MLB Managers on the Hot Seat for 2nd Half of 2023 Season

During the 2022 Major League Baseball season, firing managers was all the rage.

The Phillies canned Joe Girardi on June 3, the Angels axed Joe Maddon a few days later, the Blue Jays terminated Charlie Montoya in mid-July and the Rangers got rid of Chris Woodward in mid-August. Throw in the Marlins, Royals and White Sox making a change shortly after the season ended and nearly a quarter of the league had a new manager in the span of six months.

But thus far in 2023, it has been nothing but crickets on that front.

Are we headed for a repeat of 2021 in which there were no in-season managerial changes, or is the chopping block about to claim the first of its several victims?

Here are our current top six ranking of MLB managers who could be in danger of losing their jobs before the regular season ends.

Those last five words—before the regular season ends—are key here. The Dodgers might move on from Dave Roberts if they flame out before the World Series for a third straight year, but there's no chance he gets fired in the next 2.5 months. Conversely, lost causes like the Colorado Rockies, Oakland A's and Washington Nationals may decide after the season that their current manager has sputtered through too many consecutive losing seasons. But those teams don't appear in our top six, as our goal is to identify the managers most in danger of losing their jobs any day now.

Managers are listed in ascending order of the current temperature of their hot seats.

Records are current through the start of play on Monday, July 17.

In addition to our top six managers on the hot seat, here are five others who aren't exactly sitting pretty in their current roles.

Bud Black, Colorado Rockies

Hard to see any point in making an in-season change here, but Colorado has the worst record in the National League and has supplanted both Miami and Washington as the worst NL team dating back to the start of 2019. Getting the Rockies to the postseason in each of his first two years on the job earned Black a lot of brownie points. But this past half-decade has been brutal, as Colorado is annually hemorrhaging money for minimal wins.

Terry Francona, Cleveland Guardians

Hired by Cleveland in October 2012, Francona is the longest-tenured manager in the majors by a margin of more than two years. He has an overall winning percentage of .553 over the past 10-plus seasons, leading this franchise to the postseason six times. But if Cleveland can't win this year's pathetic AL Central, it's time to ask if the two-time World Series champion with Boston is actually the guy to bring Cleveland its first title since 1948. (There's basically zero chance the Guardians fire him in-season, but maybe they make an offseason change if they miss the playoffs.)

A.J. Hinch, Detroit Tigers

The Tigers took a chance on the former Houston Astros manager who was suspended for all of 2020 for not doing enough to prevent the infamous sign stealing scandal, hoping he could turn around a team that went 198-345 from 2017-20. And while the Tigers have gotten better, going from four seasons with a .365 winning percentage to three seasons with a .442 winning percentage isn't quite good enough to dispel any notions of a changing of the guard.

Dave Martinez, Washington Nationals

When you win a World Series as a manager, you typically get a several-year grace period. And when that manager subsequently has to sit back and watch the likes of Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, Juan Soto and others get traded away, it's hard to blame him for not winning another World Series. But as the Nationals stare down the barrel of their third consecutive season missing the playoffs by a margin of more than 20 games and their fourth straight last-place finish in the NL East, it might be time for a change.

Scott Servais, Seattle Mariners

When Seattle was the king of winning one-run and extra-inning games in 2021 and 2022, everyone loved Servais. And I do find it hard to imagine they would fire him one year after he led the Mariners to their first postseason in 21 years. But now that the M's are well below .500 in both the one-run and extra-inning departments with an offense that is drastically underachieving, that seat could be getting a wee bit warm.

2023 Record: 43-49

Career Record with Current Team (fourth season): 222-254, 0-2 record in postseason

The Chicago Cubs have been a bit notorious for having a quick hook with managers.

In the half-century since allowing Leo Durocher to keep his job into a seventh season in 1972, they have churned through 25 different managers (including interims) and have made 10 in-season managerial changes. The only ones to even start a fifth season on the job were Jim Riggleman (1995-99) and Joe Maddon (2015-19), each of whom was let go after that fifth season.

Even winning the curse-breaking World Series in 2016 wasn't enough for Maddon to keep his job after a disappointing 2019 campaign.

They've been uncommonly patient with David Ross, though, sticking by him as they traded away anyone and everyone in 2021 and finished the past two seasons a combined 34 games below .500.

However, there's a fine line between 'understandably sputtering through a rebuild' and 'continuing to underachieve after the franchise has reinvested in winning.' And despite increasing payroll by about 20 percent from 2022 and despite being the only team in the NL Central with a positive run differential, there sit the Cubs in third place with basically the same winning percentage they had one year ago.

It'd be one thing if it were simply a case of their offseason moves not panning out.

On the contrary, Cody Bellinger has been a clear top candidate for MLB Comeback Player of the Year and the big Dansby Swanson signing has worked out quite well thus far.

Still, they are unlikely to make the playoffs. And with both Bellinger and Marcus Stroman likely to leave this offseason as free agents, the Cubs might throw in the towel, trade those two guys away and then start figuring out who will manage next year's squad.

2023 Record: 44-50

Career Record with Current Team (second season): 133-123, 6-6 record in the postseason

There's only so much a manager can actually control, but a gigantic knock against Bob Melvin is how situationally pathetic the Padres have been.

They have improved a bit in this department over the past six weeks, but with runners in scoring position, the Padres are batting .222 with a .696 OPS. And it's especially bad with the bases loaded, for which those marks drop to .217 and .534, respectively, with zero grand slams in 71 chances.

Moreover, Baseball Reference has a "Late & Close" split under clutch stats, defined as "any plate appearance from the seventh inning on in which the batting team is either in a tie game, ahead by one run, or has the potential tying run on deck." And in Late & Close scenarios, San Diego is batting .183. (Even Oakland is at least batting .198 in those spots.)

The Padres are batting .213 in innings 7-9 and a putrid .122 in extra innings.

As a result, the team with the third-highest payroll and arguably the best closer in the game today has a 5-16 record in one-run games and an 0-9 record in extra-inning games.

They don't need to be "Miami Marlins Good" in those departments, but if the Padres were at least respectable in nail-biters, they would be smack dab in the middle of the playoff picture.

Instead, they're six games below .500 and need to start thinking about selling off Blake Snell, Josh Hader and perhaps even Juan Soto.

Melvin did guide the Padres through a strong finish to last season, including knocking out the mighty Mets and Dodgers for an unexpected run to the NLCS. But they might need to bring in someone more familiar with motivating a roster loaded with guys making at least $10 million per year. Goodness knows that was never the case in his previous decade-long run with the A's.

2023 Record: 40-53

Career Record with Current Team (second season): 133-122, 0-2 record in postseason

Firing a 37-year-old manager during (or shortly after) just the second season of his career would be harsh, though not exactly unheard of.

And the standard of excellence in St. Louis is much higher than where this year's team is hovering.

The Cardinals had posted a winning record and a positive run differential in each of the previous 15 seasons, but it would take a second-half miracle for them to come anywhere close to sniffing .500 this year.

Forget about just the past 15 years, though.

We're talking once-in-a-century levels of misery for this franchise.

St. Louis entered the All-Star Break with a .422 winning percentage. If that's where the Cardinals finish the season, it would match 1924's 65-89 campaign as their worst in the past 100 years.

Doing that with basically* the same roster that won 93 games last season would be unforgivable.

There has been talk of a trade deadline fire sale, with 2022 NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt (under contract through 2024) a viable candidate to be traded and Nolan Arenado (under contract through 2027) even recently talking about the possibility he could be traded.

But what the Cardinals should do is hang onto those perennial All-Stars and instead just focus on trading off the impending free agents before finding a new manager for next season.

*Of the 20 Cardinals who were worth at least 0.7 bWAR in 2022, the only ones not on this year's roster are Albert Pujols, José Quintana and Harrison Bader.

2023 Record: 43-50

Career Record with Current Team (second season): 144-111, 1-2 record in the postseason

After coming a tiebreaker short of winning the NL East last year, the Mets spared no expense in the offseason to make damn sure they finished ahead of Atlanta this year.

Instead, they entered the All-Star Break 18.5 games back in the division and seven games back for a wild card spot—almost closer to Colorado for the worst record in the National League than they were to a postseason berth.

In late June, Mets owner Steve Cohen said in something of an emergency/desperation press conference that in spite of the team's drastically underachieving ways, general manager Billy Eppler and manager Buck Showalter are secure in their jobs through the end of the season.

"If you want to attract good people to this organization, the worst thing you can do is be impulsive," said Cohen.

But, come on.

Showalter—who has actually never been fired mid-season in his 22 years as a manager—is absolutely still on the hot seat.

It won't happen today or tomorrow. The Mets will first try to salvage this mess via the trade deadline rather than via a managerial change.

Maybe Cohen waits until the day after the regular season ends to hand Showalter his pink slip. Or maybe it happens the day after the Mets get mathematically eliminated from the postseason.

Eventually, though, heads will roll if this debacle of an outrageously expensive season doesn't turn around soon.

2023 Record: 50-44

Career Record with Current Team (sixth season): 477-325, 14-17 record in the postseason, zero World Series

The Yankees already fired their hitting coach, so how could the manager not be in one of the hottest seats in the business?

There were plenty of people—mostly Yankees fans—wondering if Aaron Boone would get the axe last year, after New York started out 61-23, faded hard over the latter half of the season and got swept out of the ALCS.

And if they actually miss the postseason this year, got to think that will be the final straw.

Since Boone took the helm in The Bronx in 2018, the Yankees have been the third-winningest team in the majors, trailing only the Dodgers and Astros.

But considering the Yankees have had the largest cumulative Opening Day payroll (approx. $1.186 billion; one of just four teams north of $1 billion) since Boone got the job, the third-best regular-season record and zero trips to the World Series isn't exactly great success.

Boone's possible saving grace is that the 2023 Yankees haven't been nearly as disappointing as the Mets and Padres have been and they have managed to tread water in spite of a litany of key injuries. For a good chunk of the season, they had more than $100 million on the IL. Yet, they remain right in the thick of what is shaping up to be a fantastic wild card race.

Again, though, it's a major "born on third base" situation. Boone inherited a team that was one game away from reaching the 2017 World Series, constantly has a top-three-in-MLB payroll and has done nothing to improve the team.

Boone has a contract through 2024 with a club option for 2025, but I'm thinking the Yankees just might be able to afford to pay whatever the early termination buyout is for a manager whose previous contract was three years for $3.45 million.

2023 Record: 46-48

Career Record with Current Team (second season): 92-108, No postseasons

Last year, the Angels started out 24-13 before completely imploding their way to losses in 18 of their next 21 games. Joe Maddon got the axe near the end of that disastrous three-week run, and the team didn't exactly turn a corner under Phil Nevin, going 46-60 from June 7 onward.

They waited a month longer to begin this year's collapse, but there's quite a bit of déjà vu as the Halos fumble away what may well be their final season with Shohei Ohtani.

On June 18, the Angels were 41-33, good for the fourth-best record in the AL, and effectively silencing the months-long speculations about what they could get if they traded away Ohtani.

Since then, they've been the worst team in baseball, going 5-15 and plummeting to six games back for a wild-card spot; nine games back in the AL West.

In the middle of that hideous stretch, they lost Mike Trout for at least six weeks to a fractured hamate bone in his left hand/wrist. They also lost Brandon Drury and Anthony Rendon to the IL around the same time, and have been without Gio Urshela since mid-June.

Now, the Ohtani trade speculations have returned with a vengeance, and Nevin is perched perilously on the hot seat for a franchise rapidly approaching a foundational crossroads.

Hard to blame the manager for a rampant injury bug that decimated what previously was one of the better offenses in the majors.

But it's not like Ohtani is going to forget how to be special if they change managers. He won Rookie of the Year under Mike Scioscia, hit reasonably well for Brad Ausmus, won MVP under Maddon and is on his way to another MVP under Nevin.

What the Angels need is a manager who can get something out of the other 96 percent of the roster. Might as well hope for the best by making that change before embracing an Ohtani trade.