Guardians must act fast after MLB insider's Stephen Vogt rumor

The managerial cycle has spun out of control this year in Major League Baseball, as we're set to enter the offseason with an unprecedented 10 managerial openings. While there are some no-brainer openings like the Rockies and Orioles, there were also some unpredictable openings like the Padres and Giants. 

While the Guardians have been able to sit that out thanks to the presence of Stephen Vogt as their manager, one MLB insider recently dropped some breadcrumbs as to how Vogt is viewed across major league baseball. 

“Some teams would love to see if they can pry Stephen Vogt from Cleveland. But that rarely works,” MLB insider Jon Heyman wrote in his story for the New York Post. 

MLB insider makes it known that Stephen Vogt is a hot commodity among MLB teams

And he’s right. You don’t see many managers leave a job to head to another. While there hasn’t been a trade involving a manager in more than 20 years, Craig Counsell left the Brewers for the Cubs in 2023 for the most expensive managerial contract in MLB history. 

While Vogt’s only been a manager for two seasons, he’s already proven how successful he can be as a big league manager. He led the Guardians to back-to-back American League Central division championships, won American League Manager of the Year last season (and is the favorite to repeat again this year) and has received high marks across baseball for his ability to navigate the nuances of a major league clubhouse. 

Although the details of Vogt’s contract with the Guardians aren’t known, we got some reporting last week from cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes that makes it seem like the Guardians want to keep Vogt long-term. 

“The feeling in the Guardians’ front office is that they want Vogt, 40, to manage this team for a long time,” Hoynes wrote. 

The team’s leadership also hasn’t been shy about its admiration for Vogt, and, after Heyman's rumor, may need to act fast when it comes to an extension.

“Fast forward to this year, literally from day one of spring training, we were faced with all sorts of adversity, some of which might be in the normal course of what you could expect,” president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said, per Hoynes. “But there were a whole host of things that he and we had to navigate that were in some cases unchartered. Stephen’s steady and consistent presence and leadership was incredible. There is no way we would’ve gotten as far as we did, or won as many games as we did, without Stephen’s leadership.”

Vogt’s coaching staff took its first hit yesterday when Mets manager Carlos Mendoza poached major league coordinator Kai Correa away from Vogt’s staff to be his bench coach. 

That shouldn’t come as a surprise since Antonetti spoke in his postmortem press conference about how he felt that there could be some turnover in Guardians’ coaching staff this offseason thanks to other teams poaching their talent. Now it’s on the front office to make sure that there’s no turnover on the top step of the dugout.

Even if it’s likely too early in Vogt's managerial career for him to end up making the kind of move that Counsell did, Heyman’s report is a reminder of how quickly things can change.