The Milwaukee Brewers fired manager Ned Yost on Monday with the team mired in a late-season slump that has jeopardized their chances of making the Major League Baseball playoffs for the first time since 1982.
Third-base coach Dale Sveum will become interim manager for the remainder of the season.
The Brewers share the National League wild-card lead with Philadelphia despite losing 11 of 14 this month, including seven of their last eight.
Milwaukee didn’t play on Monday.
It marked the first time in MLB history — except the strike-split 1981 season — that a manager was fired in August or later with his team in playoff position, the Elias Sports Bureau said.
With an 83-67 record, the Brewers have just 12 games to rebound.
“[Yost] didn’t have all the answers for what is going on the last two weeks and I’m not sure I have all the answers,” general manager Doug Melvin said during a news conference at a hotel in Chicago. “I’m not sure this is the right one, either.”
Melvin met with principal owner Mark Attanasio on Monday and they agreed to fire Yost. Melvin acknowledged it was an unpredecented move but one that “shows we’re serious about winning.”
“We just felt a managerial change at least gives us a chance to see if we can turn it around,” he said.
Milwaukee are hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s collapse.
The Brewers held an eight and a half game lead in late June before sliding to 83-79 and missing the playoffs.
The Brewers kept up their playoff push even longer this season, boosted when they made a big splash on July 7 by getting ace CC Sabathia from Cleveland.
Sabathia, the reigning American League pitcher of the year, was 9-0 in 13 starts with six complete games and a 1.59 ERA.
Yost was in his sixth season as the Brewers’ manager. When Milwaukee hired him from the Atlanta Braves after the 2002 season, the team was in the midst of four straight seasons with 94 losses or more.
But the next three seasons resulted in records of 81-81, 75-87 and 83-79, a marked improvement for a franchise that hadn’t had a winning record since 1992.
The California-born Yost spent 12 years on the Braves’ coaching staff with Bobby Cox, and Atlanta won division titles every year Yost was there except for the strike-shortened 1994 season.
Yost briefly enjoyed a second career as a taxidermist in between his playing days and coaching days.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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