Report: Jim Leyland to Announce Retirement from Detroit Tigers Today

Oct 17, 2013; Detroit, MI, USA; Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland addresses the media prior to game five of the American League Championship Series baseball game against the Boston Red Sox at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

That didn’t take long. The Detroit Tigers have scheduled a press conference for 11:30 AM today, and Detroit Sports 105.1 FM is reporting that the Tigers and Jim Leyland are expected to announce his retirement.

We’ll have to see who the candidates will be for his replacement, but the top interanal candidate has always seemed to be former Detroit third baseman Tom Brookens. FanGraphs had a sort of Q&A with Brookens earlier this week about his managerial style. Go and read the whole thing, but here’s a piece:

"Brookens on what his managerial style would be: “I would like to think I’d be able to have good relationships with all the players. That’s a philosophy I feel a manager has to have. You have to figure out how to get the most out of each individual player. It’s all about performance, because at the major-league level it’s all about winning ballgames. Whatever you can do to get them to focus a little better, and compete a little better on a daily basis, is going to be to your benefit.“I like to think I’d be an aggressive manager. I like to make things happen. But I’ve also learned, with a ball club like this, that you don’t necessarily do that. The pieces you have sometimes dictate how you manage. You can’t run guys — steal bases — if you don’t have that. You have to learn what you can and can’t do with the team you have."

Brookens probably wouldn’t be a bad choice, but he’d probably also be “more of the same” to a large degree. He’s a former player who seems to pride himselft (to some degree) on “being old school”. Then again, he seemed to be somewhat inclined toward advanced statistics and some of the newer ideas in baseball. Perhaps he would adopt some of those ideas, but he doesn’t seem like a manager that would continually challenge the status quo.

An external candidate that I would like to see get some consideration (assuming Jim Leyland is in fact retiring) would be Manny Acta. Acta, a sabermetric-friendly manager, recently interviewed for the Chicago Cubs managerial job.