Lou Piniella Is Back In Baseball

When Lou Piniella announced his retirement as Chicago Cubs manager in August of last year, many believed that Piniella would still be involved in Major League Baseball in some capacity. The expectation was that Piniella would return to the Yankees and join their front office team. There was even a chance that Piniella would return to the Chicago Cubs and take on same role as Greg Maddux currently has with the them. Needless to say, Lou Piniella is back in baseball, the only question is where?

Piniella announced today that he has signed a one year contract with the San Francisco Giants. Piniella will serve as a special consultant in the Giants front office, and report directly to Giants General Manager Brian Sabean.

That comes to a surprise to me, as I thought Piniella would have reunited with the Yankees. No one will know if the Yankees made an attempt, but you have to speculate that at some point this winter, Piniella went to Yankees and expressed interest in joining the front office.

As for the Cubs, there is no belief that Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry reached out to Piniella to see if he would like to remain with the Cubs organization. Many of the local media outlets speculated shortly after Piniella’s resigning as Cubs manager, that the Cubs may reach out to Piniella to remain with the organization in some capacity. Instead, the Cubs opted not to reunite with Piniella for the 2011 season.