Tigers hire Hinch as soon as ban ends
The Tigers hired AJ Hinch as their manager on Friday, marking Hinch’s return to baseball after what ended up being a one-year exile for his role in the Astros’ cheating scandal in his previous job.
The two biggest revelations in Hinch’s introductory press conference were that he contracted the coronavirus and that Detroit called him “minutes” after the last out of the World Series.
Hinch has been in this position before, taking over a tanking team on the precipice of trying to win. But when he did so in Houston, it was with the help of the funniest and most extensive cheating scheme in modern baseball history. That dominated the questions on Hinch’s first day in charge.
“I do have conversations to have with players and coaches,” Hinch said Friday. “Absolutely, those are tough conversations…I’m sorry that they’re going to have to deal with it… But that is our reality, because wrong is wrong. And it was very wrong. And I’ll make sure that everybody knows that I feel responsible because I was the manager and it was on my watch, and I’ll never forget it.”
Even if Hinch’s version of events remains a bit fuzzy, this is much further than his boss, Jeff Luhnow has gone in taking any responsibility.
Tigers owner Christopher Ilitch alluded to as much on Friday.
“I started thinking right then and there, when AJ and Jeff got suspended, what’s going to happen to those two guys? Are those two guys going to be back in the sport? Would they be welcomed back in the sport?” Ilitch said. “As time went on, and I just sort of watched from afar, how everybody that was involved with that handled themselves, I really admired the way AJ handled himself,” Ilitch said, notably omitting any admiration for how Luhnow has handled himself.
There is plenty of clowning to be done on the Tigers’ hiring process. “About 30 minutes after the World Series’ last out, my phone rang,” Hinch said. In other words, the entire process, including interviews for deserving Black coaches like Yankees hitting coach Marcus
Thames, was more or less a sham, as Hinch was getting the job from the second it came open.
But the good new for the Tigers is that it could be worse. They didn’t hire a player-alienating boss like Tony La Russa, which is exactly what the best team in their division did. “The White Sox did us a big favor,” one Tigers official said, according to The Athletic. There are a lot of problems with the Hinch hire. You can’t say it actively helped other teams in obvious ways.
Dennis Young
KLUBER DECLINED
The Texas Rangers on Friday declined the $18 million contract option on right-hander Corey Kluber, who lasted just one inning in his only start before a shoulder injury ended his season.
Kluber gets a $1 million buyout, and the club has said it is interested in re-signing Kluber to a less expensive deal. The Rangers acquired the two-time Cy Young Award winner from Cleveland last offseason in a trade that sent hard-throwing reliever Emmanuel Clase to the Indians. Clase was suspended 80 games after testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance.
Kluber threw 18 pitches in his only inning for the Rangers, leaving with shoulder tightness in a 5-2 loss to Colorado in the third game of the season. The 34-yearold was diagnosed with a small tear in his shoulder muscle the next day.
It was Kluber’s first appearance with a team other than Cleveland, and his first start in almost 15 months after his right forearm was broken by a line drive in what ended up being his final start for the Indians on May 1, 2019.
HAND FREE
Brad Hand’s solid season didn’t earn him another one with the Indians.
Feeling the financial pinch from a shortened season, Cleveland declined Hand’s $10 million contract option on Friday and also chose not to exercise options for either first baseman Carlos Santana ($17.5 million) or outfielder Domingo Santana ($5 million).