Red Sox to interview Luis Urueta for managerial opening

Amid all of the Mookie Betts rumors and the ongoing investigation by MLB into the team, the Red Sox also have a managerial opening with spring training rapidly approaching. As of now, we don’t know a ton about this search, with most of the rumored interest coming internally (though vaguely, without too much association with specific names) as well as interest in Hensley Meulens and Mark Kotsay. To this point, there has been no confirmation of any interview or even request of an external candidate. That changed on Friday, when it was reported they were indeed interviewing with Diamondbacks bench coach Luis Urueta.

Urueta is a former player who spent the start of the millennium with the Diamondbacks organization, though his career didn’t last long, topping out in High-A in 2003. He rejoined the organization as a coach in 2007 and he has been there ever since in various roles. Most recently he served as the bench coach under old friend Torrey Lovullo. Speaking of Lovullo, the Diamondbacks manager spoke with Alex Speier and indicated he is confident Urueta would be able to handle this job.

Urueta doesn’t have major-league managing experience, but he has served in that role before. He has been the manager for the Colombian national team in 2013 and 2017 for World Baseball Classic qualifying, leading the nation to their first WBC in the latter year. He has also managed the Dominican Winter League’s Tigres de Licey, one of the most prestigious teams in that league. He won a championship with them in 2017 as the interim manager. According to this profile from La Vida Baseball, Urueta is a “new-school” manager “steeped in analytics and clear communication.” In this era of baseball with this front office, that would appear to be a good fit.

I will also note that I found that page because Urueta’s Wikipedia page labels him as “a Colombian professional baseball coach, manager and former soccer goalkeeper.” I found this interesting because A) it omits his playing career and B) doesn’t mentioning the goalkeeping again. So I went Googling that goalkeeping bit and found that La Vida profile, which I would very much recommend reading, not only if you also want to know about the goalkeeping bit, but partly.