{"id":230650,"date":"2025-10-21T19:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T19:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/230650\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T19:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T19:36:09","slug":"padres-interview-brian-esposito-for-managerial-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/230650\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres Interview Brian Esposito For Managerial Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Padres\u2019 managerial search has reached the interview stage, as The Athletic\u2019s Dennis Lin<\/a> reports that the club spoke with bench coach Brian Esposito on Monday.\u00a0 The 46-year-old Esposito is the first candidate known to have an interview in the books with the Padres, though the team may have already sat down with other internal candidates like pitching coach Ruben Niebla or special assistant Mark Loretta.\u00a0 As far as external candidates, Albert Pujols is set to interview<\/a> with San Diego on Wednesday, as the future Hall-of-Famer continues to explore his first foray into managing at the MLB level.<\/p>\n

Esposito is technically a former teammate of Pujols, as one of Esposito\u2019s three career Major League games as a player came with the 2007 Cardinals.\u00a0 That cup of coffee in St. Louis and two games with the 2010 Astros comprised the big league portion of Esposito\u2019s 13-year playing career (2000-12) that was otherwise spent in the minors with seven different organizations.<\/p>\n

After hanging up his glove, Esposito went on to manage at multiple levels of the Pirates\u2019 farm system, including a five-year run as the skipper with Triple-A Indianapolis.\u00a0 Beginning with the 2022 season, Esposito joined the Padres first as a minor league manager, then as a catching coach and game strategy assistant on the big league staff in 2023-24.\u00a0 The Padres didn\u2019t have a formal bench coach in 2024 (Mike Shildt\u2019s first season as manager), but Esposito was promoted to the job prior to last season.<\/p>\n

Unless he gets the manager\u2019s job himself, Esposito\u2019s status could be up in the air heading into 2026, along with the rest of the San Diego coaching staff.\u00a0 Naturally a new skipper will get some say in assembling his own staff, and for the bench coach role in particular, a manager usually prefers to assign that role to a long-time colleague.\u00a0 Esposito\u2019s chances of remaining as bench coach could be improved if a familiar face like Niebla or Loretta gets the job, though since both would be first-time MLB managers, they could prefer to have a more seasoned voice or a former ex-skipper as their top lieutenant.<\/p>\n

Hiring Esposito would be a way for San Diego to maintain some continuity in the dugout.\u00a0 The Padres are coming off consecutive trips to the playoffs and didn\u2019t think they\u2019d be making a managerial search at all, prior to Shildt\u2019s surprising resignation.\u00a0 Bringing in an entirely new face like Pujols might be more of a shake-up than the Padres would necessarily want to make, which could be why the early stages of the team\u2019s search has largely been centered around familiar names.\u00a0 Beyond Esposito, Niebla, and Loretta, former Padres bench coach Ryan Flaherty and ex-Padres catcher Nick Hundley have been linked to the job (though Hundley recently turned down<\/a> the Giants\u2019 managerial job due to family concerns).<\/p>\n

Another known Padres figure has expressed interest, as longtime broadcaster and former big league catcher Carlos Hernandez tells Lin that he would like to be considered for the manager\u2019s position or possibly a coaching role.\u00a0 Hernandez\u2019s 10-year MLB playing career includes parts of three seasons in San Diego (1997-2000), and his post-playing endeavors included managing in the Mexican League and Venezuelan Winter League, as well as stints as a catching coordinator with the Padres and Diamondbacks.\u00a0 For the last 14 years, Hernandez has been calling Padres\u2019 TV and radio broadcasts as a Spanish-language announcer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Padres\u2019 managerial search has reached the interview stage, as The Athletic\u2019s Dennis Lin reports that the club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,139079,139080,591,85],"class_list":["post-230650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brian-esposito","tag-carlos-hernandez-padres","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}