Will Alex Rodriguez Be The Next New York Yankees Manager? Here Are 5 Candidates To Take Over For Joe Girardi


With the New York Yankees announcing on Thursday morning that Manager Joe Girardi was out after 10 seasons — with six trips to the postseason including a World Series championship in 2009 — speculation among fans and the media in New York immediately went into overdrive, naming numerous possible candidates to take the reins of Major League Baseball’s winningest franchise.

Among those names were several longshots and surprises — but perhaps none more surprising than the former Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who once missed a whole season in disgrace over a steroid scandal.

Rodriguez played for the Yankees from 2004 until his retirement in 2016, missing the entire 2014 season after he was suspended for a full year over his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

But “A-Rod” has carved a path to his own rehabilitation, with his successful tenure as baseball analyst and TV personality for Fox Sports, a high profile romance with Hollywood star Jennifer Lopez, and an overall friendlier and more self-effacing demeanor than he exhibited during his playing career, when he was often accused of arrogance and made regular appearances not only on the sports pages of New York’s tabloids, but in the gossip columns as well.

Even Rodriguez’ harshest critics, however, acknowledge that his baseball knowledge and insight is vast, and since his retirement he has shown an affinity for communicating with the Yankees’ crop of burgeoning young stars, even guiding sophomore catcher Gary Sanchez out of a prolonged hitting slump earlier this year.

Will Alex Rodriguez Be The Next New York Yankees Manager? Here Are 5 Candidates To Take Over For Joe Girardi
After 10 seasons at the Yankees helm, Manager Joe Girardi was told this week that the team would not hire him back for 2018. [Image by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images]

Some experts are already including Rodriguez on their speculative short lists for the next New York manager, but so far Rodriguez himself has given no indication that he would give up his blossoming TV career to take the high-pressure job on the perpetual Yankees hot seat.

Here are four more, perhaps likelier candidates for the New York Yankees manager’s position.

Fredi Gonzalez

Listed by NJ.com baseball analyst Randy Miller as the favorite — albeit at 10-1 odds — to take over from Giradi, the 53-year-old, Cuban-born Gonzalez would fit the job description if the Yankees and owner Hal Steinbrenner are looking for an experienced hand to guide their young team. The team that came one game short of what would have been a surprising World Series berth this season, losing the American League Championship Series in seven games to the Houston Astros.

Gonzalez, in 2013, returned the once-dominant Atlanta Braves to the top of the National League East, and guided the team to three postseason appearances in his five full years in Atlanta — before being fired after just 37 games of the 2016 campaign after a disastrous 9-28 start.

Gonzalez also managed about three-and-half seasons for the Miami Marlins, from 2007 to midway through 2010. In 2017, he returned to the Marlins to serve as third-base coach. He would be the first Latino manager in Yankees history (as would Rodriguez, should he get the job). He was drafted by the Yankees in 1982, playing six minor league seasons but never rising higher than Double-A ball before retiring to pursue a coaching and managing career.

Willie Randolph

Randolph played second base for the Yankees on their great teams of the 1970s, joining the Yankees in 1976 after an offseason trade from the Pittsburgh Pirates, for whom he played his rookie season. Remembered fondly by Yankees fans for his key role on the back-to-back World Series winning clubs of 1977 and 1978, Randolph is remembered perhaps less fondly by New York Mets fans for managing the team through four mostly mediocre seasons — with the exception of a near-glorious 2006.

In that season, Randolph’s second in the Mets dugout, he guided the team to a 97-win record, leading the National League East nearly wire-to-wire — but falling short of the World Series when the Mets lost the NL Championship Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.

While Randolph would be a sentimental favorite for the Yankees, and remains active in the Yankees organization, he has been out of a baseball uniform since 2011, when he served as bench coach for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Randolph would also become the first African-American to manage the Yankees — a team that did not add a black player until Elston Howard in 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier.

Will Alex Rodriguez Be The Next New York Yankees Manager? Here Are 5 Candidates To Take Over For Joe Girardi
Former Atlanta Braves Manager Fredi Gonzalez may be on the short list for the next New York Yankees manager’s job. [Image by Joe Skipper/Getty Images]

Kevin Long

Long, the current Mets hitting coach, has never managed in the Major Leagues — and never played Major League Baseball either, recording eight seasons in the minors from 1989 to 1996. But Long is thought of in MLB circles as a strong managerial prospect. He interviewed for the New York Mets opening after the Mets fired Terry Collins — who had led them to the World Series just two years earlier.

But the 50-year-old Long didn’t get the Mets job, which went to now-former Cleveland Indians Pitching Coach Mickey Callaway. As a result, Long is expected to be out the door at Citi Field shortly as well.

New York General Manager Brian Cashman is believed to prefer candidates with organizational ties to the Yankees. Long served as batting coach for seven seasons, presiding over a series of powerhouse offenses including the 2009 World Series-winning Yankee lineup.

The parting of ways between Long and the Yankees was not pretty, however, with Long — who was fired after the 2014 season — stating his belief publicly that he had been made a scapegoat for New York’s second straight season without a playoff appearance. Those wounds would need to be healed if Long were to have a shot to be the next Yankees manager.

John Farrell

A little more than two weeks before the Yankees gave Girardi his walking papers, their arch-rivals, the Boston Red Sox, also sent 55-year-old skipper John Farrell packing after five years in the always volatile Boston manager’s job. Farrell won a World Series with the Red Sox in 2013, his first season at the Boston helm. But the team sank to the basement of the American League East in 2014 and finished last again in 2015 — a season cut short for Farrell by a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The Red Sox bounced back under Farrell, however, as he led Boston to back-to-back AL East division titles for the first time in club history.

Will Alex Rodriguez Be The Next New York Yankees Manager? Here Are 5 Candidates To Take Over For Joe Girardi
Recently fired Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell could have a shot at becoming the next Yankees manager. [Image by Brian Blanco/Getty Images]

But two successive postseason failures — being swept by the Cleveland Indians in the AL Division Series in 2016, and losing the ALDS in four to the Houston Astros this year — propelled Farrell out the door in Boston. But will Farrell, who was the Red Sox pitching coach on their 2007 World Series winning team and also managed the Toronto Blue Jays in 2011 and 2012, find an open door in New York?

The Yankees have a long history of acquiring former Red Sox players, starting most famously with Babe Ruth in 1919, through more recent pickups of star ex-Sox such as Wade Boggs in 1993, Roger Clemens in 1999, Johnny Damon in 2006, and Jacoby Ellsbury in 2014.

But while two former Yankees managers have gone on to skipper the Red Sox — Joe McCarthy in 1948 and Ralph Houk in 1981 — no Red Sox manager has ever moved in the opposite direction, managing the New York Yankees later in his career. But coming from Boston, where scrutiny of the team’s manager is never less than intense, Farrell would have the advantage of familiarity with an often brutal sports media environment — a trait Boston shares with New York.

[Featured Image by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images]

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