This might be my favorite time of the baseball year. No, not because of the playoffs and the World Series. This is the time of year when teams fire managers (three already) and general managers (one), and we can witness the futility of Commissioner Rob Manfred’s wishes for teams to fill their vacancies with Latinos or African Americans.
Manfred has talked a lot about diversity hiring but has done little to achieve it. He talks a far better game than he plays.
Today, however, Manfred is ahead of his usual game. Hensley Meulens told me from his home in Curacao Saturday evening that the Detroit Tigers interviewed him last week. Given that the Tigers told Meulens that he is one of 8 to 10 candidates they plan to interview for their managerial vacancy before paring the list to four or five for in-person interviews, a telephone interview might not seem like a big deal. However, in Meulens’ case, it is.
Meulens is the San Francisco Giants’ 50-year-old hitting coach. More relevant in this case, he has managed the Netherlands team in the past two World Baseball Classics and has earned widespread praise for his managing. The only problem for him was nobody had ever thought of him for a major league managing job.
Now someone has. The Tigers, Meulens told me, are the first team to interview him for a managing job.
It’s definitely progress, I suggested. “It is,” agreed the man who was Curacaos first major leaguer and who was knighted by the Queen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 2012.
“I’m hoping to be interviewed by the Mets,” Meulens said. “I haven’t heard from them.”
The Mets need a replacement for Terry Collins, and the Phillies are replacing Pete Mackanin.
Meulens is not the only minority on the Tigers’ list of candidates to replace Brad Ausmus. Meulens said the Tigers were considering three of their coaches and have interviewed at least two, Omar Vizquel and Dave Clark. Lloyd McClendon is the third Detroit coach. All three are minorities.
Al Aviles, the Tigers’ general manager, is the only minority general manager in the majors. Michael Hill, the Marlins’ president of baseball operations, is the only other front-office chief who is a minority.
At the moment, the Braves are the only team with a departed general manager. John Coppolella resigned before he could be fired over an MLB investigation into alleged improprieties in the international market.
The developments were shocking because since John Schuerholz became general manager in 1990 the Braves had been the epitome of class, success and standards of the highest order.
Club officials have not addresses Coppolella’s alleged wrongdoing. John Hart, the team’s president of baseball operations, said by telephone Saturday night, “We’re not making any comment until baseball’s investigation is completed.”
Gordon Blakely, a veteran baseball man, who was an assistant to Coppolella, has also been implicated in the wrongdoing and has resigned.
With Hart in place as baseball operations chief, the Braves apparently have no immediate plans to name a new general manager. When they are ready, though may want to consider two black executives of other teams, whom Manfred has ignored – De Jon Watson of the Nationals and Kevan Graves of the Pirates.
For the past half dozen years or so, I have written about Watson, who some baseball executives say is the best general manager who isn’t a general manager.
After he served the past two years as Arizona’s senior vice president of baseball operations under Tony La Russa, the Diamondbacks let him go in their housecleaning. Last January he was a last-minute hire as the Nationals’ 11th special assistant to Mike Rizzo, the president of baseball operations.
Watson resents being considered a minority candidate, preferring to be known for his baseball ability, which is considerable. But that hasn’t helped either and at the age of 51, he has very likely lost any chance to get a general manager’s job. The analytics rush with younger practitioners has overtaken Watson, and Manfred should get a mental image of Watson every time he utters the words diversity hiring.
OK, then, how about Graves, who is 36? He is the Pirates’ assistant general manager, who when I spoke to him in July was articulate, impressive and someone I considered a worthy candidate to fill a general manager vacancy. As a young trainee, he even worked in the commissioner’s office.
But he is black, and today on the front-office front that barrier seems as strong and looks as ugly as it was 70 years ago before Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson. There are no Branch Rickeys today and though I don’t like thinking it, I have to suspect there are a lot of racists among major league club owners.
Where is the owner who will tell his general manager to hire a black or Latino manager if the choice with a white guy is even close? Where is the owner who will hire a black or Latino as general manager even if that decision is close?
Watson has rarely had interview opportunities, and I suspect the reason is an owner doesn’t want to be in the position of having to explain why he didn’t hire Watson. Of course, he could avoid that problem by hiring Watson, but he doesn’t want a black general manager. I think that qualifies as racism.
A couple of years ago, Manfred cajoled the Brewers’ owner, Mark Attanasio, into hiring David Stearns as his general manager, but the commissioner has done nothing similar for a minority candidate.
Manfred acted on Stearns’ behalf because the young white man had worked for Manfred in Major League Baseball’s labor relations department.
Matt Klentak, the Phillies’ general manager, worked in that department, too, when Andy MacPhail, now the Phillies’ president, was working with the department on collective bargaining.
Manfred has created a pipeline program to enhance minorities’ chances of growing into significant front-office jobs, but obviously Stearns and Klentak, who is also a young white man, had personal pipeline programs. For whatever reason you’d like to imagine, minority trainees don’t work in or don’t benefit from MLB’s labor relations department.
According to the Pirates’ media guide, their assistant general manager, Graves, worked in the commissioner’s office in labor relations when he was in the inaugural class of the Executive Development Program. However, like other ventures the commissioner’s office has undertaken, that program was eventually shut down.
Graves was a baseball teammate of the Phillies’ Klentak when they attended Dartmouth College. Now they play on different teams and have different duties. For one thing, Klentak has to pick a new manager.
It’s not as if Klentak and other general managers don’t have a sizeable group of minority candidates from whom to select qualified candidates. They actually have too many.
Look at it this way. Each year managers are fired, and general managers seek replacements. They have tons of white guys to choose from, they select one and a few years later they fire him. That’s OK, but they fear repercussions with a black or Latino manager.
But go ahead and hire a black or Latino and subsequently fire him a few years if you must for legitimate reasons. No manager except Walter Alston has a job for life. But give them a chance to be fired. Here are several worth minority candidates:
- The brothers Cora, Alex, the Astros’ bench coach, and Joey, the Pirates’ third base coach;
- Charlie Montoyo, the Rays’ third base coach, who has won many minor league managerial awards;
- Willie Randolph, former major league manager, who deserves another chance;
- Meulens, Sir Bam Bam, who deserves a first chance.
At least he has had his first chance, the telephone interview with the Tigers last week, a step that should please his boss in San Francisco. When I called Brian Sabean last March to talk about Meulens, he thanked me for recognizing Meulens, saying Bruce Bochy’s coaches don’t get enough credit or attentions for the Giants’ three World Series championships in a five-year span.
After I hung up the telephone with Meulens last weekend, I found myself pulling for him to get the Tigers’ job. That seldom happens with me, but in this instance it did. It would be a great story: “I got my job through the WBC.”