The Houston Astros tapped Red Sox coach Brad Mills to field manager the team:
The 52-year-old Mills has been Terry Francona’s bench coach in Boston for the past six seasons. He’ll manage in the majors for the first time, though he’s managed a total of 11 seasons in the minors, with affiliates for the Chicago Cubs (1987-92), Colorado Rockies (1993-96) and Los Angeles Dodgers (2002).
It’s been a good week for the Red Sox organization as they produced a new GM and a new field manager.
Mills played briefly in the majors, accumulating 184 plate appearances over four seasons with the Expos. His strong suit offensively was drawing a walk, but in general he was a poor hitter. We’ll how he is as a strategist next season.
Posted by David Pinto at 3:59 pm | Management | Permalink | 1 Comment
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October 28th, 2009 @ 1:28 am
The Red Sox have historically been known as an iconic franchise filled with legendary players but cursed with terrible ownership and management. Certainly things have changed now.
Mills, even among Sox diehards like myself, is a cypher. Certainly Terry Francona is the best manager in Red Sox history, but, like Joe Torre, the manager he will forever be compared to fairly or unfairly, his strengths lie more with his ability to handle both the media and his players and less on in-game decisions.
Mills has come across as more of a low-key inside baseball figure, which makes him an ideal figure for an under-the-radar team like the Astros which would have no use for a Torre or LaRussa or Francona figure (remember Lou Pinella with the Devil Rays?).
Still, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, among us Red Sox fans has any idea of what the heck Brad Mills can offer a team. We’ll see.