Time for Wotus as baseball manager
NEW YORK – After Ron Wotus finished a threesport career at Bacon Academy in Colchester in 1979, the Pirates drafted him in the 16th round and made a modest offer.
“I was going to go to college, to Clemson,” Wotus remembers, “but it actually fell through and I didn’t sign my letter of intent. If I didn’t get drafted, I probably would have ended up at another school, but I didn’t know which one. I remember asking my dad, ‘Should I go to college, or should I sign a professional contract?’
“He gave me advice most parents probably wouldn’t. He said, ‘You’re only going to college to play baseball. Maybe you should just go for it.’ And I did.”
Forty years later, it has long been established that John Wotus knew his son’s heart, and sent him off on the right course. Ron, a fixture on the San Francisco Giants coaching staff, is one of those rare — some would say disappearing — breeds: A baseball lifer, with all the term implies.
“Ronny’s been such an asset to this organization, to me, to the players,” says Bruce Bochy, who is stepping away as manager after this season. “He’s worn a lot of hats. He’s been a bench coach, third base coach. He’s run spring training, handled our infield positioning. He’s an invaluable member of this staff, done a terrific job and I’m grateful for everything
he’s done for me.”
The one hat Wotus, 58, has not yet worn is a big league manager’s, and you don’t have to be from eastern Connecticut to believe that just doesn’t make sense. After playing briefly with Pittsburgh in 1983 and ’84, he managed at each level of the minor leagues before joining Dusty Baker’s staff in San Francisco in 1998. He rode shotgun as bench coach as Bochy led the Giants to World Series victories in 2010, ’12 and ’14 — shouldn’t a top assistant in so successful an organization in any sport be prime head-coaching timber? He’s had several interviews over the years, most recently with the Mariners, Rays and Nationals.
“That’s probably my biggest disappointment up to this point, not being given an opportunity,” says Wotus before a Giants-Mets game at Citi Field. “But I’m still very, very satisfied with the responsibility and the things that we’ve accomplished here. I’m not saying I’m done, but at some point you have to be realistic about how the game is changing and what is taking place. I’m still here. Somebody values what I do. I’m still here and would welcome the opportunity. … We’ll see how this unfolds. We’re going to have a new manager, I would love to be that guy. I think I’m the right guy for the position, but as always, that’s out of my control.”
And there’s the rub. Even as the Giants were making history, they were swimming against the tide in baseball. “We did it the old fashioned way,” Wotus says. A team built around pitching, defense, contact hitting and managing by instinct, they were collecting rings as one organization after another moved toward young first-time managers, frontoffice fashioned lineup cards and analytics-driven decisions. Wotus has been open to new ideas, incorporating the avalanche of numbers into his own system for defensive shifting, and making the data digestible for players.
“I believe what I believe, because I’ve lived it,” Wotus says, “and I’ve lived it with lot of success, whether it was managing in the minor leagues, developing young players, winning World Series in the major leagues. It’s hard to devalue those things. I consider myself a blend: I’m old-school, but I’m always looking for a way to do things better, and there are a lot of things we can do better in this game.”
And nothing about Wotus suggests an old-timer. Except for the thick, gray mane, he looks as wiry and energetic as the kid who scored 89 goals for Bacon’s soccer team, a CIAC record that stood many years.
The respect for Wotus within the game is evident in his lasting on the Giants staff through three managerial regimes — Baker, Felipe Alou and Bochy. But now there is a different front office. After a downturn in the standings, the Giants hired Farhan Zaidi away from the Dodgers to run baseball operations. Zaidi, 42, has a degree from MIT, a Ph.D. from Cal-Berkeley; he’s from the Billy Beane, “Moneyball” school of baseball. But he is known to talk enthusiastically around the batting cage with the older practitioners, and it’s anticipated his search for Bochy’s replacement will include a cross-section of candidates, including Wotus, who moved back to the thirdbase box in 2018, and current bench coach Hensley Meulens, 51, who was a finalist for the Yankees’ job that went to Aaron Boone.
“I think at some point, Ronnie will get his opportunity,” Bochy says. “He has a great feel for the game.”
Wotus gets back to Colchester when he can — to visit his mother, Jean, when there was an off-day before the Mets series, to accept a Founder’s Day award at Bacon last November. But after 32 years with the Giants, he and his wife, Laurie, have made a home in California, and whatever changes come, it’s hard to fathom there won’t be a hat for him to wear, even as an era ends and Bochy heads into the sunset toward Cooperstown.
“Who knows what the future holds?” Wotus says. “But you’re very, very fortunate when you can do what you love for a living. As long as someone still sees value in you and you enjoy it, it’s a hard game to walk away from.”