Ron Roenicke officially named interim manager

The Red Sox officially have a new manager. This is not a huge surprise as Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe had reported this was coming late last week, but on Tuesday the Red Sox made it official. They are going to name Ron Roenicke, the team’s bench coach, as the interim manager heading into the 2020 season.

Alex Speier had reported earlier in the day that the move was coming. The team will be holding a press conference scheduled for 4:30 PM ET on Tuesday to announce the move. Roenicke previously managed for parts of five seasons with the Brewers from 2011-2015, winning one division title and earning one postseason appearance. Overall, he managed to a .508 winning percentage. He has been the Red Sox bench coach since 2018.

There will still be a few questions to answer for this move, first and foremost being a better definition of what the interim tag means. It could mean that this is just a one-year gig, with either a much-speculated return of Alex Cora coming next year — I still think this is incredibly unlikely, but I’d be remiss to not even mention it — or just giving more time for a more traditional search early next winter. There is also speculation that the interim tag is only going to be in place until MLB concludes their investigation into the team’s alleged sign-stealing scheme in 2018.

Speaking of which, as I said in the linked post at the top this move would seem to indicate the team is confident they will come out relatively clean in the investigation. It’s hard to see them choosing a member of the 2018 coaching staff if they thought the league was going to bring the hammer down on them for that season.

The Red Sox also now need to find a new bench coach. Some candidates could include Jason Varitek, Carlos Febles or Billy McMillon. Note that those names are just speculation from me, and as far as I can tell there has been no reporting as of this writing of who the team is considering. We’ll have more as we learn more.

Update:

Chaim Bloom says at the press conference, “Naming Ron our interim manager is the best way to respect the investigation into our club.” That, of course, points to the tag being lifted when the investigation is over.

Update 2:

Bloom says at the press conference that the team will address the bench coach opening later in the spring.