The Twins will hire Diamondbacks farm director/vice president of player development Mike Bell as their new bench coach, per Ken Rosenthal, Zach Buchanan and Eno Sarris of The Athletic (Twitter link). He’ll be stepping into the void left by Derek Shelton when he was hired as manager of the Pirates. Bell, the younger brother of Reds manager David Bell, was a managerial candidate himself this winter. He interviewed with the Mets and was also reportedly considered for the Pirates gig that eventually went to Shelton.
The 44-year-old also interviewed with both the Rangers and the Orioles last offseason, so it stands to reason that the Twins could be making a hire who’ll draw managerial interest again in the near future. The 2019 season was his third as the Diamondbacks’ farm director, but Bell previously served as the team’s director of player development and spent another three years as a minor league manager. In all, he’s been with the D-backs as a minor league skipper or a front office executive for a total of 13 years.
A former third baseman, Bell was a first-round pick of the Rangers back in 1993 and is the son of five-time MLB All-Star Buddy Bell, who also managed in parts of nine MLB seasons with the Tigers, Rockies and Royals.
Bell isn’t the only notable hire for the Twins in recent days, however. Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com tweets that Minnesota has hired UC Santa Barbara hitting coach Donegal Fergus as their new minor league hitting coordinator. The Twins haven’t been shy about dipping into the college coaching ranks to fill out key positions in their organization recently, with second-year pitching coach Wes Johnson (formerly the pitching coach at Arkansas) standing out as the most notable hire to date.
trade him for Arenado
Trust me, Rockies fans want NOTHING to do with any member of the Bell family. Buddy was the worst manager in franchise history and that history includes a multi year stint by a high school coach and 1 year of Jim Leyland’s compete disinterest. So yeah, he was bad.
Don’t google Mike Bell–yikes.
What you don’t want to do is Google “teratoma”. Those things are ugler than Chris Davis’s batting average.
what you want to google is the “Vargas Girls”
says someoldcreep
I assume you are referring to the ECW wrestler named Mike Bell that died from huffing electronic dust spray.
BTW, stop telling people to not Google things because that’s the first thing most of us do when we see that.
Now about that Ace pitcher and Stud 3rd baseman…. we’re waiting..
Testing!
Do teraromas cost 30 million a year?
Billy Eppler is a P.O.S….!!! move on.
How long with this anger and quest last?
I was really hoping they’d bring someone in with pitching/bullpen management knowledge for the bench coach position since that was seemingly Rocco’s only weakness last season. Nonetheless, a player development background should be pretty beneficial to this coaching staff as well. My opinion doesn’t matter, but I like this move!
I think you’re beginning to see the D-backs being considered as the place you “raid” to find people who can blend analytics with “old school stuff”. The Brewers, the Rays, the D-Backs; very forward thinking organizations. And they do a lot with middle/lower tier payrolls,
Just about all the small market teams have been forced into doing that (D-Backs are actually a lower mid-market).
A’s. Reds (although at this point they’re also increasing payroll, which will plateau shortly). Jays are trying although they too are lower mid-market. Indians. In fact, the only small market teams I see that do not have a heavy usage of analytics combined with accentuating fundamentals are the Royals and Marlins, although they appear to be influenced a bit more by analytics in day to day strategies lately.
What all the small market teams do is to build a core each year of 4 regular position players (some may play more then one position), 2 strong starting pitchers, 2 back-end bullpen guys, and then rotate the other players on the 25 man roster around them – which include shuffles between the roster and their high minor league clubs along with in-season trades and waiver moves. What they also do is rotate some of those 10 core players off their roster every year or two as the individual players salary demands become unaffordable and/or they’re approaching free agency – hopefully by promoting a youngster that was a part of the roster but not considered a core player.
Ex-Ray’s FO people running the Dodgers and Red Sox are now also taking this approach. The cardinal rule – don’t get stuck with a bad long-term contract. It limits what you can do, often for years at a time.
I guess he decided that being a bench coach will be helpful for his resume the next time he interviews for a managing position.
The best three generation baseball family.
is the Boone family.
Sounds like they got their man. Too bad it won’t help on the field. Here comes the ole we just financially we couldn’t stretch to that. Hey we did get Sergio Romo and we think with that and all the injuries coming back we will have a great roster. Straight from the “ Eppler” playbook in Anaheim just a 1500 miles to the West
Crickets! from 1 Twins way on that impact starting pitcher.
Letting our hitting coach Rowson go to Miami was a huge loss!! Had to save money to keep same old pitching staff? Wtf
Rowson has managerial ambitions and being a bench coach is the typical next step. If Shelton would have left first I’m betting Rowson would have stayed to take the bench coach position in MN. You can’t force someone to not take a promotion somewhere else.