A's Extend Showalter

Post date: Jul 21, 2010 6:17:27 PM

A's Manager Buck Showalter at press conference announcing his new 5-year contract extension on Wednesday

GM Matt Veasey announced this afternoon that the club has agreed to a 5-year contract extension with manager Buck Showalter. The contract kicks in next season and will run through the 2015 season of play. This is the 3rd contract for Showalter. Originally signed to a 3-year deal beginning in 2005, Buck signed another 3-year deal for the 2008 season and won a WFBL Championship in that first year of the deal.

Including the current 2010 season, the 54-year old Showalter has led the A's to a 85-38-2 record in his 6+ years at the helm, including Owens/East pennants from 2005-2007 and a WFBL Championship in 2008. Despite the fact that the A's have not won a pennant in the highly competitive Owens/East division since 2007, and what has been a struggling season thus far in 2010, there was never a question of "if" Showalter would be invited back, just of "when" the deal would get done.

"It was really just a matter of timing" said Veasey. "I've talked with Buck about this for months, and we were going to do it in the off-season. Maybe the term in length was the biggest hold up. But with the club struggling there has just been too much distracting discussion of the contract in the media. This will end one distraction at least."

For his part, Showalter seemed happy to get it over with. "Some of the players have asked me about things in the last few weeks" said Showalter. "I was never worried about it, the relationship between Mr. Veasey and myself is and always has been outstanding. But maybe this will settle a few things down with you guys in the press, and it sends a good message to the team as well."

The A's are currently sitting with a 9-6 record and involved in an eastern playoff dogfight. They are tied with both Boston and Brantford, just one game ahead of New York. There will likely be no pennant chase this year as the club is 3 games behind division leading Montreal with just 7 weeks left to play, already having lost to the Expos once earlier in the season.

"This has been a somewhat frustrating year from a Majors perspective for our fans, we understand that" admitted the GM. "Buck and I discussed jointly that we wanted to begin moving the club in a certain direction, repositioning for the future. At the same time, we hope to still be able to take a run at the next couple of WFBL Championships."

"It's basically his job to bring in the talent to both the Majors and the Minors, and my job to win with it" said Showalter. "I think that our fans know we both have done our jobs pretty well over the years, and no one wants to win more than we do. We're doing everything we can to make this thing work now and going forward. We did a great job with the Draft last week. We have great young talent here just coming up. We have some strong veterans to lead us right now. I'm very happy with the direction this team is headed in."

They will apprently be going forward with Buck Showalter as the manager here in Philly for five more seasons after this one, and should he fulfill the balance of that deal will have managed a total of 11 seasons here in town. The team also announced that Showalter will be examining the entire coaching staff in the off-season, and there may be some changes necessary if those can improve the team's chances of winning.