5 MLB teams Barry Bonds should coach for next
Barry Bonds is in need of a coaching job now, and these might be the best fits
When Barry Bonds was brought on last December to become the hitting coach for the Miami Marlinsb, the announcement was met with a mixture of surprise, shock and a healthy amount of trepidation as well. So it is not completely surprising when it was announced earlier this week that Bonds was relieved of his duties just 10 months after initially taking them on.
Such was the extent that Bonds had alienated Mattingly that it is rumored the Marlins manager would have stepped down if Bonds was retained. It is just another in the long history of stories around Bonds being hard-to-impossible to deal with throughout his career. But unlike when he was resetting the record books en route to winning seven Most Valuable Player awards during his on-field career, it is easy to turn the page on a hitting coach, no matter what he accomplished.
And regardless of the brevity of his time with the club, the Marlins offense is in better condition post-Bonds than before his tenure. The team finished second in the National League in team batting average on the year, with Christian Yelich and Marcel Ozuna in particular making big strides on the year. The team’s runs scored and slugging percentage finished towards the bottom of the Majors, but that is just as much of a device of both the struggles and absence of Giancarlo Stanton as it is of any issues of Bonds.
But despite anything else, the facts are that Bonds is a free agent from the game once again. And while he said he would like to return to Miami for another year back in August, it is unclear if he’s interested in going elsewhere to continue coaching at this juncture. But it should not be surprising if either he or a team in need reaches out for his services for the 2017 season.
But what team would offer the best –or at least most intriguing— fit for him?
5. Milwaukee Brewers
The Brewers are a club that is rebuilding on the fly, having dealt away many of the players that made them an annual contender in the NL Central just a few years ago. While Ryan Braun remains standing (for now), many of the surrounding players there now are mostly unrecognizable in comparison, and more recently acquired talents are on their way in the next few years.
As a result of this, Milwaukee has gradually fallen down the National League leaderboard in runs scored in each of the last few years, from sixth in 2014, to 9th in 2015, finally down to 11th this past summer. Bonds bettered the Miami offense in his year with it, stabilizing their team batting average at .263, all without former batting champion Dee Gordon and Stanton in the mix for most of the year. So he has shown that he does not need a particularly stacked lineup to make his plan work.
Now, one thing that could make Milwaukee a tough match for Bonds is that personality of his, that is almost certainly bigger than manager Craig Counsell. While Counsell was an accomplished player in his own right, winning two World Series, the bigger personality of the legendary Bonds could be a detractor for a young manager. If Bonds’ ways overwhelmed even Don Mattingly, who was seemingly able to block out the noise in New York and Los Angeles in his career for the most part, it could be an insurmountable task for Counsell, who could be managing for his job in 2017.