ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Los Angeles Angels have hired former major league catcher Kurt Suzuki as their next manager, the team announced Tuesday.
Suzuki played 16 seasons in the major leagues for five teams, earning an All-Star selection with Minnesota in 2014 and winning a World Series with Washington in 2019.
Suzuki finished his career with two years in Anaheim, retiring after the 2022 season. Suzuki also won the College World Series while playing for Cal State Fullerton, located a few miles from Angel Stadium.
He has spent the past three seasons as a special assistant to Angels general manager Perry Minasian.
Rangers
The 42-year-old Suzuki replaces Ron Washington, who wasn’t brought back to the Angels’ dugout after two losing seasons. Washington missed the second half of the current season after undergoing quadruple bypass heart surgery.
The Angels pivoted to Suzuki and fellow special assistant Torii Hunter as their top candidates after talks with former slugger Albert Pujols broke down in recent days. Pujols, who has a personal services contract with the Angels, was the early front-runner for the job as a longtime favorite of owner Arte Moreno.
Pujols and Suzuki both have no major league coaching experience.
Suzuki becomes the Angels’ fifth full-time manager in the past eight seasons since Mike Scioscia was let go.
The Angels have the majors’ longest active streaks of futility, with 10 straight losing seasons and 11 consecutive non-playoff seasons.
Although Minasian has assembled a modestly exciting young core led by shortstop Zach Neto and outfielder Jo Adell to join three-time MVP Mike Trout, the team has shown few signs of emerging from its decade of profound struggle under Moreno’s stewardship. The Angels went 72-90 last season, finishing last in the AL West and 13th in the American League.
Suzuki, who is from Hawaii, is a fourth-generation Japanese-American. He joins Don Wakamatsu and Dave Roberts among the list of former and current MLB managers with Asian heritage.
Suzuki takes over the Angels’ dugout during another chapter of negative publicity for the franchise, which is currently involved in a highly public trial over a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who died of a drug overdose in 2019. Trout testified in the trial Tuesday.
Find more MLB coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.