Mariners bullpen and quality control coach Stephen Vogt will interview with the Giants about their managerial vacancy this week, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The Giants have thus far interviewed only internal candidates about the manager’s job, yet Vogt isn’t exactly a true outsider, having played with the Giants during the 2019 season. Vogt has plenty of other ties to the Bay Area, as he also played six seasons with the Athletics, and hails from Visalia, California (about a four-hour drive from San Francisco).
Vogt only retired from playing after the 2022 season, and his one season on the Mariners’ staff represents his only coaching experience. That said, Vogt has been regarded as a future manager for years, so it isn’t surprising seeing him immediately pop up as part of a managerial search even though he is relatively lacking in coaching experience. All of the candidates linked to the Giants thus far would also be first-time MLB skippers, so clearly the front office isn’t prioritizing a long resume when considering its next dugout hire.
Over 10 Major League seasons, Vogt appeared in 794 games with six different teams. The big majority (528) of that action came with the A’s, but the Giants rank second on Vogt’s game list with 99 games played. Vogt also briefly played with the Brewers in 2017, so speculatively speaking, it is possible the Brewers might give him some consideration if Craig Counsell doesn’t return as the manager in 2024.
Some more items from around the baseball world…
- Some flame-throwing relief help figures to be a target for the Braves this winter, as Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that only two bullpens in baseball threw fewer pitches of 96mph or higher than the Braves did in 2023. Joe Jimenez and Pierce Johnson contributed a big chunk of the high-velocity pitches Atlanta did throw, yet both relievers will be free agents. With Jesse Chavez also a free agent and Collin McHugh, Kirby Yates, and Brad Hand all on club or mutual options, “the situation allows the Braves to rebuild their bullpen, if they want,” Toscano writes. Rookie Daysbel Hernandez could be an option on the high-velo front, as Atlanta thought enough of Hernandez’s potential to include him on their ALDS roster even though injury limited the righty to 3 2/3 innings in his first MLB season.
- J.D. Martinez was known to be a Red Sox trade candidate heading into the 2022 deadline, and WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford reports that the Dodgers came “very close” to a deal to land the veteran slugger. However, talks fell through when the Sox asked for Evan Phillips to also be included in the trade package. At the time, Phillips was partway through a breakout 2022 season that saw him post a 1.14 ERA over 63 innings, and he went on to another outstanding year as the Dodgers’ first-choice closer in 2023 (2.05 ERA over 61 1/3 frames, with 24 saves). Since the Dodgers pivoted to adding Joey Gallo at that deadline, it’s easy to wonder if Martinez could’ve or would’ve done more to upgrade the lineup, yet it’s hard to fault the team’s logic in wanting to retain Phillips. As it turned out, L.A. got the best of both worlds in 2023, with Phillips closing games and Martinez delivering a big year at the plate after signing with the Dodgers as a free agent last offseason.
All this juicy news makes me moist
Calm yourself Bevis
Taste – I would recommend a good antiperspirant for that armpit issue.
Brave will have a revamped bullpen next season
Red Sox could’ve had Clayton Beeter, reset their luxury tax, and received higher draft compensation for Xander leaving if they traded JD at the 22 deadline. What was Bloom thinking?
How do you know it was Bloom? This ownership seemed to control how the ship sailed/sunk.
Dewey, there’s no way ownership was micromanaging to that extent. That’s just making excuses for bloom’s ineptitude.
Dewey – I find the whole story a bit preposterous. JD wasn’t going to be signed by Bloom so why would he say NO to a deal that brought back anything?
Also, ask yourself why if a great young relief pitcher was more than JD was worth for two months why not ask for something slightly less talented that had controllable years and wasn’t being used. LAD probably only had two dozen of those guys.sitting around accumulating dust on them.
The answer is simple. The whole story is a fabrication. It gives Bloom way too much credit for asking for such a coveted player when JD was struggling and it helps a writer for LAD justify the terrible choice of Gallo. Friedman isn’t a good GM despite all the marketing hype about him. Other than pantsing Bloom for Mookie and Price, he’s not done much in 2/3 of a decade except draft Buehler who has yet to have a several year run of success. The studs in the farm system all came from the previous GM. Sound familiar? Yep Friedman took credit for his predecessor’s success in stocking the farm system and pretended that he “built” the farm system just like a certain protege clown did in Boston..
Considering 21 of the top 30 prospects currently in the Sox system were brought in by Bloom I fail to see how your claim that he’s taking credit for guys who were there when he came on is valid in any way. Yes, the guys who were recently promoted like Casas and Bello were already in the system when he was hired. When you’re only given 4 years in the job it’s hard to have guys you drafted make a huge impact. But he left the system in very good shape, and much better stocked than when he took over.
Ken – It’s a FACT that Dombrowski left Houck, Crawford, Duran, Casas, Bello and Rafaela.
It’s also a FACT Dombrowski was with the Red Sox only 4 years, same as Bloom.
As for 21 out of 30, what do you expect? That guys Dombrowski drafted or signed in 2016-2017 are still toiling in the minors 7 years later? You think 21-year-old college kids who are top prospects would still be in the minors at Age 28?
Troll you could say the same about AA and if Elias never gets the O’s out of the first round he’d be overrated too. The best GM in baseball the last 2 decades was Jeff Lunhow and he was fired because the owner was cheating
I agree that Friedman is overrated. Owners should look closely at the front office. However, the Dodgers have been stocking the farm system since Friedman has been in Los Angeles. He didn’t just inherit a bunch of homegrown players. They continue to develop them.
MLB needs expansion – Luhhow is and was a snake in the grass during his entire baseball career. You meet people like him all the time in life. Guys who don’t care what lines they cross to come out ahead.
Tanking should be cheating which would add to Ludhow’s massive resume of unethical behavior. He has brilliant ideas about how to get an edge in baseball but he never seemed to find the line you shouldn’t cross.
Heck I still find it too coincidental that the year STL hacks the HOU database is the same year the team is stealing signs. That’s too much of a coincidence for me and knowing Ludhow has huge character flaws it wouldn’t surprise me that the leak benefited the Astros more than it hurt them. That’s the common thread between a guy like Ludhow and Cora, they don’t care what lines they have to cross to come out ahead.
NO INTEGRITY WHATSOEVER!!!
DD is head over shoulders better at being a GM who colors within the lines.
Lunhow like Cora is a slime ball who you hire if you can’t win without cheating.
And it’s taken the 4 years Bloom was here for those holdovers from Dombrowski to get to Boston and have an impact. That’s part of the criticism of him. He’ll blow through the upper levels of the farm and have nothing left to create a sustained run at making the playoffs. And considering guys like Crawford who were drafted back in 2017 just started making an impact this year that’s not far off your “7 years later” comment.
ElysianPark – Please name a few.
Who are their best players? Ranked by 2023 OPS+
Mookie – from Boston
Freeman – from Atlanta
JD – from Boston, Arizona, Detroit and Houston
Heyward – Cubs
Muncie – Oakland
Peralta – TB and Arizona
W Smith – Friedman college draft choice in 2016 ***** that’s ONE
Outman – Friedman college draft choice in 2018 ***** that’s TWO
Taylor – Seattle
Smith finally made the all=star team at 28 years old in his 5th season and Outman finally got to play full time in his sixth season with the Dodgers
Friedman and Bloom have a lot in common. They inherited a great bumper crop of farm players from their predecessor:
LAD propsects when Friedman arrived:
1 – Corey Seaguer
2 – Julio Urias
3 – Joc Pederson
4 – Cody Bellinger
And many more. Now list all the studs he’s acquired beyond Buehler.
He’s completely over-rated.
Keep trolling grandpa
Dombrowski is the worst out of the bunch. He just got lucky inheriting a stacked Phillies team and having a huge budget.
I swear the commentors here suffer from recency bias on ever win or loss
Trollfree, Are you seriously going to assess Smith on one, totally subjective criterion; that he wasn’t an AS until his 5th season? Smith has been one of the best hitting catchers in baseball since his rookie year. He has a 126 wRC+ over those 5 years. His least productive season when he had ‘only’ a 119 wRC+ which was his all-star season. that indicates how useless that yardstick is.
He’s no slouch defensively either. I’m not a Dodger fan by any means, just the opposite in fact, but to be objective is to recognize he’s a top 5 catcher in MLB. I’ve seen people try to twist stats to skew perception, but using when a guy makes an AS appearance is a real stretch.
dewey – Ownership gets involved in setting the annual team payroll, approving new mega contracts, and whether or not to trade star players. They don’t get involved in approving the return on trades. Not a chance that Henry would have told Bloom “Not good enough return, do better”.
@FPG, to an extent that is correct in so much that Henry will give an opinion on trade/deal, but will not prevent the GM/POBO from having the final say. Case in point would be Carl Crawford. Henry said ‘on-air’ said he disagreed with that contract but didn’t prevent it. He will definitely hold the GM and PoBO accountable. And eventually, the president.
Henry has been annoying me the past few years, but not because he’s making decisions on the staff or players. He’s not pulling a George Steinbrenner on us. My problem is that he’s let his FO turn into 147 headed dragon of VP and Assistant titles.
As I posted in another topic earlier in the week. I think Henry is feeding Kennedy the proverbial rope to hang himself on. This is way to similar to Henry pushing out LL in 2015. I had posted a link to a 2015 article in one of the other GM topics.
Check it out, man. The reporting of the state of the team and the FO today is eerily similar 2015.
DBH – Absolutely the head of baseball ops is held accountable for anything that impacts profitability and branding, including trades & contracts. I didn’t remember Henry publicly criticizing the Crawford signing. Sure it turned into a bad contract, but Henry saying on air he was against it to me is very wrong … you never embarrass your employees with Monday morning quarterbacking, even after they are gone.
Actually I do see some similarities with George. Petulant, arrogant, controlling, visions of grandeur. And when I say George I don’t mean just Steinbrenner, I also mean Soros.
On Lucky I see things a little differently. After hiring two rookie GM’s, Henry wanted to bring in someone with lots of experience and a proven track record of success. He knew Dombrowski wouldn’t work under Lucky, so it was time for Lucky to move onto other things. And Lucky was on board with it too. Let’s face it, if Lucky still wanted to be HOBO he would have had no problem getting that same position with another team. But he never had any desire to do so.
MLB – One of Bloom’s biggest weaknesses was assessing fair value, whether it be trades or contract offers.
Same thing happened last year. The Mets wanted JD, but Bloom made unreasonable demands in trade talks.
THIS
MLB needs expansion: What was Bloom thinking? He was probably thinking that he better get a really good return if he traded JD Martinez. Bloom still gets criticized for the return in the Mookie Betts trade. People overlook that the main return was the $48M that the Dodgers took on with David Price’s contracts and when you take on that much money the player return is lower. Bloom was probably getting crucified no matter what he did. If he had a sell-off at the trade deadline, he would hear “This is unacceptable in Boston!” or “How could we trade JD Martinez!” If he doesn’t trade JD Martinez, he get crucified by people like you.
Makes zero sense the Sox didn’t reset last year when they had the opportunity. Just very poor decision in the group making the calls and it cost them obviously
badco – The word reset is a bit misleading. Sometimes it means clearing house and starting over and that’s what Bloom did by releasing Bogey, Eovaldi and JD. If you are saying that was a terrible choice, I completely agree. In fact, almost every one of Bloom’s choices were terrible. They just varied in degree of terrible.
The payroll was low enough in 2023 to reset the counter for the Luxury Tax. It went from 2 to 1 in 2024. Hopefully they can finish 2024 under the CAP and rid themselves of the past issues but with bad contracts like Devers, Yoshi and Story the new GM could be a moron like Bloom and trade them with pay downs that lower the available money below the CAP. Let’s hope those days are behind us but I don’t trust ownership’s judgement on anything any more.
Ownership has a lot to prove to rebuild a relationship with the fan base. The derailment of the Red Sox that started with the firing of DD in 2019 has continued for four years and until we get to review their next big critical decision of new POBO, I don’t trust anything they do. After all, these are the owners who embrace the biggest cheater in the history of the sport. It’s very hard to trust a group with that bad of judgement.
Spot on, troll, spot on. If Romero ends up as the new guy it’s going to be another long four years.
bad – It’s widely believed Bloom simply lost track of where they were in relation to the threshold last year. To go over by so little an amount was embarrassing, especially when you consider the negative impact it had on this season and the draft.
especially for JBJ of all players!
DBH – YES! I was gonna mention the JBJ trade, but didn’t want to take the time to research the timing of that trade in that offseason.
Fever: Where is this coming from that Bloom lost track?
suit – Many, many sources out there.
Here’s one of ’em …. Sox were only $4.5M over the threshold, an incredible inexcusable blunder.
masslive.com/redsox/2022/09/red-sox-will-pay-luxur…
That’s $4.5 million over the first luxury tax threshold level of $230 million
Fever: That article does not answer the question I asked which is: Where did get that “Bloom simply lost track of where they were in relation to the threshold last year”? Where did you get that from?
suit – Here’s one article I found quickly. Obviously he would never allow himself to be quoted confessing to a major screwup, but it was crystal clear he was not allowed to go over the threshold last year. There is no way in hell he would intentionally blow past the budgeted amount Henry gave him.
“How much can Red Sox boss Bloom spend with MLB lockout ended?
Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom probably has in the $24-28 million range before the Red Sox would reach the level where they must pay the smallest luxury tax penalty.
By Christopher Smith
masslive.com
That said, Bloom probably has in the $24-28 million range before the Red Sox would reach the level where they must pay the smallest luxury tax penalty.
Bloom still needs to add an outfielder and short relievers.
“I do feel we still have room to add position players to this crew,” Bloom said Dec. 1, before the lockout. “Obviously swapping Hunter (Renfroe) for Jackie (Bradley) does change the handedness of our group a little bit. So maybe the dial moves a little more toward a right-handed bat, where before it might have been toward a left-handed bat. But there’s different ways it can come together with the versatility and flexibility that we have. So we’re going to keep looking to supplement.”
Fever: Thanks. I don’t think that establishes the payroll limit John Henry gave to Bloom or that Bloom lost track of how much he spent and went over the luxury tax threshold by accident. I just don’t see any evidence for either of those.
suit – You’re right, there’s no quotes of Bloom admitting he screwed up. But I think all the articles referencing Bloom being allowed to spend up to the threshold is evidence that he wasn’t supposed to go over.
The price that was paid certainly wasn’t worth the small overage, wouldn’t you agree?
Fever: Yes, I agree it was a mistake to go over the luxury tax threshold. It hurt, but I don’t think it was the end of the world. I think Bloom tried to trade Eovaldi and JD Martinez and it may have been that no one was willing to take on their salaries, so Bloom kept them. I’m not sure we have all the facts.
suit – Agreed, we weren’t included in the negotiations so we don’t know the details.
But I really don’t see the reason why teams like the Mets and Dodgers would lie about players after the fact. They have nothing to gain from doing so.
Fever: Agreed, but nothing was leaked about money changing hands in the deals, right?
I don’t think the Braves had an ALDS roster…
They had a fine roster and were well prepared for the ALDS—
Atlanta
Loses
Division
Series
Giants are gonna need more than a new manager to avoid the NL West basement. Figures to be them and the Rox fighting it out for last place.
Teams keep adding Joey Gallo thinking they can fix him, then he’s still Joey Gallo.
Meanwhile, they’ve wasted a lineup spot on a guy that hasn’t got a whiff of the Mendoza Line since half a season in 2019 and has a career strikeout percentage higher than his OBP
He’s usually good for a big whiff!!!
Schwarber and Gallo were in similar places in the late 2010s, but while Schwarber recently has found himself (even as his high SOs and low BA has continued) Gallo has collapsed. “Fixed” is even the right word, as Gallo has already proven how valuable and good his bat can be even with the SOs and bad BA, and he has been a positive defender to boot. But then you write “then he’s still Gallo”, as if he’s always been power promise and never actually achieved notable value. Something has broken, whether it’s nagging injuries or mental or something else, but there has been something worth trying to repair in there for sure. The question isn’t whether he’d be worth repairing, but whether at this stage he is beyond repair.
Despite having few high octane relievers and no southpaw in the bullpen, Atlanta won 104 games during the regular season.
Coop – Red Sox are reportedly hot for Aroldis Chapman, I’m all for it as long as it’s not for more than 2 years.
Ya, Dodgers did great getting both players for 2023, but still got their asses kicked in the NLDS 0-3. They weren’t remotely competitive in that series, LMFAO
LA had a fantastic, ($360 million), lead off hitter go 0-11, and their future HOF pitcher was lights out…. (as in shut off the lights the party is over).
I believe in Steven Vogt …
…someday wearing a manager’s uniform.
No comments about Vogt only having one year of coaching experience, but the Giants interview an internal candidate with four years of coaching experience and people freak out.
Well, plus 16 years of being a professional ballplayer. A catcher at that, meaning he was basically the on-field coach.
But, yes, I know what your point is, and you’re not wrong.
A lot to Like with Vogt.
But unfortunately he’s not going to give you 35Hrs and 90RBi’s if you catch my drift.