News and Notes: The Guardians Reportedly Request to Interview Craig Counsell
News and Notes for Thursday, October 26th, 2023
Ken Rosenthal dropped a couple of Cleveland Guardians managerial search nuggets last night on Twitter:
Cubs bench coach Andy Green has interviewed for the Guardians’ managerial job, sources tell @TheAthletic. Here’s @ZackMeisel’s report on some of the other names involved: https://t.co/3tgmGs5pml And @WillSammon linking Craig Counsell to the Guardians as well.…
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) October 25, 2023
As for interviewing Andy Green, Green was the manager of the San Diego Padres from 2016-2019... it did not go particularly WELL record-wise. But, the Padres have had some organizational issues, so it’s hard to know how much of that fell on Green’s managerial failures. Interviewing an experienced manager for the position makes sense to me.
Craig Counsell has been a very effective manager in Milwaukee and is highly regarded around the league. Hard for me to imagine Cleveland outbidding the Mets for Counsell’s services, but it’s certainly worth the Guardians having a conversation with Counsell. One would imagine that a Counsell discussion means the Guardians decision-making process is now delayed a little bit, but that’s a worthy trade-off to be able to explore even a remote possibility of landing an experienced and successful skipper.
Some folks are dealing with some trauma connected to Counsell’s role in the Marlins winning the 1997 World Series over Cleveland, but I say we can create a nice story arc with him leading the Guardians to their first World Series title in 75+ years if he comes here.
There are some World Series previews out there from FanGraphs, from the Athletic, and our mothership. I think it’s nice to have either a first-time World Series title winner or a huge underdog winner, so I’m looking forward to the series starting tomorrow.
In the Arizona Fall League, the Javelinas lost, but Kyle Manzardo had a double, Christian Cairo had two walks, and Eric Sabrowski gave up a homer but had two strikeouts in an inning of work.