How Steven Vogt went from an 0-for-32 rookie to a big league manager
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Tim Kurkjian, ESPN Senior Writer
IT IS OPENING Day 2017. Stephen Vogt, the Oakland A’s multi-talented, multi-dimensional, multi-personality catcher, was asked to perform something on tape that could be played on TV before his first at-bat that day — ideally, his hysterical rendition of Chris Farley’s riotous “In A Van Down By The River” skit from “Saturday Night Live.”
“That’s just for my teammates,” he said. “But I’ll sing something for you.”
So, in full uniform, only hours before the first pitch of the season, Vogt sang from three Disney songs, led by a heartwarming diddy from “The Little Mermaid.” It was played before his first at-bat of the game, and seconds later, he hit a home run.
From “Under The Sea” to over the fence.
From Ariel to aerial.
That moment, that day, captures who Stephen Vogt is. He is so secure in himself, so comfortable in his own skin. He is meticulously prepared, and “obsessively observant,” according to former teammate Elliot Johnson — traits that will be critical for a major league manager. He has tremendous communication skills, the most important attribute of today’s manager. And Vogt is relentless: He did not get a hit in his first 32 at-bats in the major leagues, yet found his way to two All-Star teams. This is why the Cleveland Guardians named Vogt, age 39 with no managerial experience on any level, to replace the irreplaceable Tito Francona as their manager.
“Within five minutes of our first Zoom call with him, we got the overwhelming feeling that he would make a great manager — five minutes,” Guardians general manager Mike Chernoff said. “Even though he had only coached for one year [2023 with Seattle], he already had a managerial philosophy in place. He walked us through it, and it was obvious that he would be great. And every reference call we made, we heard the same thing, like, ‘I only knew him for one year in A-ball, but I knew he would be a great manager.”’
It’s a sentiment echoed by plenty of Vogt’s former teammates.
“He is the perfect storm of knowledge and awareness and he just got done playing at a very high level,” Jerry Blevins said. “He checks all the boxes. He is all-of-the above.”
“The baseball gods single out their guys before they are even born,” former teammate Dallas Braden said. “And they picked Vogter. We all knew he would be a great manager.”
“It’s like he has been doing this for 10 years,” said Guardians catcher Austin Hedges. “His first speech to the team this spring was incredible. The energy in the room is amazing.”
“Vogter is one of the greatest teammates I’ve ever had,” said Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy. “He has all the makings to be a Hall of Fame manager.”
IT IS SPRING training in 2012 in Port Charlotte. Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon organized a talent show.
“That put Stephen on the map,” said Johnson, then a utility man for the Rays. “He was in minor league camp. I had no idea who he was. No one had ever heard of him. He was one of the last acts. He killed it. He did impersonations [of Maddon, farm director Mitch Lukevics and coach Matt Quatraro]. Everyone was dying laughing. He won the pot. He probably went home with $2,000. The rest of that spring, when we needed someone from minor league camp to come over, we’d say, ‘Let’s bring that Vogt guy over so he can do impersonations for us.”’
Sure enough, Maddon routinely brought him over to big league camp.
“I had a couple of conversations with him that spring and thought, ‘My God, this guy would be perfect on any team,'” Maddon said. “I got a whiff of his humor. He did this impersonation of me where he rides in on his bicycle wearing a Rays jacket and glasses. He gets a fungo and puts it under his one leg and crosses over like I do. Then he starts talking using big words. We’d bring him over in the morning, we would have a huddle before our workouts, and he would rock it every time.”
Giants manager Bob Melvin was one of Vogt’s managers with the Oakland Athletics. “The hardest part of every meeting is, ‘How does it end?”’ Melvin said. “You just clap and say, ‘Let’s go.’ Our meetings always ended with Vogter. Levity. Funny. He is the perfect way to end a meeting.”
The “Van Down By The River” skit is among Vogt’s famous impersonations; he even provides his own table that collapses when porky, dorky motivational speaker Matt Foley falls on it.
“I still have that clip on my phone,” former teammate Sean Doolittle said. “I watch it all the time.”
The communication skills, the importance of inclusion, the sense of humor, the fearless ability to perform and entertain all come from the influence of Vogt’s parents, Randy and Toni. They insisted that Stephen and his brother, Danny, do more than sports. Stephen played the trumpet, sang in the choir and did several school plays.
“My mom said we needed to be involved in music because it allows you to appreciate everything,” Vogt said. “Music was a big part of our family. I sing all the time. What I miss most is singing with the choir. There is no pressure greater than singing a solo. Everyone’s parents are watching. Being in a church play, public speaking and performing allows you to tune out the audience and really just focus on what you’re supposed to be doing.”
How did his high school baseball and basketball teammates react to him being in the school plays?
“Obviously, I got made fun of, but not too bad,” Vogt said. “It was the person I was raised to be. People are into different things, that doesn’t make one weird. I had a teacher tell me once years after high school that I made uncool things cool. That was such a really neat compliment. Everything is awesome in your own way. Being able to put on your drama hat and go put on your baseball hat, your basketball hat, your student government hat relating to everybody and being able to interact with everybody is super important.”
Johnson sees another way that Vogt’s impressions impacted the way he played — and the way he’ll manage.
“He pays attention,” Johnson said. “When you can do voices and mannerisms, it shows being observant. Vogter was always locked in. He will be [the same] as a manager. When he talks to his players, he will already know everything about them. If someone is too high, too full of himself, he can bring that guy back to center. If someone is too low, he can bring him back up. Great clubhouse guy, secure human.”
“He has an innate ability to make everyone around him more comfortable,” Doolittle said.
That will be more important than ever as a manager.
“It’s being able to read your teammates and read the room,” Vogt said. “There are times when the tension gets really high over the course of six months. There are times when we are down as a team. The guys need to laugh. If you’re not smiling and laughing on the baseball field, you’re not going to play your best. For three hours a day we get to be 12-year-old kids again. If you lose that perspective, not many are good enough to overcome that.”
IT IS SPRING training 2024 with the Guardians. Stephen Vogt is wandering the field wearing uniform No. 12, carrying a fungo bat and observing, missing nothing. Matt Foley and the Disney balladeer are inside him, but as Muncy said, “once the game starts, it’s all about winning.”
Doolittle said, “He is one of smartest players I ever played with. He’s not a goofball. I would sit next to him on planes. When everyone else is playing cards, he’s doing his homework.”
“He is always asking questions,” Blevins said. “All the smart people I’ve been around ask the most questions. He would get into your head. He’d ask me, ‘You shook this, why did you want to throw that?’ I’d answer his question, and the next time he’d adjust.”
“We learn from failure,” Vogt said. “No one learns from success. And Lord knows I’ve had enough failures.”
Vogt was drafted by the Rays in the 12th round in 2007 out of Azusa Pacific College. He finally got to the big leagues in 2012. “He was always a good hitter,” Maddon said. “But I kept hearing in the meetings that he was going to be a 2-A or 3-A player. His defense was substandard. He heard all those things, too. He was very motivated.”
He went 0-for-25 in his first year with the Rays, then was sold to the A’s, where he went hitless in his first seven at-bats. That’s 0-for-32: the fourth longest hitless streak by a position player to begin a career in the expansion era (1961-on), trailing only Vic Harris (0-36 in 1972), Lou Camilli (0-34 in 1971) and Chris Carter (0-33 in 2012).
“I don’t know how I got through that,” Vogt said. “That was tough. You reach your dream of making it to the major leagues and then you go home 0-for-25. You have to look everybody in the eye. You’re giving hitting lessons and you’re wondering if the kid and parents are asking, ‘Why are letting this guy give our kids hitting lessons? The guy can’t hit.”’
But in 2015 and 2016, Vogt made the All-Star team with the A’s — and became one of the most popular players at the club. “When he was catching in Oakland, I’d come to the plate and sing what everyone sings in Oakland: ‘I believe in Stephen Vogt,”’ Hedges said. “We’d be laughing. Great banter. I’d have to say to him, ‘Hey Vogter, I got to get locked in here. This is a great conversation, but I’m trying to get a hit off your guy.”
Vogt was waived by the A’s in 2017, then played for the Milwaukee Brewers, San Francisco Giants, Arizona Diamondbacks and the Atlanta Braves, where he won a World Series ring in 2021.
As far back as A-ball, Vogt wanted to be a coach. After watching Melvin manage, he determined that he might be able to do that job someday. “A lot of things suggested that he would manage,” Melvin said, “but mostly, it was his interaction with me. The questions he asked me. Things you don’t get from a lot of players. He was not afraid to ask. Very inquisitive.”
It was with Milwaukee, where he was injured and couldn’t play, that he became certain about his career path. Then-Brewers manager Craig Counsell and general manager David Stearns “allowed me behind the curtain” to understand free agency, the draft, the whole process, Vogt said.
“I’ve been building for this for a long time, writing managerial philosophies in notebooks,” Vogt said of his job in Cleveland. “I’m in a great spot here. There is help everywhere. I need help. We have 200 years of coaching experience on this team. When I got here, we went to 201.”
It helps that Vogt was an active player only two years ago. He has never left the game; nothing has passed him by.
“He already knows exactly what that player is feeling because he constantly has the pulse of everyone around him,” Braden said. “He will relate to the 26th guy on the roster exactly the same way as he will relate to the star of the team. It takes a special set of skills to do that. He knows what it takes to get the best out of everyone, every day. And in this analytics world in the big leagues, that skill is more important than it has ever been. He nails it.”
The last player to become a manager only two years after retirement was Larry Bowa in 1989. Vogt’s final day in the major league was his most memorable.
“It was Oct. 4, the last day of that [2022] season,” Braden said. “He has already announced to the world that he is retiring. I go down to the bullpen before the game. Stephen Vogt straps on the gear and does a pre-game, ball-blocking drill. He is never going to put shin guards again in his life, and what does he do? He gets his early work in so he could set the right example for everyone. It is always about doing the right thing.”
In the final at-bat of his career, Vogt’s three children, Payton (now 12), Clark (9) and Bennett (6), announced his name over the public address system at the Oakland Coliseum.
And, of course, as he always does in the biggest moments, he hit a homer.
“To hear your kids’ voices, them saying, ‘Now batting, our dad,’ it still makes me emotional,” Vogt said. “It was an incredible moment. The kids were like ‘Dad, no way, I can’t believe you did that!”’
Actually, with Stephen Vogt, and only Stephen Vogt, it is believable.
On the day Alex Bregman met Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer this spring, the two Boston Red Sox uber-prospects greeted him with a proposition: Let us play student to your teacher. Bregman, who joined the Red Sox days earlier on a three-year, $120 million contract, has cultivated a reputation as perhaps the smartest baseball mind in the game, a combination of film hound, analytics dork, eagle-eyed scout and pure knower of ball gleaned from a wildly successful big league career. As Mayer put it in his unique verbiage: “Hey, bro, do you just want to marinate in the clubhouse and talk shop?'”
“It made me laugh,” Bregman said, “because, like, ‘marinate in the clubhouse and talk shop’ — it sounds like me when I was 21. All I wanted to do is just sit in the clubhouse for four hours after a game and talk about baseball.”
All these years later — having played more than 1,000 games, whacked 200 home runs and worn the countless slings and arrows of those who can’t bring themselves to look past his role on the Houston Astros team that cheated amid its championship run in 2017 — Bregman is still in love with the game. When his wife, Reagan, was about to give birth to their second child in mid-April, Bregman told teammates he didn’t plan to take full advantage of Major League Baseball’s three-game paternity leave. That day in Tampa, Florida, he went 5-for-5 with two home runs, flew to Boston, saw the birth of Bennett Matthew Bregman, and returned to the team. He missed one game.
At 31, Bregman is scarcely different from the baseball obsessive who brute-forced his way to the big leagues within a year of being drafted and has logged the second most postseason plate appearances since. Even as others seek his wisdom, he still fancies himself an apprentice, an explorer with an endless font of curiosity– someone who watches closely and studies ceaselessly, capable of making adjustments from pitch to pitch, at-bat to at-bat, game to game. Bregman converses in English and Spanish, with hitters and pitchers, finding himself at the intersection of the Venn diagrams that illustrate divisions in plenty of clubhouses.
“It’s consistent ball talk,” said Garrett Crochet, the Red Sox ace also acquired over the winter. “When I’m not starting, in between innings, he’ll come over on the bench and pull out the iPad and be like, ‘I was looking for this right here. He’s going to give it to me the next at-bat,’ and then [the pitcher] does, and it’s a single or double.”
Bregman’s instincts come from a place of necessity. His biographical details don’t scream big leaguer. In a game increasingly inhabited by physically imposing athletes, he stands a couple of inches shy of 6 feet. He grew up in New Mexico, nobody’s idea of a baseball hotbed. Bregman’s love of the game has fueled him every step of the way, from starring at SEC powerhouse LSU as a freshman to being selected No. 2 in the 2015 MLB draft and becoming a mainstay in a loaded Astros lineup since his debut as a 22-year-old.
“His energy is very contagious,” said Red Sox first baseman Abraham Toro, who also spent parts of three seasons as Bregman’s teammate in Houston. “He’s always talking about baseball. Even when the game’s over, he’s talking about baseball. And it makes you want to get better.”
Bregman started his career picking the brains of veteran teammates such as Justin Verlander, Martin Maldonado, Brian McCann and Carlos Correa in his quest for improvement. Now, a decade later, he is relishing the opportunity to foster those discussions with the next generation of players in his new home.
“Baseball talk is the key,” Bregman said. “Just talking the game with your teammates, coaches, talking about the pitcher you’re facing or the hitters that our pitchers are facing, how you see it and how they see it. And then if you see anything in their game or they see anything in your game, you go back and forth on how guys can improve.
“It’s energizing, to be honest with you. Especially it being a bunch of younger guys who are trying to improve the same way I am. I feel like I’m young and want to get a lot better. And I feel like my best baseball’s ahead of me.”
As the offseason languished on, it became increasingly clear that Bregman would have to find a different home than the only clubhouse he’d ever known. When Bregman’s primary suitors finally came into focus, the favorites were the Detroit Tigers — managed by A.J. Hinch, with whom he spent four seasons in Houston — and the Red Sox.
In the final hours, Bregman asked Boston for its best offer — one the Red Sox had loaded up with annual salary and opt-outs after each of the first two seasons in hopes of proving sufficiently alluring.
It was a staggering deal for someone who over the previous five seasons was plenty good (.261/.350/.445 with 92 home runs) but objectively not a $40 million-a-year player. But Bregman and the Red Sox both believed he could get himself back to the version of himself from 2018 and 2019 — the one who posted more than 16 wins above replacement and ranked among the game’s elite.
Bregman accepted. And that’s when Boston’s hitting machine went to work. Red Sox coaches already had put together a presentation to explain how and why he needed to fix his swing. Over time, Bregman had developed almost imperceptible bad habits. The timing of Bregman loading his hands was too late and too fast. Moving his hands as the ball left the pitcher’s hand left him vulnerable, and never did Bregman possess the sort of bat velocity to make up for it.
“After those [successful] years, it was like, I wanna be better, I wanna be better, I wanna be better, I wanna be better,” Bregman said. “So I started trying to change things and improve, improve, improve instead of doing what made me who I am and just refining what I was already doing at the time.”
Red Sox hitting coach Peter Fatse and assistants Dillon Lawson and Ben Rosenthal loved the simplicity of Bregman’s move in the batter’s box, but they saw more potential and knew swing adjustments would be necessary. Change doesn’t exactly suit Bregman. He is the guy who eats the same meal every day and never deviates from his hitting schedule. But he is also the son of two lawyers and at least open to practical solutions, so he was willing to hear out his new coaching staff.
The Red Sox worked with Bregman to address the flaw in the swing: It all started, they agreed, with a poor setup and load. Rather than exclusively focus on bat-speed training, Bregman committed to loading earlier and rebuilt his swing in a place that’s heaven to baseball rats like him: the batting cage.
“Get back to doing what I did in my best years, which was to focus on being the best in the cage that day,” Bregman said. “Not worrying about if I’m hitting well on the field; more like, can I master the f—ing cage today? Can I square the ball up? Can I execute the drill in the cage and then go play in the game? As opposed to, I need to go 4-for-4 tonight with two doubles and a homer. I’m gonna be the best hitter before the game in the cage, and then I’m gonna go out and just try and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.”
Bregman had found his greatest success when he followed a few cues: load slowly, take the bat’s knob past the ball in front of the plate and strike the inside part of the ball. Finding that simplicity in his purpose and swing would be the goals. He did not need to set specific production expectations, instead trusting process over outcome. He would fix the swing in time for the numbers to reflect it. When the ball started jumping off Bregman’s bat again, he knew he had hacked himself successfully. His average exit velocity over the first seven regular-season weeks with the Red Sox jumped by 3 mph. His hard-hit rate spiked to 48.5% — up eight percentage points over his previous career high. He is hitting .304./381/.567 with 10 home runs and 32 RBIs in 43 games.
“Honestly,” Bregman said, “I feel like this has been the best I’ve hit in my career.”
Bregman’s desire for improvement does not begin and end with himself. When he recently overheard Fatse and Ceddanne Rafaela, the Red Sox’s talented 24-year-old super-utility man, talking about ways to improve Rafaela’s poor swing decisions, he couldn’t help but chime in.
“We were talking about simplicity of the load, and [Bregman] just goes, ‘One, two,'” Fatse said. “One, be ready to hit. Two, be in a position to get your swing off. And it was amazing. It just clicked. In the dugout, we’ll scream: ‘one, two.’ Rafa’s walking up plate: ‘one, two, one, two.’ [Bregman] will be screaming it from the dugout, and it’s simple, but it’s his ability to connect with everybody that makes him a unicorn in that regard. He cares so much about his teammates. He wants to win.
“It’s just the urgency behind it,” Fatse continued. “If he has something, he’s going to go right to you and give it to you. And whether it’s something with his swing or if we’re talking about somebody else’s approach or swing or matchup-related stuff, he’s ready to engage in the conversation immediately. There’s no waiting around. When you have that level of urgency, everybody responds to it.”
In much the same way that his advice has rejuvenated Rafaela — who has four two-hit games in his past eight and has struck out only twice — Bregman’s arrival has changed the Boston clubhouse by bringing to it an edge that left with the 2019 retirement of Dustin Pedroia, the second baseman who was every bit the heart of the Red Sox’s three most recent championships as David Ortiz. Bregman grew up idolizing Pedroia for his outsized production from an undersized body. He was unaware of the other qualities they share: the encyclopedic knowledge of the game, the capacity to evoke fits of uproarious laughter at team dinners, the desire to help others find the best version of themselves the same way he did.
“Everyone understands [Bregman’s] process is just to win that game and he’ll do whatever it takes that day or night to win,” Red Sox outfielder Rob Refsnyder said. “He’ll adjust his swing, his setup, his thoughts, his scouting, everything. It’s all about just winning that game. I think guys are a lot more receptive to him, and obviously he’s a winner and he works so hard. It’s easy to take advice from somebody like that because you know it’s from a genuine, we’re-just-trying-to-win-this-game [perspective].”
Winning comes in plenty of forms, be it a 5-for-5, two-homer day or an 0-for-4 bummer in which Bregman does the work with his glove or legs. By now, his teammates know that no matter how early they show up to the ballpark, Bregman will be there first, his white pants already on, ready to attack the day. He’s always happy to pore over information and develop a detailed scouting report, Crochet said, “based off of analytics, video, prior at-bats. For him, it’s really a happy medium of all three. I feel like he’s able to get on TruMedia — that’s our site with all the pitch-usage breakdown by count and pitch-frequency maps — and window a guy or sit on a specific pitch, specific spot. It’s incredibly impressive.”
The Red Sox aren’t taking for granted the time they get with Bregman. As much as they’ve loved the knowledge and production, they recognize that a seasonlong jag almost certainly will precipitate him opting out of his contract. Bregman now knows he can replicate for other teams what he developed in Houston, where he was lionized by local fans amid the festering fallout of the cheating scandal in 29 other stadiums.
If this does wind up as a Boston gap year, a la Adrian Beltre, Bregman’s influence will continue to reverberate. He did spend time marinating with Anthony and Mayer — and also bought them, and a host of other top Red Sox prospects, tailored suits to help them feel comfortable in a major league setting. By Bregman’s second week with the Red Sox, the kids were already giving him grief, wondering aloud if he had gray pants in his spring training locker — an implication that he’s too big-time to travel for a Grapefruit League road game. Never one to be told what he is or isn’t, Bregman went for a 90-minute bus ride with Anthony and Mayer from Fort Myers to Sarasota.
Bregman’s connection to the Red Sox is generational. His grandfather was the general counsel for the Washington Senators and helped hire Ted Williams, who spent the entirety of his 19-year Hall of Fame playing career with Boston, as their manager. His father, Sam — currently running for governor in New Mexico — grew up around the Senators and Williams. And it sparked a fondness for baseball he passed on to his son.
The allure of Boston that helped guide Bregman to the Red Sox — familial and modern — has been substantiated in every way but their record, which, at 22-22, is good enough for second place in the American League East but would leave Bregman on the outside looking in at the postseason for the first time in a full season spent in the big leagues. Boston has plenty of time to right itself, which would be the final validation for Bregman on his stay in Boston, however long it lasts.
“I felt like it was a place I could win,” Bregman said. “I felt like it was a place where I could prove the caliber a player that I believe I am. And I wasn’t scared to go prove it.”
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The Boston Red Sox placed right-hander Tanner Houck on the 15-day injured list Wednesday because of a flexor pronator strain in his right forearm.
The move is retroactive to Tuesday. In a corresponding move, the Red Sox recalled right-hander Cooper Criswell from Triple-A Worcester.
Houck yielded 11 runs, nine hits (including two home runs) and three walks in 2 1/3 innings Monday night in a 14-2 loss at Detroit.
“This is definitely probably the most lost I’ve ever been,” Houck, 28, said after the game. “And just not getting the job done, which weighs on me heavily.”
Asked about his health, Houck said, “Physically, I feel good,” and added, “I just need to be better.”
Houck is 0-3 with an 8.04 ERA, 17 walks, 32 strikeouts, an America League-high 57 hits allowed and a major league-worst 39 earned runs in 43 2/3 innings over nine starts this season.
An All-Star in 2024, Houck owns a career 24-32 record with nine saves, a 3.97 ERA, 158 walks and 449 strikeouts in 474 1/3 innings over 113 regular-season games (80 starts) since 2020.
The Red Sox selected Houck 24th overall in the 2017 MLB draft out of the University of Missouri.
Criswell, 28, is 0-0 with one save, a 10.38 ERA, one walk and no strikeouts in 4 1/3 innings over three relief appearances this season. For his career, he is 7-7 with one save, a 4.78 ERA, 44 walks and 104 strikeouts in 141 1/3 innings over 41 games (20 starts) for the Los Angeles Angels (2021), Tampa Bay Rays (2022-23) and Red Sox (2024-present).
SAN DIEGO — Hard-throwing reliever Ben Joyce will miss the rest of the Los Angeles Angels‘ season after undergoing surgery on his right shoulder.
The Angels announced the setback Wednesday for Joyce, who went on the injured list a month ago with inflammation in his throwing shoulder.
The team declined to provide any specifics about the nature of the latest injury and surgery for the 6-foot-5 Joyce, who can throw a 105 mph fastball when healthy.
Joyce is in his third season with the Angels after making his major league debut two years ago. After being limited by injuries in 2023, he made 31 appearances for Los Angeles last season, posting a 2.08 ERA and showing promise as a setup man and an eventual closer.
He also threw a 105.5 mph fastball last September against the Dodgers’ Tommy Edman. The pitch was the third-fastest recorded in the majors since 2008.
But Joyce went on the injured list a week after throwing that pitch, and he made just five appearances this season before going on the list again after a downtick in his velocity. The Angels transferred him to the 60-day disabled list last week, raising alarms about another major injury setback.
Joyce has made 48 career appearances for the Angels, going 4-1 with a 3.12 ERA and a 1.31 WHIP.
Joyce had Tommy John surgery during his college career at Tennessee, but he threw a 105 mph fastball when he returned from injury. He also missed a season of junior college play prior to joining the Volunteers due to a stress fracture in his elbow.
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