Angels hire Brad Ausmus as manager

The Angels have hired 18-year big-league veteran and former Tigers skipper Brad Ausmus as their new manager, per their announcement Sunday morning:

When he came on board as the Tigers’ manager in 2014, Ausmus fit the stock profile of many managers being hired at the time — he was a recently-retired catcher who, as Brian Kenny might say, was ruggedly handsome. This time around, though, he’s got four years of managerial experience under his belt, having posted a 314-332 record in Detroit (that number is skewed a bit by the 64-98 mark the Tigers put up in 2017 as they underwent a total teardown). He went 90-72 while helping Detroit to an AL Central title as a rookie manager in 2014, but then he didn’t take them to the playoffs again after that.

Ausmus served as a special assistant to Angels general manager Billy Eppler this past season, so he should already be very familiar with the players he’s managing. He cautioned against the overuse of analytics to make managerial decisions in Detroit, but one would think that with his Ivy League education and after a year in the front office, he’d be better-equipped to delve heavily into the analytical approach. (After all, he must’ve done well on the Angels’ two-hour written test for managerial candidates.)

This is the second straight time that Ausmus will be replacing a tenured, beloved manager; last time he took over for Jim Leyland, who became the Tigers’ third-most-winningest manager in their 118-year history and took them to two World Series and two more ALCS during his eight years in the dugout. Now he’ll be taking over for Mike Scioscia, who had managed the club for most of the past two decades (2000-18), helped them to their only World Series victory in club history, and is the winningest manager in the history of the franchise by over 1,000 wins.