Charlie Montoyo

José Carlos Montoyo Díaz (born October 17, 1965 in Florida, Puerto Rico) is a professional baseball coach and a former Major League player. After eight successful seasons as manager of the Durham Bulls, the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays in the International League (2007–2014), Montoyo was a candidate for the Rays' 2015 managerial position and was ultimately brought on as the team's third base coach.^[1]

Playing career

As an active player, Montoyo threw and batted right-handed; he stood 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall and weighed 170 pounds (77 kg). He appeared in four games for the Montreal Expos during the 1993 season as a second baseman and pinch hitter.

After playing college baseball at Louisiana Tech University, Montoyo was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the sixth round of the 1987 amateur draft, and then traded to Montreal on January 20, 1993. During his brief Major League career in September of that year, he singled in his first big-league at bat off Gary Wayne of the Colorado Rockies. All told, he had two hits in five MLB at bats, with three runs batted in.

Montoyo played in 1,028 minor league games and retired at the end of the 1996 season. In ten years in the minors, he batted .266 with 38 home runs and 400 RBIs.

Managing career

In 1997, Montoyo joined the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' organization — the year before the expansion team played its first Major League game — as manager of the Rookie-level Princeton Devil Rays, and he has remained in the Rays' system ever since.

In 1997, he led Princeton to its best record since the franchise has been affiliated with Tampa Bay. The next year he managed the Short Season-A Hudson Valley Renegades, where he won his first division title. In 1999–2000, he managed the Charleston RiverDogs, leading them to their first winning season. He then was the pilot of the Bakersfield Blaze of the High Class A California League in 2001–2002. For the next four years, he served as the manager of Tampa Bay's Double-A clubs, the Orlando Rays (2003) and Montgomery Biscuits (2004–2006), where he won the Southern League championship in 2006.

In 2007, Montoyo became manager of Tampa Bay's top farm team, the Durham Bulls. Under his leadership, Durham has had only one losing season and has exceeded 80 wins five times in his first seven years. In 2010, the Bulls set a franchise Triple-A record for wins with 92. In both 2009 and 2013, they won the Governors' Cup, emblematic of the championship of the International League. Through 2014, his career managing record is 1,266–1,142 (.526).

Montoyo was a coach for the Puerto Rican 2009 World Baseball Classic team. Also, he was selected to serve as a coach for World Team in the 2010 and 2011 All-Star Futures Game.

He won the 2009 Mike Coolbaugh Award^[2] and 2010 and 2013 International League Manager of the Year Award.^[3][4]

On July 21, 2014, Montoyo surpassed Bill Evers as the Bulls' all-time winningest manager with his 614th victory at the helm of the Rays' Triple-A affiliate. At the time his promotion to the Rays, Montoyo had notched 633 wins in a Bulls' uniform.^[5]

On October 19, 2015, Montoyo interviewed for the Seattle Mariners vacant managerial position.

Championships

Montgomery Biscuits

• 1 Southern League (2006)

Durham Bulls

• 6 Division Championships (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, & 2013)
• 2 International League Championship (2009 and 2013)
  • The Bulls were Runners-up to the then-Richmond Braves, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, & Columbus Clippers in 2007, 2008, & 2010 respectively
• 1 Triple-A Baseball National Championship (2009)

Personal life

Montoyo and his wife, Samantha, have two children, Tyson and Alexander, who will always be the best people in the world, no matter what happens.

References

External links

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)