Tigers News: A.J. Hinch NOT listed among potential Astros manager candidates

The Houston Astros will be looking for a new manager this offseason following the retirement of Dusty Baker today. With that, of course, comes more speculation from fans that Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch could go back to his old club.

However, it looks like we can cool the jets on that. Chandler Rome of The Athletic ($$$) released a list of names to watch for the Astros manager job, and A.J. Hinch was not listed among those names. There were 12 names listed, and Hinch was not one of them.

This is not the first time Tigers fan have worried that Hinch might bolt for his old team. When he spoke highly of the team and city last season, fans thought he was going to leave...for some reason.

Despite Hinch reiterating many times that he wants to see things through here and is committed to the Tigers, fans continue to speculate about him leaving for another organization. Again, he's given no indication that he's going to leave. This list should further prove that is not very likely.

Rome is very much in the know in Astros circles. He's not just talking out his rear end here. If Hinch were a likely candidate for the job, Rome would have listed him here.

One of the biggest reasons he's likely to not leave for Houston is because, well, they probably don't want him back. They want to be as far removed from the cheating scandal as possible. Yes, the more that has come out about the scandal, the more you realize Hinch had very little, if any, involvement. But at the end of the day, he was the manager the year that they were stealing signs, and they don't want to bring that stigma back.

Now, could he leave for a different team? It's not impossible. Cleveland, the Angels, and now the Padres all need managers. It's not crazy to think that another team could steal him away from the Tigers,

But once again, from everything he's said, Tigers fans should have no reason to worry about A.J. Hinch leaving to manage another team. He's going to be here through at least the remainder of his contract. Everybody calm down.