Mavericks in market for new head coach for fourth straight season

By Medicine Hat News on September 28, 2019.

The Medicine Hat Mavericks will have a new head coach for the fourth year in a row in 2020.

Owner and general manager Greg Morrison confirmed that Tom Vessella has opted not to return after one season as the team’s on-field manager.

“It’s kind of the nature of the beast,” said Morrison, who’s been busy combing over resumes of prospective replacements this past week. “Tom, his brother lives in Royal Oaks, Mich. They’re getting a brand new college summer team, he said he’s going to live with his brother.”

Vessella and the Mavs got off to a slow start this summer but rallied to finish with a 30-26 regular season record. They then fell to Lethbridge in the first round of playoffs.

It was hardly a bad showing in the Western Canadian Baseball League’s first 56-game regular season, up from 48 when the Mavs won the league title in 2018. But the summer collegiate scene is hardly full of long-term commitments and the team is lucky to get a half-dozen players returning from one year to the next.

“I keep thinking it’s all going to get easier, but it’s not,” said Morrison, who bought the team a decade ago and served as its head coach for four years before starting to hire one. “It’s part of what the gig is, players, managers… even the front office staff I don’t know how many we’ll be able to get back because they’re college students.

“We try to get good at hiring and training, that’s really our thing.”

Morrison is setting the stage for a couple longer-term employees, however, having hired on graduated local player Nolan Rattai as assistant general manager and coach. The duo pored over nearly 40 resumes for the new coaching job and figure to have one picked as soon as next week.

“He’ll be coming to the (league) AGM, he’s going to be the alternate governor,” Morrison said of Rattai. “This is the guy that if I get hit by a bus or the Yankees call me to be GM and president, he could be the dude in a couple years.”

Also returning as assistant coach is another ex-Mav, Jared Libke. Fehlandt Lentini won’t return, however, opting to stay home in California after two summers in the Gas City.

Prior to Vessella, Andrew Murphy coached the 2017 league champs, Mike Thompson spent the summer in 2017 and Taylor Bratton was the 2016 field manager. Adam Shorsher is the only manager since Morrison to last more than a season, lasting both the 2014 (championship) and 2015 seasons.

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