UPDATE (Nov. 10, 2:40 p.m. PT): According to Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times, Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi said the list of managerial candidates should be trimmed down by week’s end:
Zaidi: #Dodgers expect to be down to 3-4 managerial candidates by the end of the week.
— Dylan Hernandez (@dylanohernandez) November 10, 2015
Nineteen days ago the Los Angeles Dodgers announced a mutual separation with Don Mattingly as the club’s manager. Mattingly soon after was hired by the Miami Marlins, and the other managerial vacancies across the league have been filled.
As the Dodgers have pored over a pool of candidates and conducted several interviews, they appear to be on the verge of taking the next step in their search for Mattingly’s replacement.
According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, Chicago Cubs bench coach Dave Martinez will close out the first round of interviews and the Dodgers will then trim their list of candidates to three:
Cubs bench coach Dave Martinez is expected to be the ninth and final candidate brought in to interview for the job, and that interview was to take place at the General Managers meetings. The Dodgers then plan to pare the group down to three with Dave Roberts, who had served as the Padres bench coach, and Dodgers director of player development Gabe Kapler viewed as the front-runners.
The interview process has seen Dodgers director of player development Gabe Kapler get replaced as the perceived favorite by San Diego Padres bench coach Dave Roberts. Both Kapler and Roberts don’t have managerial experience in the Majors, though Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said on Oct. 22 that wouldn’t necessarily be a deterrent.
Others believed to have interviewed for the Dodgers manager job are: New York Mets bench coach Bob Geren, University of Nebraska coach Darin Erstad, former Arizona Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson, former Padres manager Bud Black, and Dodgers coaches Ron Roenicke and Tim Wallach.
Should Wallach not get hired, he’s expected to join Mattingly in Miami as bench coach. Dodgers first base coach Davey Lopes is now part of Dusty Baker’s Washington Nationals staff under the same position.
Friedman has continued to point to the Winter Meetings, which begin Dec. 7, as a loose deadline to have a new manager in place.
