And no, this is not a continued riff on my managerial handsomeness rankings. I mean, yes, the guy is an absolute dreamboat, but I actually sat through his press availability here at the Winter Meetings a few minutes ago and I cam away impressed for baseball reasons as well.
It’s hard to put a finger on it, but it mostly falls under the category of cliche avoidance. He’s new, so a lot of the questions he was asked were about managerial philosophy and big picture things like, how do you plan to approach bullpen usage and defensive shifts. How do you plan to approach clubhouse things. Stuff like that. A lot of it are subjects that lend themselves to cliches, and boy have I heard a lot of cliches when these topics have come up at the past five Winter Meetings.
But Ausmus pretty steadfastly avoided them. He answered direct questions with direct answers. When he didn’t know the answer or hadn’t thought about the topic yet, he said he didn’t know or hadn’t thought about it yet. But most of his answers suggested a guy who has thought pretty deeply about things and has no problem sharing his thoughts about it.
Maybe he’ll get into the habit of cliche as he’s in the job longer. But I’m optimistic he won’t. Just saying I like the cut of his jib on the first impression.
