{"id":754164,"date":"2026-07-17T12:36:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/754164\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:36:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:36:20","slug":"matt-williams-to-coach-sf-womens-baseball-team-in-inaugural-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/754164\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Williams to coach SF women\u2019s baseball team in inaugural season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The brand-new women\u2019s pro baseball team assigned to represent San Francisco will have an all-time <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sports\/giants\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Giants<\/a> great as their manager.<\/p>\n<p>Former third baseman and recent Giants coach Matt Williams will be announced as the Firebells\u2019 manager next week, the Chronicle has learned, and Williams confirmed the news when contacted by the paper.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a ton of fun,\u201d Williams said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Williams, a five-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner, managed the Washington Nationals in 2014-15 and was the NL Manager of the Year in his first season there. He also spent two years managing the KBO\u2019s Kia Tigers in South Korea. He will have one player, shortstop Jua Park, from South Korea on his squad, along with players from Japan, Mexico and Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The Firebells had the No. 1 pick in the inaugural draft for the Women\u2019s Pro Baseball League, and selected former Oakland Ballers pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sports\/athletics\/article\/baseball-trailblazer-kelsie-whitmore-makes-19396131.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kelsie Whitmore<\/a>, who is currently playing with the Savannah Bananas and the US national team.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we\u2019ll have a good team,\u201d Williams said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Williams is also the quintessential girl-dad, with three daughters who are all about the same age as his players, so he knows the generation well.<\/p>\n<p>The new women\u2019s league consists of four teams in its inaugural 30-game\u00a0 season, which will be played in Springfield, Ill. The other three teams in the league represent Los Angeles, New York and Boston. All four will hold a brief spring training over the final week of July before their regular season begins.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The league, co-founded by former A\u2019s coach Justine Siegal, has said that it hopes to hold exhibition games in the teams\u2019 cities later this year, with plans to play full-time in their assigned cities at some point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The brand-new women\u2019s pro baseball team assigned to represent San Francisco will have an all-time Giants great as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,162,185,93590,5538],"class_list":["post-754164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-giants","tag-sports","tag-women-s-sports","tag-womens-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116935352862971780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}