Next step: Somerset graduate settling in as Cleveland Guardians bench coach

Craig Albernaz didn't get the managerial job with the Cleveland Guardians. He did end up with the next best thing.

The Somerset High School graduate even received a promotion before he ever put on a Guardians uniform. Early last November, Albernaz was hired as the team's field coordinator. Mid-November, bench coach DeMarlo Hale, interim manager for the last 63 games of the 2023 season, left Cleveland to become associate manager with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Stephen Vogt, Cleveland's newly-hired manager and successor to Terry Francona, wasted little time in bumping his friend Albernaz, 41, to bench coach, the person second in command on the field.

Albernaz is one-third of Greater Fall River's non-playing Big 3 in Major League Baseball. Brandon Gomes, the Dodgers executive vice-president and general manager, is a B.M.C. Durfee High School graduate, while Joseph Case High School graduate Tom Tanous is the New York Mets' vice president, amateur and international scouting.

"It blows my mind,“ said Albernaz, a close friend of Gomes and a former American Legion Baseball and Tampa Bay Rays minor league teammate of the Dodgers' executive. "I dreamed of getting to the next level. As a player, I got to Triple A. When I started coaching, I just wanted to be a great coach where I was at."

Albernaz's coaching climb to the big leagues has very much paralelled Gomes' front office rise. Both finished playing professional ball (Gomes pitched in the majors for parts of five seasons) in 2015 and quickly climbed their respective second-career ladders. Albernaz started as a coach with Tampa's Appalachian League affiliate.

By 2017, he was managing in the New York-Penn League and in 2018 he was named the Midwest League's manager of the year for the job he did with Bowling Green. In 2019, he was Tampa's minor league field coordinator, and in December of that year, he made it to the big time as manager Gabe Kapler's bullpen/catchers coach with the San Francisco Giants.

Both Gomes and Albernaz have had close working relationships with Kapler, who played on the Red Sox's 2004 Reverse-the-Curse World Series championship team.

As the then Dodgers' director of player development, Kapler was Gomes' boss when Gomes started his second career, as Los Angeles' pitching coordinator of performance. Late in 2017, Gomes succeeded Kapler as director of player development when Kapler left to manage the Phillies. Kapler last September was fired after four seasons as Giants manager, all four with Albernaz as one of his most trusted coaches.

Describing himself as loyal to Kapler, Albernaz, also desiring to find work closer to his home 30 minutes north of Philadelphia, chose not to sign a contract extension with the Giants, and instead essentially became a free agent coach/prospective manager. He did not do so recklessly, as events of the near future proved.

Albernaz said he was offered a chance to try for the Giants' managerial spot but he did not want a "'token inteview.' I knew they wanted (Bob) Melvin."

Well respected within Major League Baseball, Albernaz was a serious candidate for the vacant managerial position in Cleveland.

He said he had four Zoom meetings with Cleveland, each an hour-and-a-half long, with 20-25 people sitting in on them. Next, he was called to Cleveland for a day of face-to-face meetings, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

"I was in the running,“ he said.

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Albernaz said that when Chris Antonetti, Cleveland's president of baseball operations, called to say he was not the choice for manager, he did say the Guardians were still interested in him. Soon after, Vogt called to offer the director of field operations position, punctuating his offer, Albernaz recalled, with, "Let's make this happen."

Albernaz said he did not immediately say yes. He said he had offers from Detroit (field coordinator/catchers) and Tampa (specifics to be determined) as well as interest from Boston (specifics TBD).

Vogt and Albernaz, both catchers, had been in the Tampa player development organization together and they played a season together. Their wives are friendly, same with their children. Albernaz has worked at Vogt's off-season catchers camp in Olympia, Wash. Cleveland is just a one-hour flight from Philly, affording Albernaz far more in-season time with wife Genevieve, sons C.J., 7, and Norman, 4, and baby girl Genevieve Elizabeth, 5 months. Living the challenging life as a professional baseball wife, Genevieve receives highest honors from her husband. "She's a rock star," he said.

It didn't take Albernaz and Genevieve long to determine that Cleveland was the best fit. Albernaz said he called Vogt back that very night to say yes.

While bullpen coaches generally operate out of the bullpen during games, Albernaz comes into the Cleveland bench coach position with extensive major league dugout experience. He said that over his last season-and-a-half with the Giants, he was stationed during games in the Giants dugout where he had input conerning in-game moves like pitching changes and pinch-hitting. He loved being able to talk to the catchers between innings.

Albernaz said he sat in on meetings with Kapler and bench coach Kai Correa.

"I'm just a by-product of the people I've been around and exposed to," Albernaz said.

Vogt, Albernaz said, wants him as a sounding board to bounce idea off, as a suggestion maker, as a helper in dealing with the front office, the media, agents, and more.

As anxious as he is for spring training an starting to pour his baseball guts into the Guardians, Albernaz throughy enjoyed returning to Somerset — and making a few trips over the Taunton River estuary — to see family and friends during the recent holiday season. While the local chow didn't bring him back home, it surely made the visit even tastier. Albernaz excitedly rattled off his Greater Fall River affordable restaurant all-star team. Marzilli's. Sam's Bakery. Savas Pizza. O'Gils. China Lake. Mesa 21. Some establishments received multiple visits. The Albernaz family likely returned to Philly a few pounds heavier.

Albernaz is a big fan of the chource pizza and the chourice and chip grinders at Savas, in Somerset, and his boys, he said, have inherited and/or developed his taste buds.

"We crushed Savas," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Craig Albernaz continues journey in Major League Baseball