It has been a busy offseason for president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and the Los Angeles Dodgers front office thus far.
The main focus was on finding the team’s next manager after deciding to part ways with Don Mattingly.
Los Angeles arrived at their decision on Monday, naming Dave Roberts as the 28th manager in franchise history.
With a manager now in place, the front office can begin to fill the other holes in the organization. One such need is the head athletic trainer position, as Stan Conte resigned following the 2015 season to focus on research in baseball injury analytics.
According to sportswriter Will Carroll, the Dodgers have selected Neal Rampe as head athletic trainer:
Hearing dodgers have new head trainer selected. Neal Rampe from Dbacks.
— Will Carroll (@injuryexpert) November 24, 2015
Rampe, 37, was most recently the Arizona Diamondbacks manual and performance therapist, and spent eight seasons with the franchise. Before that he was at the University of Arizona for five years, where he served as the associate director of performance enhancement.
Prior joining the University of Arizona he served as an athletic trainer for the Boulder (Colorado) Center for Sports Medicine providing athletic training services to local high schools, which included practice and game-day coverage.
Rampe also was the assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Minnesota from 2001-02 while earning his master’s degree in applied kinesiology.
Originally from Kalida, Ohio, he earned two bachelor’s degrees — athletic training and physical education with a strength and conditioning emphasis, from the University of Findlay in May 2000.
The Dodgers are coming off one of their most injury-plagued seasons in recent memory. The main culprit was hamstring injuries, though Brandon McCarthy and Hyun-Jin Ryu were lost to respective season-ending arm surgeries.
