Andruw Jones is back. Not as a player, although at 48 years old, he might still have a little pop in his bat. Rather, Jones will manage Team Netherlands in next year's World Basbeall Classic.
A fair first question to this news would be, "Is Jones from the Netherlands?" And the answer is, sort of. Jones is from Curaçao, which is a self-governing body within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Jones played for the Netherlands in the 2006 and 2013 World Baseball Classic, and now he'll return as the team's manager — a potential foreshadowing of a career in an MLB dugout.
There's some legit talent on the Netherlands team, including Xander Bogaerts, Jurickson Profar and Kenley Jansen, and the team is currently ranked No. 7 in the WBSC rankings, so it's not as though this team would name Jones manager for the sake of it; they want to compete next year with the United States, Japan and the other baseball powers.
In 2023, the last WBC, Team Netherlands went 2-2 in group play, not good enough to advance to the knickout stage, but good enough to qualify for next year's tourney.
Andruw Jones seems poised for MLB managerial career
Hey, Braves fans are already fed up with manager Brian Snitker, so maybe a spot for Jones will open up quicker than we think. I'm kidding, of course. Mostly.
Jones has been slowly starting to take coaching gigs around the baseball world, including being the Hitting Coach for the NL Futures Team this summer in Atlanta during All Star Week.
Being a former player has pretty much no bearing on if someone will be a good manager, but Jones seems on a path to a managerial future in baseball, and one of the first stops is the 2026 World Baseball Classic.