Oakland Athletics Fire First Base Coach Tye Waller

The Oakland Athletics have announced that they have dismissed first base coach Tye Waller. Waller has been with the Athletics since 2006 and was also a bench coach for the A’s from 2009 – 2010. Waller also coaches the outfield.

This comes as quite a shock to the A’s community who has become accustom to seeing Waller at first base. According to Waller, he told the San Jose Mercury News that he was being let go because the team was going more “cutting edge.” This is very vague. Since his dismissal, Waller has spoken with numerous news outlets and is noticeably disappointed about being let go and is understandably a little frustrated with the explanation.

"“Waller expressed gratitude for his time with the A’s but added of his dismissal: ‘There was no real definitive explanation. That’s kind of tough when you give nine years of your life’ to a team.” – Joe Stiglich, CSN Bay Area"

Additionally, this personally confuses me since I had the opportunity to interview Waller earlier this year regarding his innovative app that has helped him and fellow coaches in a variety of ways. Waller created this app to help organize all of the baseball related data he had collected over the years in order to better and more quickly educate his players as they prepared for each game. To me, this seems pretty “cutting edge”.

However, this move does show that the team is obviously looking to go in different direction. They are truly trying to build for the future and really want to revamp the team as a whole. Basically, it is out with the old and in with the new for the Oakland Athletics.

The team has yet to announce Waller’s dismissal and there has not been any mention as to who might replace him as first base coach. The A’s are known for promoting from within when it comes to the coaching staff, so it would not be surprising for Oakland to bring up someone who is already part of the organization. All in all, we here at Swingin’ A’s wish Waller all the best in his future endeavors.

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