Lynn Henning dined with the Tigers' new manager this week and comes away with impressions of Brad Ausmus as a shrewd baseball vet, careful not to step on predecessor Jim Leyland's legacy -- yet.
His personality is amiable but low-key. His baseball knowledge is intricate. His thoughts are spiced by an effortless wit that isn’t overdone. He does not try and impress you with a mind that is high-horsepower.
I had not seen him in 13 years, not since his last season with the Tigers. He looks about the same at 43 as he looked at 30. Genetics have been kind to him.
The setting for lunch with a half-dozen writers was a winter meeting for managers and media in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
"The Ausmus inaugural promises to be fascinating theater," Henning predicts. "Things will be different," though Ausmus is understandably mum about strategies and tactics .
He did not pretend to have answers about players and about a team he can’t begin to forge until spring camp convenes in seven weeks. He did not offer a single “we’ll do it this way” phrase or sentence that would signal a change from the Leyland administration.
The take-it-slow tone was as necessary as it was shrewd. He can’t be sure how his batting order will shake out, or how his bullpen will align, or what he will be able to do with baserunners. Not until personnel are determined and situations arrive can he offer much insight.
Nor will he insult Leyland’s skills and legacy by playing to the crowd when he has yet to manage a single big-league game. Fans expect there to be a distinction between Leyland’s ways and Ausmus’ lever-pulling. Some of Comerica’s customers are itching for Ausmus to show that the Marlboro Man was an anachronism of old-school thought and antiquated habits.
Ausmus, though, knows baseball strategy isn’t so much a matter of imagination as it is a product of your roster. Yes, he will run more than Leyland’s teams did — all because Rajai Davis and Ian Kinsler are in the lineup and Prince Fielder is gone.
