Astros begin managerial search with first round of interviews

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

HOUSTON -- With several teams around the league hiring managers this week, the Astros’ search for a replacement for the retired Dusty Baker has begun in earnest. General manager Dana Brown, speaking from the General Managers Meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., said Tuesday the club has started to interview potential managerial candidates, including bench coach Joe Espada.

Astros owner Jim Crane has made it clear the task of finding a new manager belongs to Brown, who’s conducting his first manager search after being hired 10 months ago. There should be no shortage of candidates considering the Astros have made seven consecutive American League Championship Series appearances and Crane has shown a commitment to staying competitive.

“They’re going to come into this environment and keep that moving,” Brown said. “And so, you have to really, really comb through the makeup and the character of each person that you’re talking to and you have to call up friends in the game and people you know to try to make sure you get it right before you get too far down the road.”

Espada, who interviewed last week, has been the Astros’ bench coach since 2018 and has interviewed for managerial openings with multiple teams during the past five years. Promoting the 48-year-old would present a seamless transition for the club, but Espada’s contract with the Astros expired Oct. 31, a source said, and his name has been linked to Milwaukee’s opening.

Brown plans to interview multiple candidates to get different perspectives and gain some interviewing experience in what is his first search for a manager. Brown came to the Astros after spending the previous four seasons (2019-22) as the vice president of scouting in Atlanta, a place he may turn to find potential candidates. On Tuesday, Brown wouldn’t say if Braves coaches Ron Washington, Walt Weiss and Eric Young -- who was a high school teammate of Brown -- were candidates in Houston.

“I don’t want to get into specifics and names, and I would just say we’ve talked to a lot of people and some of the people we know well,” Brown said. “We’ve gone through a lot of the names and a lot of the names I knew very well.”