Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
There is a good chance the new era of the Giants will not feature Ron Wotus.
Wotus, a minor league Giant in 1988 and ’89, a fixture of their minor league operation in the ’90s and a coaching staple of the big-league team since 1998, has been informed he will not be the team’s next manager, according to multiple reports. The news suggests the process is moving forward as Farhan Zaidi weeds out who still is in the running following his first round of interviews.
There have been eight candidates linked to the job, the others being Hensley Meulens, Joe Espada, Mark Kotsay, Pedro Grifol, Will Venable, Gable Kapler and Matt Quatraro. Zaidi said there would be 8-10 candidates, and it sounds as if the initial interviews are finished.
For Wotus, this could be the last time the Giants turn him down. He was a minor league manager in their system from 1991-97 before his promotion, initially to third-base coach, then bench coach, then back to third-base coach. He has survived so many coaching changes and received many outside managerial interviews but has never taken the last step up the ranks. Now 58 in a baseball environment in which the younger, the better for managers, it’s possibly Wotus will not get that opportunity.
Wotus likely will look around for his next job, as the Giants will want their next manager to form his own staff. The last person to interview with Zaidi was Espada, the Astros bench coach, who flew to San Francisco on the World Series travel day.