The Astros’ sign-stealing scandal has sent shockwaves around the baseball world, including the sudden creation of three managerial vacancies in less than four days. With A.J. Hinch, Alex Cora, and now Carlos Beltran out of work, the Astros, Red Sox, and Mets are all looking for new managers less than a month before the start of Spring Training. Here’s the latest on the three openings…
- Though Dusty Baker had expressed interest in the Astros job, the longtime skipper tells Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle that he has been yet to be contacted by the organization. Such names as Buck Showalter and John Gibbons have already been interviewed by the team, though Baker isn’t necessarily counting on a future call, saying “I’m thinking that if they really needed or wanted you, there’s a good chance somebody would have stepped up by now.” As for other Astros candidates, Rome lists bench coach Joe Espada as a potential hire, though notes that the team might prefer to bring in an outside manager without any links to the controversy engulfing the franchise.
- The Mets are considering quality control coach Luis Rojas, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports (via Twitter). Rojas seems like a logical candidate, as he received two interviews when the team was doing its initial search for a new skipper last fall, though Rojas wasn’t among the reported finalists for the job. Installing a familiar face from the current staff might be preferable to bringing someone in from outside the organization at this late stage of the offseason, though Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen told reporters (including The Athletic’s Tim Britton) that internal and external candidates are under consideration, as the club so recently did background on a number of managerial candidates before Beltran was hired.
- One known quantity that doesn’t appear to be on the Mets’ radar for now is former manager Terry Collins, as SNY’s Andy Martino (Twitter link) writes. Collins has worked as a special assistant in New York’s front office since leaving the dugout after the 2017 season.
- Cora’s firing leaves the Red Sox with what as Alex Speier of the Boston Globe simply describes as “a devastating mess,” as a managerial vacancy adds yet another layer of complication to what has already been a challenging offseason for newly-hired Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom. If an outside hire is indeed explored, it will take time away from Bloom when he could be focusing on a trade market that could be opening up, as many of the top free agents have now been signed. Promoting from within carries its own set of difficulty, however, since the Red Sox organization that is facing its own league investigation over alleged use of electronic sign-stealing. It already seemed like the Red Sox were somewhat stuck in limbo waiting for the fallout of this investigation, as well as waiting for the trade market to blossom so that some larger salaries could be moved off the payroll (though both Bloom and principal owner John Henry have denied that avoiding the Competitive Balance Tax is a chief offseason priority).
whyhayzee
Great season ahead.
greenguy
Dusty, my grandma wanted to fly jets but no one contacted her so don’t feel so bad!
Pacific Wave
Lol!
Ejemp2006
Hope the Red Sox try Pedroia in a player/manager role. Bring a little novelty excitement to their team. Or give Omar Visquel a shot at the major coaching job. This is a season where they can afford to take a high risk high reward move and people won’t blame them too much if the result is badly bad.
costergaard2
Very interesting idea…
bosoxfan4life
What about Veritek as an interim manager for the season? If he turns out to be good why not keep him? He was really good when he played as holding it down.
bradthebluefish
Agreed
tigerd7335
Varitek would make perfect sense and he would have the clubhouse makes to much sense to happen
TeddyBallgameYazJimEd
Varitek is the best solution… familiarity with the team and the players within the organization… Will need less time to prepare for the season..let alone spring training, which is only about 30 days away.
deweybelongsinthehall
I know he’s the obvious choice but instead I’d hire Baker or even bring back a John Farrell with Varitek serving as the bench coach. Too much drama in my view for a rookie manager.
Hondo17
Are you crazy? Farrell?
lowtalker1
Follow in the footsteps of Pete Rose eh?
Ejemp2006
If only Pete Rose wasn’t such a lying degenerate then we could finally celebrate just how great he was at baseball. Remember when the Phillies brought Rose on board merely hoping that his gritty win or die attitude would push them over the hump. And it worked.
The book hasn’t been completely written about Pedroia yet but something tells me he has that same Pete Rose grit in his soul. I suspect Pedroia could maybe get a team to play each game like its their last and help everyone maximize their individual talents for a championship run.
nick1218
screw that “lying degenerate” Why should someone fess up when they do something wrong? The issue is what they did wrong and thats all that is the issue in judging them. you were probably one of the dummies saying :if he just fesses up we will all go easy on him, thats all he has to do”
iamhector24
And what about the fact that he had sèx with a 14 year old girl? Guess we should just ignore that too?
Buck Jones
Like how you put in Dustin Pedroia on the same line as “a little novelty”.Lol
Buck Jones
Jerry Lee Lewis married one at 14 years old.
g8752
Yes Pedroia
Buck Jones
Like how you put in Dustin Pedroia on the same line as “a little novelty”.Lol
Buck Jones
Like how you put in Dustin Pedroia on the same line as “a little novelty”.Lol
SupremeZeus
Poor Dusty sitting at home waiting for his tin can and string to ring.
baseballpun
At least you can be sure he won’t be using tech to steal signs, if he’s using a tin can phone.
Larry David's Joe Pepitone Jersey
It’s simple – put a tiny transmitter in his toothpick.
nymetsking
lol
brandons-3
Do tin can phones actually work?
retire21
Yes
baseballpun
Just put a Best Buy assistant manager in charge of the Astros and they can pick up where they left off. Might save some money on equipment with that employee discount.
Larry David's Joe Pepitone Jersey
Under the circumstances, Rojas wouldn’t be a bad pick. True, he hasn’t managed in the majors before, but he does have 8 minor league seasons under his belt and he’s managed a lot of the key pieces on the current roster.
I can’t imagine the Wilpons putting Terry back in the dugout after they pushed him out. Then again, a report from Andy Martino saying that Collins won’t be a candidate practically works as an announcement that he’s coming back.
dlevin11
Red Sox should at least interview David Ortiz for interim manager duties
IronBallsMcGinty
Why? Is it because some guys in the Dominican Republic thought he was worth a shot?
lautrec 2
Well, I see what you did there.
Buck Jones
If you are going to bring someoneback it should be Francona.He was the best you ever had and you hung him out to dry over some lousy chicken wings in reaction to Baltimore kicking you out of the playoffs on the last day of the season.
Of course Terry would likely tell John Henry where to shove it lol
DarkSide830
replace your disgraced manager with a former PED user. that’ll really rebulid trust in your team.
chicagofan1978
Kevin millar
txman22
He’d be most entertaining Mgr ever.
chicagofan1978
No kidding, I’d love to see him manage the orioles or something. Like a team with no expectations. For the post game press conference alone
Maurice Lock
Ozzie Guillen anyone?
ews34
Ozzie is entertainment waiting to happen. I miss that about him. Didn’t he support Castro though? Is that why he disappeared?
stevebaratta
He should have said, “No, I was talking about Starlin Castro”.
ChiSox_Fan
Robin Ventura
stevep-4
Ha ha I see what you did there
Unclenolanrules
Jesse Ventura.
Bill M
Ace Ventura
nymetsking
Ray Finkle
soxshortstop
Speier stop talking like it is the end of the world for the Red Sox. They have a GM in BOH and 3 assistants and everyone is well connected. Getting a manager will not be too complicated. Yesterday’s media questions were good but get over the doom and gloom, still a great team that someone will be lucky to manage.
qbert1996
Hiring a manager a month and a half before Spring Training is never a good sign for a team. Players are going to be questioned all season long about the 2018 title and how much Cora helped them with sign stealing which is a huge distraction. There’s also a lot of pressure in Boston to win with that talent they currently have before Betts inevitably leaves. So no it may not be the most attractive job
Nook
Red Sox still have to deal with the fall out from cheating during their 2018 World Series season. That will not be fun or easy. Especially in light of them being one of the teams cheating going all the way back to 2015 that caused the commissioner to lend a letter to everyone.
DarkSide830
id seriously consider Backman if im any of these teams, especially NYM. he has a strong track record in the minors and independent leagues.
Larry David's Joe Pepitone Jersey
The Wilpons will never hire Backman in a million years. Backman also completely burned that bridge in any case.
stevecohenMVP
lmao hes an alcoholic womanizer missing a good chunk of teeth and is a raging psychopath
I’m in
stevep-4
So was half the hall of fame, so what?
DarkSide830
admittedly i had not known about the full extent of the off field stuff when i first thought if his name as a candidate.
MarlinsFanBase
If the Mets install a bar in the Mets dugout, Wally will stick around for the whole game.
lambeau gang
If MLB truly wanted to handle the scandal correctly, they would punish the individuals according to their role in the sign-stealing scheme. If you’re going to punish a manager and GM who were not active participants in cheating, then you definitely need to punish Altuve, Bregman & co. who bought in and benefitted most from said cheating. Manfred won’t bring the hammer down on his most profitable faces though. The coaches and “non-stars” are the scapegoats in this situation.
Vandals Took The Handles
Vandals Took The HandlesLess than a minute ago
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I’ll say one thing for that “scandal”……
It’s been the first scandal I’ve heard about in 3-plus years in which the media and other irate people are not on soapboxes blaming the President for.
Yet.
But I’m giving it a few more days.
retire21
Nah. Way too intellectually challenging for Fat Donnie to even comprehend.
bosoxfan4life
That’s would be a long drawn out process with the MLBPA. They would make the league prove everyone suspected. That is what I heard on ESPN
Vandals Took The Handles
The problem occurs with players that were on that team and are now playing for other teams.
It would cause major headaches for their new employers and fans as well as disruptions for the players, manager and coaches – particularly if they were not involved.
takeitback
I’m interested in reading the report you referenced, that proves Altuve and Bregman were involved. I must have missed where specific names of players were mentioned in the MLB report.
txman22
You forgot about the players union who will defend players to their death, right or wrong.
Nook
Do you know which Astros did and didn’t participate? Where their numbers as good or better in 2019 when there was no indication of cheating?
Most the names I have heard linked (McCann, JD Davis, Aoki, Marisnick, Reddick, Gattis, Beltran) were minor players.
jimthegoat
Dusty Baker is the most overrated manager ever
pasha2k
Jim I agree n I would not want him. I trust Bloom to find a candidate for ownership to hire.
brandons-3
I think he’s properly “rated” by most people. If an owner’s prerogative is to make money and win games, he’s a fine manager. If you’re in the business of wanting to win championships, it’s probably best to look elsewhere at this point.
If you gave him the keys to your Camaro for a scenic drive, it’ll be safe. If you want him to race your Camaro, he’ll probably wreck it.
But he brings credibility, integrity, respect, and experience to the table, all things Houston could use. I expect they’ll go in a different direction, but he’d be an appropriate hire for just one season to manage the media storm and not trip up the current roster that should still be in the playoff hunt.
The Astros are not likely to win a championship with him, but the safety net Baker’s proven to be can’t be dismissed out of hand given the mess in Houston at the moment.
jimthegoat
Baker’s teams do well in the regular season because he always inherits loaded rosters. Then his teams routinely choke in the playoffs.
brandons-3
That’s a much shorter way of putting it, but yes that’s the just of what I was saying. But the wrong manger can mess up even a loaded roster. You can assure Baker won’t mess it up.
I just feel that’s not a terrible thing for the Astros in the intermediate- have Baker manage on a one-year deal, make the playoffs, and then you’ll have a new GM that can conduct a proper search next offseason.
jimthegoat
No, they don’t want to waste a year of Bregman, Altuve, Correa and whoever else they have on a season in which they get bounced in the first round.
maximumvelocity
That title belongs to Showalter.
He’s been less successful than Baker, yet is somehow considered a great coach.
lowtalker1
Bobby valentine
soxshortstop
Lol. Bobby V was certainly entertaining in 2012 in a goofball way. Sox might as well play competitive ball as they are going to be losing draft picks so no sense in tanking with Bobby V cause no help coming in the first two rounds for 2 years.
micg
Am I alone in thinking Showalter and the Mets are a great match? Buck has weathered the “NY” pressure before, and the Mets are at the stage of their rebuild where he excels. You have to wonder what might have been in his last years in Baltimore if he had the pieces the Mets now have?
Vandals Took The Handles
Brodie and the front office want a manager they can continue to boss around. It’s why they ignored Girardi and others, spending their time on Beltran, Perez, and other candidates with no managerial experience that would be happy just to have the job. Experienced managers such as Buck and others would expect to….gasp!….be allowed to make up their own line-ups and not be told what moves they should make during a game.
It’s no coincidence that during the managerial search they were taping candidates answering questions the NY media might ask after a game, and evaluating their responses. It was sad watching Mickey Calloway after games in 2019 trying to explain moves he made that obviously were not what he was comfortable doing.
Ex-managers such as Buck and Dusty are not going to came in and be told by a guy that was a players agent 15 months ago – along with a group of bureaucrats – how to run each game. The Mets will hire a flunkie that’ll do what they say, and make plausible deniability-type excuses when it fails.
AssumeFactsNotInEvidence
Hey Vandals, you have an excuse for Callaway before BVW was in the organization? Anything? No?
Vandals Took The Handles
Huh?
They were winning in 2018 when a few guys started getting hurt. That roster was terrible, it had no depth. No bullpen. No defense up the middle. No consistency. Try winning with a team where you have to play Jay Bruce cause he’s being paid a lot, and he can’t play the OF, but 1B is taken……and he can’t hit either.
You want to dump on the manager, fine. There was not a manager in MLB that could have won much of anything with the Mets in 2018. In fact, during the last few months Callaway oversaw the pitching staff improving, and McNeil coming up – being given time at 2B. In 2019 the Mets had 43 corner OF’s, 16 3B’s, and 32 2B’s. A catcher that should be a DH, and the bullpen went south again. And look at this upcoming year – the pitching staff features 2 starters dumped by the Red Sox and Cardinals of which Met fans are being told is “depth”, while Sox and Cardinals fans are happy they’re gone. The 2020 bullpen features 3 “established” guys that look like disasters, along with a few other guys from their farm system that arguably shouldn’t be pitching as anything other them mop-up guys in MLB.
The Phillies roster is an incoherent mess. The Mets roster may well be worse. I don’t care who manages those 2 teams – they’re depending on lots of injuries to key Braves and Nationals players in order to legitimately compete in 2020.
Callaway will square away the Angles pitching, and will again manage in MLB. He won’t take any job – only one where it’s possible to win and he’s given backing. He’ll be a successful manger long after Brodie and his staff are out of the sport.
Dan Hunter
then the mets have to expect to lose…
VonPurpleHayes
Mets don’t want to spend big on a manager. So they’ll be going with a cheaper, inexperienced manager. Hence Callaway and Beltran over options like Girardi and Showalter.
AssumeFactsNotInEvidence
Bold of you to assume that anyone will give Showalter a salary to manage a team at all! Let alone a big one!
VonPurpleHayes
He’s gone tenure and playoff experience. His salary would be much higher than a first-year manager.
pburns65
if mlb truly wanted to punish the red Sox they would force them to keep Cora.
Rsox
The Red Sox are not trading any of Betts, Sale, Price, or Eovaldi. Even Bradley probably is in CF on opening day. The Managerial search is not keeping Bloom from anything.
I would find it hard to believe the Rays would deny Matt Quatraro a chance at a big league manager job if Bloom requests an interview.
Showalter and Baker are likely not really candidates due to probably being too old school for the analytic crowd.
Internally, Jason Varitek, Joe Oliver, and Billy McMillan could all be possibilities for the job
Rsox
The Mets would probably benefit from adding a veteran manager but are unlikely to pay for a Dusty Baker or a Buck Showalter. Eduardo Perez would come cheap and Luis Rojas and Hensley Meulens are already on the payroll making one of them more likely
Bill
Except they would need to hire someone to replace them, certainly in the case of Meulens. But yes ,it would be cheaper than a big name manager and overall cost less than Beltran was going to make.
ramon garciaparra
Historically the Red Sox have their best seasons when expectations going in are low and have their worst seasons when expectations are high. It is the Red Sox way.
Rsox
Showalter to the Astros is interesting and I think buck could restore order to the ‘stros while keeping them competitive.
Vandals Took The Handles
The problem with an old-line guy like Buck going to the Astros is understanding how that franchise uses not just analytics, but video equipment in evaluating the approaches individual pitchers and hitters are taking – both during games and in practice. They employ a bevy of instructors making recommendations and working with the players on making adjustments. Brett Storm has been there for years as pitching coach, and has been extremely successful. Not sure a guy like Buck could work with him, and others.
stevep-4
Or maybe they can dig up Leo Durocher, he would restore order again
canocorn
Is the guy who managed the Knights in The Natural available, or is he still Postmaster General?
nymetsking
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Wilfred on here in a while…
Ruben_Tomorrow 2
Funny you mention him, he actually posts on this site. I liked his philosophy as a Postmaster General. As he said, “In addition to being a postmaster, I’m a general. And we both know, it’s the job of a general to by God, get things done.” I think that type of mindset is needed for a baseball manager. He’d fit in well with the Mets too because like Cespedes, he enjoys his golf.
Ashtem
I hope we find a good manager for RS nation
bradthebluefish
Bloom hasn’t done much of anything this offseason. He should tell teams to make their final offers on Price and Betts. No more games.
Bill
Maybe he can trade one of them for a manager.
Buck Jones
TheJays traded a manager to you guys in 2013 and you won that year’s World Series.lol
jonesadoug
well I’ll just throw my hat in the ring. I could manage any of those teams if given the opportunity. no mlb experience other than being a fan I usually win my fantasy leagues though this giving me a vast knowledge of mlb players and what it takes to win. just give me a call
brucenewton
Gibbons is the man for the Astros.
moody
Dusty Baker again? Geezus. He won 1 pennant in 20 years, and ruined several great pitchers. By far, the most overrated manager in mlb history. The Astros should be forced to hire him as punishment.
maximumvelocity
Showalter has zero, and has never won a game past the divisional round. He is far more overrated.
robluca21
I think on the wake of the scandal the astros , mets and sox should look to hire a well respected veteran manager, Showalter, Bochy and Baker would be great fits and get things in order quickly and establish some much needed respect and credibility within the organizations .
George
Since MLB hasn’t dropped the hammer on Boston yet, it might make sense for them to hire outside the organization, since they don’t yet know how far the fecal matter will fly.
mario crosby
Give Clint Hurdle a call. He did a good job with the Triple A Pirates. He would be a great transitional manager.
tiredolddude
Good guy who was told to make something out of the mud his owner continually handed him here. A player’s manager. Franchises could do a lot worse
chicagofan1978
How’s about Ron Washington for the Mets? Don’t see a fit in Boston or Houston though.
Rsox
Billy Beane: “It’s not that hard, tell him Wash…”
Ron Waahington: “it’s incredibly hard!”
jaysfan1994
I feel like Dusty Baker has been 70 years old for 30 years, seriously I remember him managing the Giants and him looking old. That was only 30 years ago!
g8752
Dustin Pedroia player manager
Armaday
The Mets will finally take Wally Blackman serious after he’s dead! Guy deserves a shot.
Buck Jones
Definitely is but he won’t get the job as he is considered too laid back.They are wrong in their thinking however as he has shown many times that he will not suffer fools and prima donnas easily.
Buck Jones
Definitely is but he won’t get the job as he is considered too laid back.They are wrong in their thinking however as he has shown many times that he will not suffer fools and prima donnas easily.
jmw1975
Lance Berkman would be perfect for the Astros job.
tiredolddude
I hear Cesar Cedeno is looking to get into managing. He feels the Mets are the place for him
zanek
Veritek should be the manager for the Red Sox