YANK STAFF

Bombers could lose several coaches to open manager

Baseball doesn’t have to worry about a brain drain so much as losing executives, coaches, scouts and managers with professional baseball experience. With three of their coaches now being considered for managerial jobs, that’s what the Yankees could be facing; losing some vital experience on the major league staff soon.

Sources confirmed that third base coach Phil Nevin, hitting coach Marcus Thames and bench coach Carlos Mendoza each were interviewed for the Tigers’ manager job, left vacant this fall when Ron Gardenhire retired. Mendoza also was interviewed for the vacant managerial job in Boston, according to published reports.

That does not include bullpen coach Mike Harkey, who has been mentioned as a replacement for Phillies pitching coach Bryan Price. Harkey worked for years with former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who took over in Philadelphia last season.

Nevin played for the Tigers 1995-97 and managed in Detroit’s minor league system for four years, including three at the Triple-A level.

Thames was also on the Tigers, playing in Detroit from 2004-09.

Mendoza does not have major league playing experience, but has 13 years playing in the minors and extensive work as a coach. Seen as an up-and-coming managerial candidate, Mendoza was promoted from infield coach and quality control coach in 2019 to being Aaron Boone’s bench coach in 2020.

In the postmortem to the Yankees’ disappointing 2020 season, both Boone and GM Brian Cashman said they did not expect changes to the coaching staff after having made several in 2019. Most dramatically, the Yankees fired veteran pitching coach

Larry Rothschild after 2019 and replaced him with Matt Blake, who had never played professionally or even coached at the big league level. Blake’s youth and inexperience was the focus of jokes, but his analytic knowledge has been repeatedly praised by Boone.

There were already moves made in the organization that contributed to that experience drain before the Yankees were eliminated in the American League Division Series by the Rays. They let go Triple-A hitting coach Phil Plantier, the man who Gio Urshela credited with helping him become a consistent big league hitter. They also let go of Triple-A pitching coach Thomas Phelps. Not coincidentally, both were picked up by the Marlins, whose managing partner, Derek Jeter came up through the Yankees farm system when it was flush with that type of experienced coaches.

The Yankees let go several veteran coaches in their player development system this year, in part because of the financial hit of the shortened season in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Some within the organization also suggest that older coaches with major league experience are no longer valued as much as the team swung more toward an analytic approach to coaching.

WAIT ’TIL NEXT YEAR

Minutes

after

the

Dodgers

clinched the World Series title Tuesday night, the oddsmakers in Las Vegas were turning the page. Wednesday morning, BetOnline released their odds for the 2021 World Series with the Dodgers being 9-2 favorites to be the first repeat champions since the Yankees won three in a row capped in 2000. The Yankees follow at 13-2 with the Padres (8-1), Rays (10-1) and Braves (12-1) rounding out the top-five favorites.

BetOnline had the Dodgers at 12-1 to win the World Series going into the 2020 season behind the Astros (5-1), Yankees (8-1), Nationals (8-1) and Red Sox (12-1).