FanHouse Jed Hoyer

One of Major League Baseball's two general manager vacancies could be filled in the next few days. The Padres appear poised to hire Red Sox assistant general manager Jed Hoyer to replace long-time GM Kevin Towers, who was fired at the beginning of October, according to multiple outlets including the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Hoyer has been a bit of a hot property for awhile now, having interviewed for GM positions with the Pirates and Nationals in recent years, but this won't be his first general managing job.

He and Ben Cherington were named co-GMs of the Red Sox in the winter of 2006 during Theo Epstein's brief hiatus from his post running the club, and most famously helped orchestrate the deal that brought Josh Beckett to Boston.

The idea that a major league team in this day and age would consider race when putting together its roster seems laughable to me -- it's hard enough to get into the postseason without limiting yourself to only a portion of the talent pool.

Nevertheless, that's a complaint being lobbed in the direction of the Red Sox by the Boston Globe, which based a story around the fact that a handful of Latino fans have noticed that there are fewer players who look like them in prominent roles:

"I've always been a Red Sox fan. That's not going to change. I want to be a Red Sox fan," said Javy Fernandez, a 22-year-old Dominican-American who owns a market in Dorchester. "But I get more excited when I see my people - people of my ethnicity - play on my team. It makes you feel like you're playing on the team also."

Red Sox assistant GM Jed Hoyer insists the front office is "completely colorblind" when making moves, and given the team's track record of playing deep into October, it's hard to doubt him. Even Mike Lowell, one of two Latino players in the regular lineup, doesn't think this is a discussion worth having.