started hit and runs when he knew he wasn’t going to get picked up.
Not getting picked up is getting fired, quit sugar coating it.
He will never be a successful manager in the majors again.
Disco Dave
a bloated payroll with washed up vets is hardly world series caliber. (see…anyone can make broad stroke generalizations without basis)