MLB: New Era of Managers? Padres, Giants, and Angels Bet on the Unusual

Surprises in Baseball: New Faces in the Dugouts

The baseball world has been shaken by a series of unexpected appointments in the dugouts of several MLB teams. The signing season has brought with it a wave of decisions that have challenged conventions and highlighted a new trend in team management. The first surprise came on October 18th, with the news that the San Francisco Giants were about to hire Tony Vitello, the acclaimed coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, as their new manager. Another surprise came on Halloween, when Blake Butera was chosen by the Washington Nationals despite being only 33 years old. But the biggest surprise, according to several coaches and executives consulted, occurred six days later, when former relief pitcher Craig Stammen, barely two years after his retirement and without having been mentioned as a possible manager, got the most important position on the baseball field with the San Diego Padres. With Stammen, Vitello, and Kurt Suzuki, another recently retired player who signed a one-year contract to lead the Los Angeles Angels last month, Major League Baseball suddenly had three managers with no experience as professional coaches. A total of five managers, including Craig Albernaz, the highly respected former bench coach hired by the Baltimore Orioles, will be rookies next year. And Warren Schaeffer, who had the interim tag removed by the Colorado Rockies on Monday, is a 40-year-old man who managed his first 122 Major League games last season. Two decades ago, MLB front offices underwent a revolution around advanced analytics, leading to an influx of general managers from Ivy League universities and with quantitative backgrounds. Data-driven coaches followed. Now, after one of the most fascinating hiring cycles in recent history, the industry may be experiencing a shift in direction, with four of the nine vacancies this offseason going to unconventional candidates. The reasons, merits, and overall importance vary greatly depending on who you ask, but no one can deny the uniqueness of what happened in the last five weeks. Let’s consider… Vitello, 47, became the first person to go directly from college coach to Major League manager. The last manager younger than Butera was Frank Quilici of the Minnesota Twins from 1972, over 50 years ago. Of the 850 people who have managed at least one game in the Major Leagues, only 124, less than 15%, were former pitchers. Stammen will soon become the eleventh person to do so after making at least 500 pitching appearances. Nine of the other 10 threw their last pitch before the 1950s, according to data.

“I think it’s interesting how it’s been a small topic this offseason,” said Nationals’ new president of baseball operations, Paul Toboni. “I think about other sports and some of these so-called unconventional signings; I don’t know if they’ve become normalized, but they’re probably a little more frequent than they have been in baseball, depending on how you define conventional or unconventional.”

Paul Toboni

Basketball has long experimented with head coaches from colleges (John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Billy Donovan, Brad Stevens), has seen a recent influx of others emerging from Europe (David Blatt, Mike D’Antoni, Tuomas Iisalo), and has had several former players lead teams without prior coaching experience (Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Steve Kerr, JJ Redick). In the NFL, Sean McVay landed a head coaching job at 30, John Harbaugh and Dan Campbell became head coaches without prior experience as offensive or defensive coordinators, and several thrived after coming from college, most notably Jimmy Johnson and Pete Carroll. Some believe that baseball following suit is a natural progression of the advanced analysis that plays such a large role in constructing lineups and bullpen deployment. Some coaches and executives saw that as a positive, noting that rookie managers have more support than ever, while others condemned modern executives for not valuing the nuances of in-game decision-making enough. But it is a development that has nonetheless allowed teams to focus more on other characteristics, such as leadership, culture building, and how their philosophies align with the front office.

“Nowadays, if you can find traits that ultimately define a successful manager, that’s enough to want to hire a guy,” said an agent who represents some current managers and coaches.

Agent of managers and coaches

Vitello, who built a powerful baseball program in Tennessee, has been described as intense, but also charismatic and magnetic. Suzuki, who forged a 16-year career in the Major Leagues largely thanks to his ability to work with pitchers, has been praised for his intelligence and sensitivity. Butera, a two-time minor league manager of the year, has received accolades for his ability to connect with people in all areas of an organization. Stammen, beloved as a player in San Diego, always resonated with his teammates because, as Padres general manager A.J. Preller said, “he’s super genuine.” Although some see its emergence as progress for a sport historically slow to adapt, others see it as further proof that modern offices are going to extremes, and, in some cases, seeking to maximize their influence. “Some clubs may feel that hiring a more experienced and better-paid manager could diminish their influence and control,” said a retired former All-Star, while other sources lamented how recent managers like David Ross, Brandon Hyde, and Scott Servais received little attention as candidates this offseason despite playing a significant role in elevating their previous franchises. Joe Maddon, three-time Manager of the Year, who last managed a team in 2022, recently lent his voice to that frustration. Two weeks ago, in an interview with San Francisco radio station KNBR, Maddon called Vitello’s hiring “insulting” because, as he said, “it seems you no longer have to have any kind of experience at the professional level to do this job.” A former manager and current coach saw those comments as a sign that, no matter how much the sport tries to evolve, opposition will always be frequent.

“No matter how much baseball has grown, and it is certainly advancing, you still have that kind of old-school thinking,” the coach said, “while if this were NFL football, or if it were NBA basketball, college coaches make that jump all the time. But in baseball, it’s seen very strangely. Our system is backwards in some way.”

Coach

The identity of the people making these hires could have something to do with that. Toboni is young, and he was entrusted with the direction of the Nationals’ baseball operations department at just 35 years old. The Angels’ general manager, Perry Minasian, also took an unconventional path, starting as a ball boy and club assistant. So did Buster Posey, the former star catcher who was part of the Giants’ ownership group before being named president of baseball operations. And then there’s Preller, who has made unorthodox moves a habit in San Diego. He warned that this process could be cyclical.

“Teams are always creative and always looking for talent,” Preller said. “So maybe that led last year to seeing some managers for the first time, but I don’t think that necessarily means that in the next three years you don’t look and there aren’t three or four openings and they all go to experienced managers.”

A.J. Preller

In fact, several teams took the most conventional route this offseason. The Twins hired Derek Shelton, who just managed the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Atlanta Braves (bench coach Walt Weiss), the Texas Rangers (senior advisor Skip Schumaker), and the Rockies (Schaeffer) promoted from within, selecting managers with previous experience in the position. The Orioles went with Albernaz, who, despite being new to that job, managed in the minor leagues and spent the last six seasons on a major league coaching staff. Orioles’ president of baseball operations, Mike Elias, entered the process looking for a candidate who has managed in the Major Leagues, then Albernaz changed his mind.

“I think managerial experience is important,” Elias said, “but it’s not everything when you’re doing that hiring. We were willing to go to the talent we wanted, even though he hadn’t been a Major League manager.”

Mike Elias