Dave Roberts to be named new Dodgers manager

The Los Angeles Dodgers will announce Dave Roberts as the first minority manager in franchise history on Monday, finalizing a deal with their former outfielder. His father is black and his mother is Japanese.

It is, frankly, unbelievable that it took this long, or that the choice between finalists Roberts – a major league coach for five seasons and the Padres’ bench coach for the last two – and Gabe Kapler wasn’t obvious way before this.

He’ll replace Don Mattingly and an inherit a team that’s averaged 93 wins over the past three years but has just one NLCS appearance and no titles.

“We could not have been more impressed with him through this process”, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said in a statement. He is a “baseball man” and “people person” in the truest sense of those words. And while his intelligence and baseball acumen is undisputed, his philosophies tend to be extreme-from his ideas about testicular sun tanning to his preaching to young hitters in the Dodgers farm system that exit velocity is the only stat that matters. As a bench player with the Giants for most of 2008, Roberts had plenty of chances to pick the brain of Bochy, a likely future Hall of Famer with whom he’ll now match wits. He is now the third base coach for the San Diego Padres.

Like Mattingly before him, the new manager probably will receive guidance from the front office on everything from lineup to bullpen decisions. Over the course of his career, Roberts established himself as a skilled defender and elite base-runner.

The Dodgers haven’t appeared in the World Series since winning the title in 1988.

Roberts has spent the last four years as an assistant coach for the San Diego Padres under manager Bud Black who was also a final candidate for the Dodgers coaching vacancy.

After all, Roberts has been first in the heart of Red Sox fans since, after coming from the Dodgers the same day Nomar Garciaparra left in July of 2004, he stole second base in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the ALCS on October 17, 2004. That year, the Red Sox were down three games to none in the series, and the score was 4-3 in favor of rival New York Yankees.

He became an established player with the Dodgers, who acquired him before the 2002 season. Boston went on to win the World Series, their first such win in 86 years, and the rest is history.

Roberts is tasked with quickly gaining the players’ respect and becoming a better tactile manager than Mattingly.

In 2010, Roberts survived a battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Roberts came to the Dodgers with minimal expectations – he had played the majority of his previous three seasons with the triple-A affiliate of the Indians.