Nov 8th 2008 4:10PM by Pat Lackey (author feed)
When the Brewers hired Ken Macha and moved Dale Sveum to the position of hitting coach, it seemed like they had plenty of managerial experience on their coaching staff. Apparently Doug Melvin didn’t agree with that sentiment because the Brewers named Macha’s bench coach today; former Mets’ manager Willie Randolph.

This kind of seems like a weird move, because it’s almost certainly made by Melvin, even though the bench coach is usually picked by the manager. Randolph was one of the other finalists for the Brewers job before it went to Macha. Apparenly Melvin liked Randolph’s interview and Willie decided that he’d rather be a bench coach again than go somewhere like Seattle, so here we are.

I thought for a few minutes that having three managers on your coaching staff was weird, but then I remembered the ex-Pittsburgh Pirate manager reunion in Detroit where Gene Lamont and Lloyd McClendon have worked with Jim Leyland the past few years. The theme of Melvin’s hiring process has been “experience” and though Randolph and Sveum weren’t managers for that long, he’s certainly packing as much experience as he can into this coaching staff.