Blue Jays bring back former bench coach DeMarlo Hale

New Associate Manager, Blue Jays position created for Hale

Baseball’s history, quite fairly, suggests, that all things being equal, given his experience and given an undeniably successful career as a MLB coach, with a string of winning teams and working under respected managers, that the Blue Jays’ freshly minted Associate Manager, DeMarlo Hale should at least, by this point, have had his first chance to be a major-league manager. It hasn’t happened.

Hale’s road to a second coaching stint with the Blue Jays has been long and grinding. The 62-year-old native of Chicago (IL) has been in pro baseball since being drafted by the Red Sox organization in 1983. After five years as a minor-league player and nine seasons as a farm-system manager, he has been a major-league coach for 22 seasons.

Hale started his MLB coaching journey with Texas under MGRs Jerry Narron and then Buck Showalter (2002-05). He was with Boston under Terry Francona (2006-11); with Baltimore under Showalter again (2012); with the Blue Jays under John Gibbons (2013-18); with the Braves under Brian Snitker (2020) and, finally, with the Guardians, again under Francona (2020-23). He was not interviewed after Francona retired.   

Over that time as a coach, Hale interviewed several times for open managerial positions, but knowing him and from personal observation, it may hurt him that interviews are not his strength, especially asked to deal with those twice daily media availabilities and TV. His strength lies in the heat of battle, in dugout decisions.

“DeMarlo is one of the best people I know,” his former boss, John Gibbons, said. “Great integrity and honesty. Very humble and responsible. Will be a great, smart addition to that staff. He’s seen it all and not afraid to voice his opinion. Winner.”

As manager John Schneider’s Associate Manager, Hale will likely be given the responsibility of controlling his infield’s defensive positioning and the opponent’s running game, duties that belonged to departed coach Luis Rivera. Meanwhile, if Don Mattingly remains as bench coach, (most managerial openings have been filled). Is there a redundancy? It may seem so, but the unique and unusual addition to Donny Baseball’s title of offensive coordinator leaves little in the way of overlap with Hale.    

Many veteran coaches, especially of Hale’s generation, might have believed the window had closed on ever being a manager in the big leagues…but that was likely before the rickety MLB Final Four of Bruce Bochy, Torey Lovullo, Dusty Baker and Rob Thomson emerged victorious. All four managers are older than 58, but perceived to be blessed with an ability to balance new-school information and old-school eye-test, who will not to be bullied by the nerds and GM wannabes. It has opened the door for a new, golden age of skippers. Baseball has forever been a copycat sport.

For those wondering about the whys and wherefores of the Jays’ two newly minted coaching titles -- offensive coordinator (Mattingly) and assistant manager (Hale) -- the bottom line is that with every team’s coaching staff now listing up to a dozen names, they may have run out of traditional titles. Do teams need all those coaches? The modern major-league game moves quickly in the dugout and decisions must be made, timely and confidently, especially with the pitch-clock, the dugout iPads and those built in enemies of deep-breaths and other 21^st-Century limitations.

In any case, the addition of DeMarlo Hale is a good thing, no matter what the title.