The Peninsula Oilers are excited to announce the hiring of Dan Lemon and Jake Silverman to the 2010 coaching staff
The Peninsula Oilers are excited to announce the hiring of Dan Lemon and Jake Silverman to the 2010 coaching staff, Oilers General Manager Shawn Maltby and Head Coach Dennis Machado announced Monday.
Lemon and Silverman replace former Oilers assistant coach Bobby Brown, who coached with Machado last season. Brown accepted the managerial job for the Las Cruces Vaquero’s of the Continental Baseball League, an Independent Professional League.
“We are extremely excited for Bob,” said Maltby of his departing assistant. “Being a manager in professional baseball has always been his goal. There is no doubt that he will be successful and continue moving up the ranks in pro ball.
“Bob will still be involved with the Oilers as we navigate our way into the season and onto Wichita in some capacity.”
Lemon joins the Oilers staff from Stockdale High School in Bakersfield, Calif., where he has been one of the most successful high school coaches in the state for the past 20 years. His teams have been crowned Southwest Yosemite League Champions eight times, CIF Central Section Championships in back-to-back years (2008 and 2009) and he has been voted Coach of the Year four times. Lemon has professional coaching experience having been an assistant coach for League Champion Nashua Pride (2007) with former Red Sox Manager Butch Hobson and also spent time as a scout with the Toronto Blue Jays.
“Dan Lemon is a great coach whose experience and knowledge of the game will be a great benefit to the Oilers,” said Machado. “Like Bob, ‘Lem’ is an outstanding tactician of the swing and I look forward to seeing him work with our hitters this year.”
Rounding out the Oilers staff in 2010 will be Cal State Fullerton graduate assistant Jake Silverman. Silverman was a catcher at Fullerton Community College and Cal State Fullerton. After completing his collegiate career in 2008, Jake immediately joined the coaching staff at CSUF and is now entering his second year as a member of the Titans’ staff.
“Jake brings a work ethic and intensity that our players will feed off of,” said Machado. “He comes from one of the top programs in the country and works with some of the most respected coaches in college baseball. Jake will work with our catchers as well as run our defense during the season.
“I am looking forward to working with these guys this summer,” Maltby added. “Dan and Jake are quality coaches who are on the same page as Machado with how we want our team to play – aggressive hard nosed baseball.”
Oilers hire Machado: Kenai Central graduate to coach his hometown team
By Matthew Carroll, Peninsula Clarion
More than a year ago, Peninsula Oilers general manager Shawn Maltby dubbed Dennis Machado, then the Oilers pitching coach, "The Mayor."
"He's like the icon of Kenai," Maltby said of the Kenai Central graduate. "I can't go to the grocery store without somebody knowing who he is."
Anyone who didn't know before will find out soon enough.
On the heels of one markedly successful season as manager of the Anchorage Glacier Pilots, leading them within one run of a national championship, Machado is coming back home, recently hired as the 25th skipper in Peninsula Oilers history -- a position Machado was destined to occupy after once spending four summers playing for the team in the 1990s.
"Kenai is, in my opinion, one of the premier summer teams in the country and it also happens to be my hometown," Machado said. "So it's a dream job to coach this team."
He replaces Jeff Walker, who guided the Oilers to an 18-27 record and a fifth-place finish in the Alaska Baseball League, their worst season since 2001.
The pairing was really only a matter of time, though.
Machado was a member of the last Oilers team to capture the National Baseball Congress World Series title in 1994 -- also the year he graduated from Kenai Central, where he once owned Alaska's single-season rushing record as a member of the Kardinals' football team. He recently served as Peninsula's pitching coach for two seasons, both times guiding the league's top staff.
At the tail end of his second season in 2008, Maltby expressed his desire to see Machado leading the team.
"I think in the future, Dennis will be a head coach here with the Peninsula Oilers," he said at the time. "I'd like to see it."
In nine months, he finally will.
"He had a heck of a year last year. I'm glad we were able to get him back," Maltby said Tuesday. "I think it's a good match for both of us.
"Obviously to some sort of degree we are lucky to get him," he added. "For him being from Kenai, it's a perfect fit and it works out and we're happy to be getting him."
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, especially with the accomplishments Machado added to his blossoming resume as skipper of the Pilots last summer.
At one point fighting for the Alaska Baseball League championship, a run that ended with a third-place finish due in part to a string of injuries and illnesses, Machado still led his squad to the NBC World Series in Wichita, Kan., and nearly left with the championship.
The team jelled at the right time, Machado said, as Anchorage run-ruled three teams en route to the title game.
"Offensively we were playing well, defensively we were lights out and pitching was very solid," he recalled. "We were able to put together a pretty good run and made it to the last day."
The Pilots surprising and remarkable run came to a halt, though, as the El Dorado Broncos walked off with a 2-1 victory in 11 innings.
With job offers from other leagues on the table following the deep World Series march, Machado had a difficult decision in front of him.
In the end, however, there was just one position he coveted.
"I kind of weighed through some offers to see what was going to be the best situation," he said, "but my heart said Kenai right away."
Maltby was tuned in to every moment, following online and even texting Machado after each win.
"It has everything to do with the run that they had," Maltby said of the hire, which began with conversations as far back as the ABL Showcase in late July. "I'm glad he had the success he had in Anchorage. That just carries over.
"He's proven himself in this league as a first-time head coach ... it will carry over to this year and we'll be fine."
Machado, the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of California-Bakersfield, a Division I program which took the field for the first time ever in 2008, feels more prepared at this juncture of his career with his first year of head coaching experience already under his belt.
"I definitely have a better understanding of what I'm getting myself into," he said. "I don't think there's going to be too many things that happen in the ABL that I haven't already seen or experienced as a player and a coach."
There to help him will be his associate head coach from Anchorage, Bobby Brown, another former Oiler who roamed the outfield on that same '94 NBC Championship team and will be joining Peninsula in the same capacity he served with the Pilots.
"I've known Bob for years," Machado said. "He is by far the best hitting coach that I have ever met."
Maltby took it one step further.
"Bobby does such a great job with the offense. He's an offensive mastermind," he said. "In a perfect world, I've got an offensive mastermind and a pitching mastermind. We should be good."
Machado, who will double as Peninsula's pitching coach, thanked the Pilots' organization for providing him with his first head coaching job, an ironic twist of fate considering it may have prevented him from landing in Kenai as coach a year earlier.
Tom Myers, who inherited the head coaching duties in 2008 when Tom Hickman resigned before the season began, was asked to return in 2009, granted another chance by Maltby to coach and help recruit the team after coaching a squad compiled by Maltby and Hickman.
Machado, who just finished his second tour as pitching coach, wanted the job, but when Myers was slated to return, he jumped on the opportunity to coach in Anchorage.
"Last year the timing didn't work out. That's really no fault of anybody," Machado said. "The job that I wanted wasn't available and another opportunity presented itself and I had to take it. Now that this opportunity came open, it was pretty much a no-brainer for me."
Maltby said he felt he owed it to Myers to come back and coach a team he actually recruited.
"Obviously it bit me in the rear and it didn't work," Maltby said. "That's all water under the bridge at this point. ... I'm glad Dennis and I were able to agree on him being a coach."
With the team already 100 percent assembled for the coming summer, including the return of pitchers Kyle Barraclough and Scott Snodgress, both general manager and coach are excited at the prospects of returning the ABL championship to Coral Seymour Memorial Park for the first time since 2006 and perhaps even making a run at the NBC title.
"You have to recruit a little differently," Maltby said of playing in a pitcher-friendly ballpark. "If you go out and recruit guys who hit home runs, it's not going to happen in our yard. Pitching, defense and being able to play small ball wins games in our yard.
"(Machado) knows what it takes to put together a winning pitching staff down here," he added. "When he was here, we led the league in earned run average and that's a tribute to what he did with the pitchers day in and day out.
"I couldn't be more excited to have Dennis back as our head coach."
The feeling is mutual.
"That other dugout felt a little weird," Machado joked of coaching from the visitor's bench at Coral Seymour. "I hadn't been over in that dugout very much."
And he won't be again anytime soon.
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