Stephen Vogt, the new manager of the Cleveland Guardians, has a difficult act to follow. Usually, when a major league team switches managers, that does not happen.
When a team switches managers, typically the new boss is easy to work with. The team is switching managers because the outgoing manager was not doing a good enough job leading to the change.
As for Vogt, the manager who was leaving left a hero, having achieved everything—winning all the awards, scaling the mountains, and earning the freedom to go out on his own terms.
Thus, Terry Francona acted.
Vogt considers managing the Cleveland Guardians after Francona—who is almost certainly going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame—to be one of the hardest roles to fill.
Francona took over as manager of Cleveland in 2013 after the team had just had a miserable 2012 campaign that saw it just miss the 100-loss mark, finishing with a record of 68-94. Cleveland has only made two postseason appearances in the previous eleven years at the time of Francona’s employment.
