Freddie Benavides has never technically been a manager of a Major League Baseball team. However, he has served as the bench coach for a manager who got ejected more often than Barry Bonds saw pitches in the strike zone, so he’s quite familiar with being given the task on very short notice.
The Cincinnati Reds officially fired David Bell on Sunday, and it the wake of the news promoted Benavides to interim manager status for the remainder of the 2024 regular season. Said regular season continues this evening in Cleveland as the Reds and Guardians play a meaningless baseball game with one team already playoff bound and the other a moribund lump.