You can add ex-Pirate utilityman Dale Sveum to the list of candidates for John Russell’s job. Sveum is currently employed as the Brewers’ hitting coach, though he bounced around in a number of other jobs for them including taking over for Ned Yost at the very end of the 2008 season and leading them to their wild card berth (as much as a guy that manages for 12 games can lead a team to anything, I guess). He’s also notorious among Red Sox fans for his time as their third base coach (including during their 2004 World Series run) for being a bit of a windmill at third base.
I like Sveum a lot; he managed Altoona back around the turn of the century and was supposed to be a great managerial prospect then and since then he’s held a bunch of different coaching jobs (third base coach, bench coach, and hitting coach) to become a better manager. Milwaukee held him over on their staff after Ken Macha was hired and he didn’t complain about not getting the job full-time, which I think speaks pretty highly of him. When I rank these guys at all it’s more gut feeling than anything, but I think Sveum is probably the guy I’d like to see hired the most out of the six interviewees so far.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
