The Boston Red Sox officially made Ron Roenicke their manager for the 2020 season, club chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom announced Wednesday night on a conference call with reporters.
Reports circulated earlier Wednesday that the team was removing the interim tag, not long after the team’s sign-stealing punishment was handed down by Major League Baseball.
Bloom emphasized that Roenicke’s contract runs solely through the 2020 season. He said he understood assertions that some people might view Roenicke as a lame-duck manager.
“I don’t see it as a problem,” Bloom said. “We were very clear with Ron that the reasons we thought sticking with the term of his existing contract was the right thing to do in this situation did not imply anything about how we felt about him. He has more than met the expectations that we had for him when we made that decision in February.”
Roenicke was named interim manager in February, a month after the organization parted ways with skipper Alex Cora over the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Cora is banned for the 2020 season for his role in the scandal when he was the bench coach in Houston.
Boston had its own sign-stealing incident in 2018, for which punishment was handed down by Major League Baseball earlier Wednesday. The Red Sox will forfeit this year’s second-round draft pick, and replay operator J.T. Watkins was suspended for one season.
Roenicke, 63, spent the past two seasons as the Red Sox’s bench coach under Cora.
Roenicke posted a 342-331 record as manager of the Milwaukee Brewers from 2011 until he was fired in May 2015 after a 7-18 start. He led the Brewers to their first division championship in 29 years in 2011 before they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series. It was the only time the Brewers made the playoffs during his tenure.
Roenicke was a major league outfielder from 1981-88, playing with six teams. He was a minor league manager and a bench coach with both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Angels.
