clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Dave Martinez's Manager Interview, And 2 New Names

The former Cubs player and current Tampa Bay Rays bench coach was in town recently for his managerial interview. Here's how it went.

By Al Yellon
Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

There's a bit of new information in the Cubs' manager search, so if you can stand one more post on this topic on a slow news day, here it is.

Rays beat writer Marc Topkin has details of Dave Martinez's interview with Cubs front-office management:

"I thought it went well," Martinez said Saturday. "I thought it went really well."

Martinez, 49, talked extensively during his visit with baseball operations president Theo Epstein and executive vice president/general manager Jed Hoyer and other members of their staff, and also met briefly with team chairman Tom Ricketts. In addition to the standard topics, Martinez said they had detailed talks about lineup construction and game preparation, and watched some video sequences after which Martinez was asked what moves he would make in those situations. "Game-in-progress kind of stuff," he said.

Meanwhile, there's a report from CSN Chicago's Patrick Mooney that Red Sox bench coach Torey Lovullo might be a candidate. I don't really have an opinion on Lovullo, and if the Red Sox win tonight and go to the World Series, it will be at least a week to 10 days before the Cubs can interview him. If you're interested, David Laurila has this interesting talk with Lovullo at FanGraphs.

Finally, Mike Maddux's name is surfacing again. This NBC Dallas report has a throwaway line at the end about the Cubs asking permission to talk to Maddux, which I would have disregarded except for this apparent confirmation:

Unless, of course, that's simply tweeting what was in the NBC Dallas report; there's no further corroboration. It wouldn't seem that Theo and Jed need much more information from Mike Maddux, as they talked to him extensively two years ago when Dale Sveum was hired. Personally, I would put Maddux slightly ahead of Martinez in my view, due to his extensive experience as a pitching coach -- former pitchers and catchers rate higher in my book due to their better knowledge of pitching.

As always, we await further developments.

More From Bleed Cubbie Blue