Shelley Duncan will return as the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders manager for a fourth season.<\/p>\n
The New York Yankees retained the 2025 International League Manager of the Year and set the field staff for this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a part of the Yankees organization is a huge privilege,\u201d Duncan said in a press release. \u201cIt\u2019s the best organization in baseball \u2026 the best organization across the sports. It\u2019s awesome. And it\u2019s family \u2026 the people in this organization. I absolutely love them from the top down. It feels like a home to me. Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre has been absolutely wonderful the last three years. And to be there a fourth year, it\u2019s going to be another fun one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spencer Medick is now the RailRiders pitching coach, after serving as bullpen coach last season. Hitting coach Mike Merganthaler and bench coach Gil Velazquez return for a second season, Raul Dominguez will be the defensive coach after three seasons as Double-A Somerset\u2019s manager and Peter Larson joins the staff as bullpen coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my eyes, everything\u2019s going to run really smoothly,\u201d Duncan, 46, said. \u201cRaul has experience in Scranton. Pete has a lot of Triple-A experience. Both guys have been in the organization, so this isn\u2019t new to them. I\u2019ve spent a lot of time with Raul over the last three years. Our communication has been lockstep over the course of the last few seasons, and I\u2019m extremely happy to have him. He\u2019s one of the best coaches in our organization. What Pete brings to the table, in complementing Spencer, is going to be another valuable asset. He\u2019ll be in the bullpen, adding all kinds of different things to these guys to get them big-league ready. The pitchers are going to have a higher big-league awareness.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving Mergie (Mike Mergenthaler), Spencer and Gil back again, I tell you what \u2026 It\u2019s a lot of fun when you go into year two of the coaching staff rather than a brand new one. You always have some growing pains at the beginning when you have a new staff, but when you have continuity, it really allows you to have a smooth start and get things going around the get-go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Athletic trainer Brandon Rodr\u00edguez, assistant athletic trainer Hannah Davis, home clubhouse manager Jim Billington and video and tech assistant Danny Althoff return, while Isiah McDonald joins the staff as the strength and conditioning coach and Matt Wells serves as an advance scouting analyst.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the unseen architecture of the operation,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cDay to day, Brandon, Hannah, Isiah, Danny, Matt and Jim manage the hidden variables: workload, recovery curves, information flow and competitive readiness. Their work integrates physiology, data, preparation and foresight into one coherent system. Nothing is accidental, and nothing is reactive. They are as good as it gets in each of their respective fields.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Duncan, Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre has 249 wins and captured the second-half IL title last season. The RailRiders lost the three-game IL championship series, 2-1, to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre\u2019s 20th manager was drafted by the Yankees in 2001 in the second round out of the University of Arizona. He reached Triple-A with Columbus in 2006, and spent parts of three seasons with the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, playing in 272 games between 2007 and 2009. In 2009, he hit .277 with 30 home runs and 99 RBIs over 123 games and earned IL MVP. His MLB career spanned 330 games and seven years with the Yankees, Cleveland and Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes, it\u2019s hard to leave that off-season lifestyle,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cYou know, you get this beautiful weather down here in Arizona. You get to spend time with family. But as soon as spring training starts and everyone starts talking baseball, the grinds start going. And you always look forward to doing new things, trying to grow as a coach, trying to grow as a manager. You have a whole new and different team. We\u2019re going to have different faces and players. I\u2019m going to spend a lot of time in spring training, building relationships, seeing what we got and seeing what type of atmosphere we\u2019ve got to build. That\u2019s always exciting. There are always little things that you want to bring to the table that you want to keep going on from years past. But in reality, it\u2019s a new year. The challenge of trying to figure out what you need to build is something that really excites me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RailRiders opener is March 27, when they travel to Buffalo for a three-game set. Then, they\u2019re at Rochester for six games before their home opener April 7, when they face the Durham Bulls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shelley Duncan will return as the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders manager for a fourth season. The New York Yankees retained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[51447,178,180,179,726],"class_list":["post-106907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-rail-riders","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}