Wichita appoint two former Aviators as Staff
Wichita had three personnel spots open up this off season, Steve Roberge retired as manager of their Rookie League team Anchorage while the Polar Bears Hitting Coach Ed Mansfield also left. The third departee was Cory Edwards, the pitching coach at Springfield, both Cory & Ed left after failing to agree a new contract, we offered them a fair deal in our opinion, but they indicated that they wanted more and this is the outcome.
Over the past few years the franchise has tried to fill casual staff vacancies from within wherever possible and this year we had a couple of great candidates to slot in if they so wished. 37-yr-old Abe Colbert Jr retired after eight years in Wichita (with a small vacation in Las Vegas) and a 14-year BBA career. He has relied a lot during his career on a top-notch Knuckleball and it didn’t take him long to agree when we offered him the Springfield pitching coach role, he too saw the benefit of attempting to teach our more experienced young Aviators and perhaps getting a few of them to consider adding a knuckleball to their arsenal.
A surprise retirement for us was 36-yr-old Doug Clement, he had been with the Aviators for the last four years of a 12-yr BBA career. He probably saw the writing on the wall as no new contract offer had been forthcoming. He took a while to convince to move onto the management side, but we got our Man in the end as he finally agreed to fill the now vacant Managers job in Anchorage. A big part of that I think was that of course he’s Canadian, it was a chance to continue his career so near to there.
Joining him up in the frozen north will be 25-yr-old Jose Carlos Flores , Jose was a third round draft pick for Wichita in 2036 and advanced quickly through the organisation aided by three FPL seasons. His cup of BBA coffee was in 2039 and he followed that up with two full BBA seasons, but he never really hit the heights that was expected. Spending his last two years in Triple-A Albuquerque, he finally decided he was just never going to make it any further and came to me expressing a desire to retire. I quickly turned him round and said with your leadership qualities I was sure that he’d make a good coach and offered him the vacant Hitting coach role in Anchorage which he only too gladly accepted.
Job done ! Three vacancies filled, lets hope it all works out as it should do
