It Won’t Be Wallach, Either

A couple of days ago, Pat Listach was ruled out of the Brewers manager race.  Now Tom Haudricourt says that Tim Wallach is not one of the two men of mystery among the Brewers’ final four managerial candidates.

Wallach, the long-time Montreal Expo who has worked for the Dodgers organization since 2004, was the subject of a weird story last week, when the Brewers were given permission to interview him, but the Blue Jays were denied.  ESPN Los Angeles reported that this was because the Jays did not rank highly on Wallach’s list of preferred job openings, but the Brewers did (h/t Hardball Talk).  As a result, the Brewers were allowed to interview him.  Now it looks like he didn’t make the cut.

Wallach already had a job in place on Don Mattingly’s staff in LA, so it’s not like he’s going to be left without work.  Considering the hype he got this offseason, I imagine it won’t be long before he makes the interview rounds once again.  Perhaps he’s even seen as the next in line in LA if Mattingly doesn’t succeed as Joe Torre’s hand-picked successor.  I do think it’s a little odd that Wallach was not named a finalist, yet Joey Cora was despite not having that minor league managing experience.  Either Cora’s interview was really, really good, or Doug Melvin isn’t as hellbent on getting a manager with experience as he said he was.

So the Brewers’ manager situation remains cloudy.  At this point, we probably know more about the guys no longer in the running than we do about the guys still in it.  While Bob Melvin and Cora have apparently already had their second interviews, it doesn’t sound like we can expect an announcement before the World Series begins on Wednesday.  If we don’t get an announcement by then, we may have to wait until the Series is over before we get any more news.