Wochit
Ron Gardenhire lost a lot of baseball games over his final four seasons managing the Minnesota Twins. The Tigers are expected to hire him to manage their rebuild, which means he’s in for a lot more losing.
Gardenhire, 59, was the most accomplished candidate on the market, and the Tigers will surely trumpet this as a major reason why they chose him. They’ll say he’s one of the most respected managers in the game, which is true.
But it doesn’t mean they’re doing the right thing.
It would have made much more sense for the Tigers to fire Brad Ausmus a couple years ago to hire Gardenhire, just like it would have made more sense for the Tigers to hire Lloyd McClendon instead of Ausmus when they needed to replace Jim Leyland after the 2013 season.