Marlins Bringing Back Fredi Gonzalez? How Rare Is That?

Do The Marlins Have A History Of Doing This? 

Kind of.

When you look at the list of former Marlins managers, you actually get two repeat performances. And if you want to be cute, and count Mike Redmond’s playing career, we can bump it up to three.

Jack Mckeon is the obvious name here. After the most successful three year stretch ever put up by a Marlins manager, Trader Jack retired. Six years later, he returned to finish out the year after Fredi Gonzalez’s replacement Edwin Rodriguez quit just over two months into the 2011 season.

The more obscure reference would be John Boles, who took over for original manager Rene Lacheman on an interim basis in 1996, and then went back to his scouting position. He reclaimed the manager job in 1999, only to be fired in 2001 after another nasty exchange between an obnoxious player and management. Boles’ situation was actually a pretty eerie parallel for Redmond’s: fired because of unreasonably elevated expectations after an awesome boost in performance the prior season.

Ozzie Guillen was McKeon’s third base coach in 2003. Perry Hill had two stints with the club. Two of the three coaches that were just fired previously played for the team, although counting playing time is a bit ludicrous as many teams bring back former players to coach. But the Marlins do have a history of hiring their own, particularly since Jeffrey Loria took over as owner in 2002.

But of all of those names, none of them were fired prior to that second hiring. That would be a unique to Fredi milestone.