Padres finalizing list of managerial candidates to interview, per report

The San Diego Padres have fired Jayce Tingler following the most disappointing season in franchise history. Now general manager A.J. Preller is tasked with hiring his third manager. Will it be a veteran manager this time around? Time will tell, but according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today on Twitter, he’s going to be interviewing plenty of former big league managers.

“The Padres are finalizing a list of managerial candidates to interview, but names being internally discussed include: Bruce Bochy, Buck Showalter, Jeff Bannister, John Gibbons, Ron Roenicke, John Farrell, and Brad Ausmus.”

What Padres fans should like about this list of candidates is that every single person on this list has managed in the major leagues before.

Bochy is obviously the pipe dream scenario. We all know he has a ticket to the Hall of Fame whenever he becomes available. Wouldn’t it be great if Bochy came back to where it all started and won the Padres its first title in franchise history?

I’m a huge Showalter fan and think he’d be a great fit for the Padres clubhouse. For anyone who watches him talk about the game on MLB Network, you know that he clearly understands what he’s talking about and has a great personality despite him being known for his serious look when he was inside the dugout with Manny Machado in Baltimore.

The other names on the list have experience but it doesn’t feel like they would be as great of fits for San Diego over Bochy and Showalter. Ausmus, for example, couldn’t get a Detroit Tigers team (that had Miguel Cabrera, Justin Upton, Ian Kinsler, J.D. Martinez, David Price, and Max Scherzer) to win a single game in the ALDS. He then finished 18 games under .500 in his only season with the Angels in 2019.

The most interesting part about Nightengale’s tweet was that Ron Washington wasn’t included on that list. That might be because the Atlanta Braves are still in the playoffs after beating the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLDS, but Washington is an obvious candidate that the Padres should want to interview for the job. He finished second to Tingler in the last managerial hunt and has recently admitted publicly that he wants to be the club’s manager.

The Padres will likely be trimming down their list of people they’d like to interview in the next week or so, so stay tuned to Gaslamp Ball for all of the updates.