The Tigers’ search to replace Ron Gardenhire has started with a familiar name to Detroit fans, as MLB.com’s Jason Beck reports (via Twitter) that the team interviewed Dodgers first base coach George Lombard.
The bulk of Lombard’s 144 career Major League games were played in a Detroit uniform, as Lombard appeared in 72 contests for the 2002 Tigers. Lombard played in parts of six MLB seasons from 1998-2006, and after his career wound up in 2009, he moved on to minor league coaching and coordinator positions in the Red Sox and Braves farm systems. The 45-year-old Lombard is currently in his fifth season as the Dodgers’ first base coach, and he was also interviewed for the Pirates’ managerial vacancy last year.
Lombard’s resume includes some managerial experience, as he ran the dugout for the Gulf Coast Red Sox (Boston’s rookie league affiliate) in 2011 and 2012. Tigers GM Al Avila is reportedly only looking at candidates who have some managerial or coaching experience at the Major or minor league levels, so Lombard qualifies on this front, though he does lack the track record of some of the bigger names thought to be under consideration — such as recent World Series-winning skippers Alex Cora or A.J. Hinch, among other candidates.
Hopefully 2 of several interviews, is Mike Rabelo going to be on the list. !
You’re right Rabelo deserve a chance
Great men and personality
I hope Mike Rabelo will be the next Tiger’s Manager. If the Tigers hire someone else, another organization will eventually give Rabelo a chance.
Hinch, should be top of list
While Lombard lacks the track record, he also lacks the baggage. Previous Tigers front offices would not have even considered the two suspended cheaters. Character should be a requirement for a manager position.
I would much rather a manager know how to arrange a lineup, deploy a bullpen, or setting defenses ahead of character. This is not a person that is going to be in charge of your money or or making laws. This is a guy in charge of making decisions for a baseball team. Let’s not act as if this is someone that kids should look up to or something. Most kids will just see them as the old guy in the dugout regardless of their character anyway.
Why not have both? There are guys who can manage a team on the field and who have character.
Yeah of course. But exactly how many of those people are there to go around? And do those types want to work for Detroit?
I wanted to marry a woman that is gorgeous, rich, intelligent and had high morals. But there weren’t enough of them to go around for my ugly butt to get one too. So I had to pick which traits were most important to me. I’m glad I had to do that because otherwise I wouldn’t have found my soulmate.
ScottCFA, exactly.
I agree Scott
White Sox job his
I would think Hinch will be on the top of any skipper opening in baseball. He is good with players and I guarantee he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He would hammer some cheaters.
Super Joe McEwing!
Good.. Being a lifelong Dodger fan, I wish they would gut the whole coaching staff. Let Dave Roberts go somewhere else and see how well he does without the talent that’s in LA. He’s a terrible manager that has no clue what pitchers to use and when. How many times are they going to let this moron screw up a chance to win a championship?
As many times as he gives them a chance to win a championship? Let him go! He won’t be unemployed long!
I know he won’t and whoever picks him up will be fooled too. Any manager could take a team like that to the playoffs. Making the right moves IN the playoffs is a different story. They will never win it all with him and his decisions as manager. He’s proved it for 5 years now. He’s awful.
I love Roberts. Who else has a pitcher throwing a no hitter or maybe a 2 hitter thru 4 innings and the opposing team gets a hit and he goes right out and pulls him. He is too managing at what Kershaw and Maddox was to pitching in the playoffs. Horrible at best. He is the best thing than any player on the opposing team
You get rid of Doc, and you take the chance of alienating the players in regards to the prototypical “player’s coach”. The on-field decisions? You won’t see a change at all. Everything comes from upstairs.
Im actually hoping Don Kelly gets a shot. He’s a student of the game and carved out a decent little career with nowhere near the talent that others around him had. Not to mention those that have worked with him have said he works very well with prospects, which in Detroit that’s basically all you’ll be dealing with (atleast for the next few years). But my issue is whos making the decision on who will coach. I can’t believe that we are stuck in the same position we have been for going on 6 years now and we are not getting any better! Avila has made awful trades, hasn’t traded the players he needed to while their value was peaked (JDM, Matt Boyd, etc) and outside of Jonathan Schoop has had AWFUL free agent signings (J. Zimmerman anyone?). He’s drafted decently but outside of that he has not gotten this team any better for the better part of a decade now and I wish Chris Illitch would just clean out the entire cabinet and start fresh. But that’s just a single opinion, looking forward to what other Tigers fans think of it.
I am all about replacing Avila. His negatives have severely outweighed his positives. The Tigers have a decent core of youth, but could have had much much more.
Avila needs to go, get a GM that can develop, draft, and find talent.
How could they “have had much more”?
There’s going to be allot of changes to MLB coming up. MLB is taking on more responsibility for MiLB. With more going into MiLB, there will be some type of player high end salary correction.
The Tigers are hamstrung from winning. They can never put the optimal team on the field. With Miguel Cabrera making $32M through 2023, he will always bat 3 in the feature spot in the order and plug the base paths when he does gets on base.
Although the media likes it, the Tiger’s free agent acquisition strategy is a failing strategy. The Tigers acquire low end – high risk free agents in a gamble that they play well enough to be marketable. If they are marketable, the Tigers then gamble them away for prospects. The Tigers take all the risks while screening free agents for other teams.
All the while, the poor scouting corps who are scouting all the poor draft choices are the same group scouting for all the poor trades and all the lousy free agent acquisitions.
I’ll agree with everything you said. They pay FAs decent money to see what they can do and if they do well they trade em away for prospects that 80% of the time don’t pan out. Al Avila in s nutshell for ya.
It would be nice if our FAs could stay healthy for a full season…..
Trading JDM when they were winning would have made little sense. It would be like the Yankees trading Tanaka because he’s in the last year of his contract. That’s what team who are not competing do.
If you think the Tigers are in the same position as six years ago, you have not been watching. They have some exciting players, not just in the minors, but on the major league roster. They are moving in the right direction.
I never said to trade him while competing was the appropriate move. I am simply saying what Avila gets for trades is awful, and it is. What he got in return of JDM, Verlander, etc has absolutely no returns thus far and it’s been years. He has lost on every trade he’s made, period. Can you really say you’ve been happy with the performance of Daz Cameron, Isaac Paredes,Jake Rogers, and really the crown jewel was supposed to be Franklin Perez and he can’t stay healthy long enough to even see if he’s got talent. And yes the big club has a small amount of young talent (Castro and Goodwin) but should be better than a top 3 pick in the draft by now. Like I said, just an opinion but one I feel strongly about. Thur new skipper we get will most likely be someone raw, as they will look to see what type of players Avila will put on the field and hopefully soon it will resemble a better product. All depends on how quickly our young positional talent matures b/c we need guys like Torlelson, Riley Greene, Parker Meadows and others sooner rather than later!
Familiar name? George Lombard was barely a familiar name when he was on the roster let alone a decade later.
I’m down for Ozzie Guillen. 1 year deal. Doesn’t work out, well then he’s a placeholder for the next manager, when there may be more attractive choices.
No Hinch or Cora! This tigers team is fun to watch and the ratings were up for the tigers (down for mlb). No need to pick a manager who will drive people away.
Final thought/question….
How did they get to interview Lombard if he’s the first base coach for the Dodgers? I thought they couldn’t do interviews until after the WS…..
I remember when Lombard was a can’t-miss prospect who missed. I’m glad to see him seeing success as a coach.
I don’t remember him. I think I’ve wiped the early 2000’s out of my memory bank, ha !
Yeah, I’ve tried to wipe that out too. I was at loss 113 in 2003, and really thought we would end up breaking the all time loss record that year. I love my team no matter what the record is, but I surely wish we had a GM that was making us better than Avila is. Hoping whomever there next skipper is will make an impact, as we got alot of young players heading into an extremely important year for them (Christian Stewart, Jake Rogers, Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, etc.) and really need someone that can get all the talent that got them drafted in the first place to manifest itself on the field!