One Step Closer

The Astros named Rodney Linares the sixth manager in Hooks history on December 19. He piloted the High-A Lancaster JetHawks to two California League titles in three years from 2012-2014. This summer will be Linares' ninth as a skipper in the Houston system.

Late in the 1998 season, an injured Rodney Linares was contemplating his baseball future with father Julio, a longtime minor league manager in the Houston system, and Andres Reiner, who opened the Astros Venezuelan academy in 1989.

Rodney had just undergone surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. Only one year before, he'd had the same procedure on his left knee. At 20 years old, through two minor league seasons, he played in just 39 games.

"(Andres) gave me a piece a paper and said, 'you know how the game is run, go ahead and do a (scouting) report on yourself,'" Rodney recalled. "My dad started laughing and he said, 'go ahead, do a report on yourself and you tell me if you're going to play in the big leagues.' And when I did the report I kind of figured it out really quick."

He would not play in the big leagues; in fact, he would never play another professional game. Rodney decided to alter his career path, choosing a vocation for which there are only 30 active jobs, as opposed to 750.

"My dad (told) me, 'if you start early, it's not going to be about if you played in the big leagues. You're going to end up having a lot of experience and you're probably going to end up doing whatever you want to do in the game,'" Rodney remembered. "That same day I told my dad, 'I'm going to manage in the big leagues one day.'"

+ + + + +

Rodney was born in the Bronx in August 1977. The family lived in the Dominican Republic, but with his dad away working in baseball, Rodney's pregnant mother, Damaris, went to live with her mother in New York, where they stayed until Julio was done with his season.

The elder Linares started his playing career at 18 in 1960 in the San Francisco organization, laboring for 15 seasons without a call above Triple-A. He went on to manage Houston's minor league teams, mostly in the Gulf Coast League, for 13 years with interruptions for a few different assignments, including a three-year stint as the big league club's bench coach from 1994-1996.

"I owe everything I am to my dad," Rodney said. "Growing up, he wasn't the type of dad that would push you to do things. He would always support whatever decision you wanted to make, even if he knew something else was better."

Quinton McCracken, the Astros farm director, believes there is a direct to correlation to Rodney's upbringing and his father's background.

"Rodney is a chip off the old block," McCracken, a former big leaguer, said. "It had a tremendous effect on his baseball IQ. He grew up in the game, around the game. His dad is one of the Astros icons and well-respected in the field. Rodney grew up around the game and has really taken it in."

Looking back, it seems silly to think Linares would do anything other than follow in his father's footsteps.

When the 1977 baseball season ended, Damaris took her second son back to San Pedro De Macoris, Dominican Republic - a town that has produced a disproportionate number of big leaguers, including Sammy Sosa and Robinson Cano, for a town of 185,000.

"My vacations were going to where my dad was working in the minor leagues somewhere," the younger Linares said. "That's how I grew up - playing baseball in the Dominican and most of my summers going up to the States and staying with my dad, being around baseball."

Every spring when school ended, Damaris would take her five sons - Amaury, Rodney, Erick, Brian, and Michael - to the United States, but Rodney is the only one for whom baseball stuck.

Amaury, now 39, and Brian, now 27, both played baseball a little bit, but did not sign professionally, Rodney said. Erick, the middle brother at age 35, was not as athletic; and the youngest - Michael, 25 - is more into music than sports.

Through grade school, Rodney said all the kids would go to the baseball fields every afternoon, including just about all day on Saturdays and Sundays. There was not as much structure in the Dominican then as now, with different little leagues and Major League Baseball's RBI program expanding there.

Dominican players such as George Bell and Joaquin Andujar used to sponsor the few little leagues that did exist. Rodney looked up to big league shortstops like Tony Fernandez and Rafael Ramirez, both natives of San Pedro De Macoris.

After years of modeling his game around these Dominican middle infielders, and also looking up to native Puerto Rican Roberto Alomar, Linares recognized his potential.

"When I was around 16 years old, that's when I realized I had the opportunity to play professionally and I took advantage of it," he said. "Unfortunately, right when I signed I started getting hurt. The first time I had surgery I was 17 years old."

The Tigers signed him first and he played at their academy for a couple of seasons before appearing in 25 games for their Gulf Coast League team in 1997. He was released, signed with the Astros, and played in 14 games in 1998. He hit .168 with 10 runs batted in.

Second baseman Tony Kemp, who played for Rodney in 2014 at Lancaster and is the likely Hooks second-sacker in 2015, said it doesn't necessarily matter if a skipper has reached the majors.

"Some guys will judge a manager because he hasn't been there, but (Rodney) is a different breed," Kemp said. "He's a different caliber of manager. He understands the game inside and out."

+ + + + +

Linares served as a scout and hitting coach at the Astros academy in the Dominican from 1999 to 2004, before he earned a job tutoring hitters at Class-A Lexington in 2005 and 2006.

His first managerial assignment came a year later for the rookie level Greeneville Astros in 2007. In the midst of 17-51 season that "still haunts him to this day," Linares considered quitting.

"I thought about not doing it again. I thought about going back and being a hitting coach. But I had that support system, not only from my coaches, but my wife, my family, my mom and dad."

His support system has always been strong - from growing up with a father who managed in the minors for 13 years, to the nurturing relationships he has developed with players and coaches.

He wanted to make the team better and beat himself up over it. That season Linares lived in a house with Greeneville pitching coach Bill Ballou, who had already spent a dozen seasons as a minor league coach and told Linares that the talent on that team was scarce.

Ballou told him: "For the amount of work you put in, if they're not getting better, they're not going to get better."

The young skipper followed his first campaign with two more losing seasons at Greeneville, but in the five subsequent seasons with Class-A Lexington and High-A Lancaster posted at least a .500 winning percentage four times.

Linares sprinkled in a year with the Arizona Fall League and another with the Dominican Winter League, and in the process, he learned how to balance winning with development.

"The kids feed off his calm, easygoing presence," McCracken said. "He's a player's manager, but in the same sense when it comes time to hold kids accountable he does it with a stern hand. I think the kids respect it, because in order to get respect, you've got to give respect."

"He knows how to handle a team, he knows how to win, he knows what it takes to be successful," Kemp said. "That's why I think he's a really good manager."

"Winning and development go hand in hand," Linares said. "I'm not going to sacrifice a prospect going out there and throwing X number of pitches just because we can whip this team if he's out there. I'm not going to sacrifice a player's at-bat because this kid can't handle the pressure. You know what? If he can't handle the pressure, then he can't play the game.

"I don't think you sacrifice a kid's health to win a game. I don't think you sacrifice a kid's mental side of it to win a game. If you do the right things and you play the game the right way and you have the right amount of talent, you're going to win games."

The JetHawks had the right amount of talent the last three seasons, including several future Hooks standouts like Delino DeShields, Jr., Mike Foltynewicz, Josh Hader, Enrique Hernandez, David Martinez, Domingo Santana, Tommy Shirley, George Springer and Preston Tucker. The group won two California League titles in three seasons and reached the division finals in the third.

+ + + + +

Reflecting on his journey from a 17-year-old signee to a 37-year-old Double-A manager, Linares remembered a conversation he had with wife Rosanna early in his managing career.

"I told her I wanted to manage in Winter Ball and I wanted to be the youngest to do it." Check. Estrellas de Oriente. 2009. Age 31.

"I told her I wanted to do the (Arizona) Fall League." Check. Mesa Solar Sox. 2012. Age 34.

"I told her, I wanted to win a championship in the minor leagues" Check, check. Lancaster JetHawks. 2012 and 2014. Ages 34 and 36.

"I told her there's a couple of other goals, but the main one is I want to manage in the big leagues. I don't want to get to the big leagues, I want to manage in the big leagues."

In 2015, he's up from High-A Lancaster to Double-A Corpus Christi. One step closer to fulfilling the goal he laid out in that 1998 conversation with his father.