There have been eight manager changes in baseball this offseason and almost all of them have the earmarks of analytics all over the hiring processes.
We’ve seen it coming — the gradual emasculation of managers by the analytic-driven GMs — and with almost all of the seven manager hirings so far (only Colorado is still looking for a new skipper after finally hiring Paul DePodesta as their new GM last week), the one attribute that seems to be missing was credibility.
It’s almost as if the GMs were saying: “Manager wanted. No major league experience needed.”
Of the seven hired so far, only Walt Weiss with the Braves, Skip Schumaker with Texas and Derek Shelton with Minnesota have ever managed in the big leagues. And of those three only Schumaker, who was 2023 National League Manager of the Year with the Marlins, managed with any degree of success. In his one previous managerial stop, Weiss had four losing seasons in Colorado. Shelton, who never played in the majors, had six straight losing seasons in Pittsburgh with an overall .410 winning percentage.
The Braves’ hiring of Weiss, however, was somewhat understandable in that he’d been Braves manager Brian Snitker’s right-hand man as bench coach since 2018 and considered an integral part of the organization by GM Alex Anthopoulos. Shelton’s hiring by the Twins, on the other hand, was a real head-scratcher (not to mention a real downer for Minnesota fans) in that there is nothing in his resume other than a familiarity with the Twins organization from when he was a coach for previous manager Rocco Baldelli in 2019 to suggest he is capable of resurrecting the rebuilding Twins any time soon, if ever. In fact I have to believe he was probably so surprised Twins GM Derek Falvey hired him over any number of other more proven candidates he said how excited he was for the analytics department taking the lineup chores out of his hands.
The one common denominator in just about all these new manager hirings is that today’s analytically-driven GMs are not so much interested in a candidate’s game strategy or leadership abilities but rather a commitment to the organization’s formulas and player evaluation processes and to offer no push back. We thought Giants boss Buster Posey was a throwback to the old-school baseball ways when he cleared out a lot of the analytic geeks under his failed predecessor Farhan Zaidi, but then he shocked baseball by hiring a college coach, Tennessee’s Tony Vitello, who never played, coached or managed a day of professional baseball.
They say Vitello’s biggest strength at Tennessee was that he was a great recruiter, but the last time I looked that’s not one of the job requirements for a major league manager. The learning curve for a first-year manager — especially going from the college ranks to the major leagues — is enormous, starting with the fact that Vitello goes from coaching maybe 60 games a year to nearly 200, counting spring training and postseason. And as one former manager told me: “He better have someone to run spring training for him and he better be adept at running a ballgame because his college credibility will wear off quickly with major leaguers.”
Hard to believe Posey would take such a risk but maybe that’s why he also just hired his old manager, Bruce Bochy, as a senior advisor. Meanwhile, the other new hires — 43-year-old Craig Albernaz in Baltimore, 33-year-old Blake Butera in Washington, Craig Stammen in San Diego, and, to a lesser extent, Kirk Suzuki with the Angels — must also be viewed with a whole lot of skepticism until proven otherwise.
Albernaz: A career minor leaguer who hit .199 in nine years mostly in the Rays system, his lone managing experience was two seasons in A ball with the Rays. His only major league experience is two years on the Guardians coaching staff, but he is now the third straight manager after Brandon Hyde and Tony Mansolino, who never played or managed in the big leagues, hired by Orioles’ analytically ingrained GM Mike Elias. If ever a team needed a veteran proven manager it was the Orioles whose young core regressed badly last year, but that’s not what Elias wants.
Butera: Another graduate of the Rays system, who won four pennants in four years managing in A ball, he’ll be the youngest major league manager since Frank Quilici of the Twins in 1972. In his case, his lack of major league credibility won’t be an issue because the Nationals are going to be NL East doormats for a while and nobody will notice whether he’s making a difference or not.
Stammen: This one was real shocker. After interviewing Rangers special assistant Nick Hundley and future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols (reportedy for 9 ½ hours), Padres GM A.J. Preller did a sudden about face and hired Stammen, one of his front office assistants who’d actually been a part of the manager interviewing process, to a three-year contract — despite the fact that Stammen has never managed anywhere and only retired three years ago after a 13-year career as a relief pitcher. In other words, zero managing credentials. But like Albernaz, Butera, Vitello and Shelton, Stammen can be counted on as a good soldier by Preller.
You could say of all the new managers, Suzuki — who spent 16 years as a catcher in the majors and the last three as special assistant to Angels manager Perry Minasian — has as much credibility as any of them even though he’s never managed, but it probably won’t matter since quixotic Angels owner Arte Moreno gave him only a one-year contract.
Time will tell if any of these unconventional manager hirings work out, but the pattern has clearly been established. As one admittedly hardened old-school baseball person said to me: “We’re not hiring managers any more. We’re hiring Stepford wives.”
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
After a most satisfying season in which he finally got to World Series, Don Mattingly walked away from his coaching position with the Blue Jays last week but insisted he was not retiring from baseball. As much as his multitude of fans would love to see him have a reunion with the Yankees, that’s not going to happen. What is likely, however, is Mattingly hooking up with his old Yankee ally Rob Thomson as bench coach with the Phillies, where his son, Preston, is the general manager. And then there’s the Hall of Fame where last week Mattingly was announced as one of the eight candidates for the Contemporary Era ballot that will be announced Dec. 7 at the winter meetings in Orlando. It’s a tough ballot in which you could make a Hall of Fame case for any of the eight former players, but after achieving a high of only 28.2% in 15 years on the Baseball Writers Association ballot, Mattingly got eight votes (of a needed 12) on the last Contemporary Era ballot in 2022, and after all the visibility and renewed accolades he got during the World Series, I suspect he’ll do even better this time.
