Detroit Tigers going back to old school well to hire Ron Gardenhire as manager
The Detroit Tigers are embarking on a rebuild, but they’re going with a notably inside the box manager in Ron Gardenhire.
The kind of season the Detroit Tigers just had brings changes, so it was no surprise when it was announced Brad Ausmus would not be back as manager. A search for a new skipper has come to a conclusion, with Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first to report Ron Gardenhire will be the Tigers’ new manager pending the completion of a contract.
Gardenhire spent this past season as bench coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks. But he is clearly best-known for his tenure as manager of the Minnesota Twins from 2002-2014, which included six AL Central titles and over 1,000 regular season wins (1,068). But a fourth straight 90-loss season in 2014 led to his dismissal and the start of changes in the Twins’ organization.
The contract has reportedly been formalized, and an official announcement of Gardenhire’s hiring seems to be coming on Friday.
Sources: Ron Gardenhire has signed 3-year deal to manage the #Tigers. Formal announcement could come as early as tomorrow. @MLB @MLBNetwork
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) October 20, 2017
Tigers press conference set for 1 pm today. Presumably to announce Ron Gardenhire as next manager
— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) October 20, 2017
Gardenhire is the definition of an old-school manager, approaching his 60th birthday (Oct. 24). He seemed unwilling to embrace the analytics movement in baseball, or even other thought patterns, late in his tenure at Twins manager to the eventual detriment of the results on the field. He also seemed to keep Paul Molitor, who eventually replaced him in Minnesota, at arm’s length.
But on that sabermetric note, Gardenhire’s season in Arizona may have changed his thinking.
Source: In interview, #Tigers were impressed by Gardenhire’s openness to sabermetrics, which evolved during his tenure with #DBacks. @MLB
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) October 20, 2017
Gardenhire will demand consistent effort from players, so that’s a point in his corner as the Tigers look to rebuild. There’s also an easy comparison to when he took over as Twins manager in 2002, and now with the Tigers. But Minnesota had a bigger group of major league-ready young players, that had come up together through the minors, back then. The Tigers don’t appear anywhere close to contending again next year.
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Gardenhire will be the most uninspired managerial hire made this offseason. But new coaching or managerial hires are generally the opposite of what was in place before, and the Tigers have definitely done that based on previous managerial experience.