Brent Lavallee will be back at the helm of the Vancouver Canadians for the third consecutive season.
The North Delta, B.C. native will manage the reigning Northwest League Champions in 2024. He will look to lead the C’s to back-to-back titles after a 77-win campaign in 2023. The last Vancouver skipper to do that was Clayton McCullough in 2012 and 2013, capping off a three-peat that began under the stewardship of current Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider and Rich Miller, who also steered the C’s to the 2017 NWL title. Lavallee—who piled up 67 wins in 2022 with Vancouver—could make history if he can lead Monty’s Mounties to back-to-back-to-back appearances in the league final.
Fellow Canadian Ashley Stephenson from Mississauga, Ontario also returns to YVR with Lavallee. Other returnees include pitching coach Austin Bibens-Dirks—last year’s bullpen coach—and hitting coach Ryan Wright is back with the C’s for a third straight season.
The new bench coach is a familiar face in former C’s infielder Deiferson Barreto, who played with the club in 2016 and 2017. His last game as a professional was Game 4 of the 2017 Northwest League final at Nat Bailey Stadium. His one-out walk started a two-run rally in the fifth inning as he scored the tying run on Logan Warmoth’s two-run single to help the C’s knock off the Eugene Emeralds to capture the 2017 NWL championship.
Also new to the coaching staff is bullpen coach is Carson Phillips who held the same role with the Buffalo Bisons in 2023. He was a graduate assistant pitching coach at the University of Arizona in 2022 and pitched for California Baptist and Utah Tech Universities.
Rob Shifrin is the new head athletic trainer and Katie Reyes is the assistant athletic trainer after joining the club last year as an athletic therapist. The head strength and conditioning coach is Bailey Forst and Zane Hunt will take on the assistant role. Alexis Maier will look after Nutrition, Raul Pimentel is back as the mental performance coach for the third straight year and will split time with Double-A New Hampshire. Crisitan Cordova is the technology assistant.
2019 Canadians manager Casey Candaele is back to lead the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons for a fourth straight season. He’ll be joined by 2021 C’s skipper Donnie Murphy who will be the bench coach for the Herd. Tommy LaBriola (2022-2023) and Yuka Samui (2022-2023) will also be in Western New York as the head strength and conditioning coach and nutritionist respectively.
Joel Bonnett—the C’s bullpen coach in 2022 and pitching coach in 2023—takes over as pitching coach of the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Roelvis Vargas (2022-2023) also goes from Vancouver to New Hampshire as the head athletic trainer. Casey Callison (2019) is the head strength and conditioning coach.
2017-2018 Canadians position player coach José Mayorga will be manning the troops for the Dunedin Blue Jays in 2024. 2016 C’s infielder Nash Knight is the new hitting coach for the D-Jays. Luke Greene (2019) will serve as head athletic trainer.
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