World Series: Luis Rojas, happy with Yankees, waiting for next chance as manager
Manager Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees talks with third base coach Luis Rojas and hitting coach Sean Casey before a game against the Washington Nationals at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023 in the Bronx borough of New York City. Credit: Jim McIsaac
LOS ANGELES — Luis Rojas says he is happy where he is, and that is easy enough to believe.
He is nearing the end of his third year as the third base coach for the Yankees, a sweet gig with a premier organization. He has learned a lot and had fun, he said. And they are in the World Series, which, after all, is the point of all this.
But when he allows himself to look ahead ever so slightly — and be honest out loud — Rojas acknowledged that yes, he would like another shot at being a manager.
“If the right situation happens, of course,” he told Newsday. “I always focus on the job that I’m doing. So I love what I’m doing right now. I expect to be doing this next year. But if the right situation lands, of course I would love to do it.”
Those around Rojas, who interviewed in recent offseasons for openings with the Padres and Marlins, believe such an opportunity is inevitable.
“Luis is such a great baseball man, great person,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I feel really, really blessed to have had him on my staff here for the last few years. So yeah, I think that day will come for him again.”
Yankees senior adviser Omar Minaya said: “He’s got a great future in front of him as a someday manager.”
Any club that hires Rojas would get a different version of the manager who led the Mets in 2020-21. Foremost among the changes, which he mentioned multiple times: Better handling what he described as the “overwhelming” amount of information available to modern major-league teams.
Doing so was part of his coaching duties with the Mets before he took over as manager, but back then they were very much playing catch-up on the analytics front.
These Yankees are a bigger, more elaborate, more efficient operation.
“We’ve got a lot of manpower here, a little bit more than I ever experienced, just working around you and helping you out,” Rojas said. “It’s really made a lot of difference as far as preparation.”
And then there is the experience piece. Merely by virtue of having done the job before — and then returning to a coaching staff — Rojas will be better suited for success next time, Minaya said. Rojas agreed, referencing “looking at different things I could’ve done” with the Mets, but he declined to get specific.
“As a baseball man, he’s as well-rounded as you’re going to get,” Minaya said.
Rojas was regarded as a managerial prospect late in his decade and a half with the Mets (a tenure that began when Minaya’s front office hired him before the 2006 season). The team went 103-119 in his two-year run in the dugout, with all sorts of stuff outside of his control making for a big off-the-field mess.
Start with the circumstances under which Rojas was hired:
When the Mets dumped Carlos Beltran amid the fallout of the 2017 Astros sign-stealing scandal, they found themselves suddenly needing a manager in late January.
They landed on Rojas, who started as a low-level minor-league coach and climbed the ranks through player development and to the majors — a “traditional” track, Minaya noted, similar to the one followed by Carlos Mendoza, who did it with the Yankees, ascended to Boone’s bench coach and just finished his first year as Mets manager.
During Rojas’ first spring training, the pandemic shut down the sports world (and the real world). The Mets didn’t do much in that 60-game season.
That autumn, Steve Cohen purchased the organization and wiped out the front office, meaning Rojas immediately became something of a lame duck, serving as manager for a regime that did not choose him. After 2021, the Mets let Rojas go so Cohen’s new general manager (eventually Billy Eppler) could hire his own manager (eventually Buck Showalter).
“I’m not concerned about him getting another job,” Minaya said. “I just hope that the next job that he gets is not one of those rebuild jobs. Because a lot of times when you get those jobs, you rebuild them, and the time comes [to compete again] and you’re not there. So I’m just hoping that it’s the right job that he gets.”
That’s why Rojas mentioned “the right situation” — with a hoarse voice befitting the climate-switching, country-crossing, screams-inducing, glory-bringing grind of October. He wants to manage again. For now, though, this is a heck of a time.
“It’s been fun, man,” Rojas said. “On top of everything, it’s been fun.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
