MLB: Maddon heads home, signs three-year deal to become Angels manager
LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles Angels have been to the playoffs one time in the last decade, an anticlimactic three-game stint in 2014 that saw star Mike Trout held to one hit. Despite Trout’s unrelenting dominance, the Angels have experienced four losing seasons in the past five years.
They hope to change that now. Joe Maddon, the one-time World Series-winning manager with the Chicago Cubs who was an employee of the Angels for 31 years, was hired as manager Wednesday with the ambition to usher in the next era of October baseball in Anaheim. Buck Showalter, John Farrell and San Diego Padres hitting coach Johnny Washington also were interviewed for the position.
“We are thrilled that Joe is coming back home and bringing an exciting brand of baseball to our fans,” general manager Billy Eppler told The Associated Press. “Every stop he has made throughout his managerial career, he has built a culture that is focused on winning while also allowing his players to thrive. We believe Joe will be a great asset for our club and look forward to him leading the team to another World Series championship.”
The pinnacle of Maddon’s career to date is leading the Cubs to the 2016 World Series title, ending a 108-year drought. Now Maddon is coming home. He left Anaheim to become manager of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2006, three decades after beginning his professional career as a catcher in the Angels’ farm system in 1975.
He moved into scouting for the Angels in 1980, spent the 14 seasons that followed as a minor-league manager and coach, and was promoted to the major-league coaching staff in 1994. As Angels managers were replaced, Maddon was a mainstay. He became bench coach under Mike Scioscia, a position he held when the team won its only World Series championship in 2002 and for the next three seasons.
Maddon’s three-year deal gives him more job security than Eppler, who spent the first three years of his tenure with Scioscia at the helm before hiring Brad Ausmus last October to a three-year contract. That experiment was shortlived. Ausmus, 50, was fired the day after the Angels completed the first 90-loss season of the century.
In comes Maddon, 65, a man as highly regarded for his embrace of modern baseball as for his quirky and effective leadership styles. Only three times have Maddon-led teams finished with fewer than 84 wins — his first two seasons in Tampa Bay, where the then-Devil Rays twice lost more than 95 games and the 77-win Rays in 2014.
This season the Cubs finished 84-78, seven games out of the division lead, after being in first place as late as Aug. 22. Cubs general manager Theo Epstein suggested that the 2019 Cubs lacked motivation and that it was not up to the front office to hold players accountable on a daily basis, seemingly implying Maddon did not push his players as he did during the first four years of his five-year contract.
Still, Maddon and Epstein parted ways amicably, toasting their joint success over wine in their St. Louis hotel during the final weekend of the season.