When the Washington Nationals introduce Blake Butera as their manager Monday, they will make history: Not since 1972 has an MLB team had someone as young as Butera, 33, in that position. That he has not managed above Class A in the minor leagues and was serving in a player development role when he was hired only differentiate him more from the people who usually get these jobs.
But during an offseason in which nearly a third of MLB teams changed managers, you could make a credible argument that Butera is not the most surprising hire — and maybe not even the second most: The San Francisco Giants chose Tony Vitello, a college baseball standout who has never set foot in a pro dugout as a player or a coach. And the San Diego Padres, uninspired by the candidates they were interviewing for their sixth full-time manager since 2015 (not including interims), asked special assistant Craig Stammen to move from interviewer to interviewee and hired him as the only manager in the majors whose playing career came as a reliever.
Those moves made the Los Angeles Angels’ hiring of Kurt Suzuki and the Baltimore Orioles’ selection of Craig Albernaz look conventional by comparison — though neither of them had big league managerial experience, either.
With so many teams needing new managers, major shifts were inevitable: The most common trait of a new manager is that he is drastically different from the old one — and one way to ensure different is to choose something new.
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For example: The Atlanta Braves chose experience for their veteran roster when they promoted longtime bench coach Walt Weiss to replace Brian Snitker, but the move was greeted with skepticism by those who wondered whether Weiss, who was unable to redirect the Braves’ trajectory from their dugout last year, can provide enough change to do so this year.
Similarly, if an inexperienced manager fails, an obvious choice for MLB teams is someone who has been there before.
“I don’t necessarily think this means [lack of experience is a trend],” Padres General Manager A.J. Preller said. “I think the next few years you may look up and there may be three or four openings and they may all go to managers with prior experience.”
This year’s deluge of managerial changes also has meant widespread shuffling of coaching staffs as new managers pull friends and confidants from elsewhere to build their staffs. As a result, many heads of baseball operations spent most of the past few weeks building or rebuilding their coaching staffs. For example: One general manager who did not even have to hire a manager this offseason was asked last week at MLB’s GMs meetings how he was doing. He offered a frazzled smile.
“Well, I just lost two more members of my coaching staff,” he said as he wandered off, staring at his phone, looking for a player agent who suddenly had become an afterthought.
Even the Cleveland Guardians, led by back-to-back American League manager of the year Stephen Vogt, had to rebuild their coaching staff after the Orioles hired his bench coach, Albernaz, as manager and the New York Mets poached trusted field coordinator Kai Correa as part of their coaching staff rebuild. The process can be all-consuming.
“They are very long interviews — a lot of background work you should be doing, then you’re also getting your owners involved and all your senior executives. Scheduling all that and the travel involved, Zoom has helped to a large degree, but it’s very intense,” Orioles team president Mike Elias said. “These are people who have a lot of career options, and they want to go into the right situation, too. So there’s a bonding part of the interview process that is very intensive.”
That bonding process — or lack thereof — means candidates who make sense at one place might make little sense at another: Angels General Manager Perry Minasian, for example, hired former catcher Suzuki to be his team’s fourth manager in the past five seasons despite Suzuki having no professional coaching experience. Minasian’s brother Zack, general manager of the Giants, pushed to hire Vitello, a different kind of rookie manager.
“I think successful people come from all walks of life. I don’t necessarily think there’s one way to do it,” said Perry Minasian, who was coy when asked whether he would consider the route his brother’s team took. “Everybody has personal preferences.”
Elias said experience was crucial to the Orioles’ attempt to rejuvenate a stagnant clubhouse.
“Even somebody who is eminently prepared for it is going to encounter things for the first time that they can’t really imagine,” he said. “It’s just hard.”
The Orioles’ previous manager, Brandon Hyde, had not exactly been a failure. But after several good years helping a young team evolve, the Orioles fired him when the 2025 squad stumbled early. The consensus in the organization was not that Hyde had done something wrong but that he was not the voice that could help make things right.
“We definitely can’t quantify or put a number on a manager’s value. We don’t have any analytics studies about that. But clearly it’s a very important leadership role,” Elias said. “It’s an extremely difficult job — I can’t even describe how hard their job is nowadays. And it’s something where your gut comes into it during the hiring process, at least the way I do it. You try to get a bunch of different opinions … but I definitely try to use my instincts as much as I can.”
Elias echoed many heads of baseball operations in noting that managers today lead larger staffs, with wider varieties of people, than they did in previous eras. And in a 24/7 media environment, the pressure to say the right thing publicly and privately is greater and more complicated than ever.
“You’re kind of the face of the franchise in terms of dealing with media. That’s maybe overlooked sometimes. There’s a lot of time that goes into it in terms of managers getting to the ballpark at 11 o’clock and noon. There’s large staffs that they’re managing now,” Preller said. “… In our organization, we’ve had a ton of stability — except in that job.”
Preller’s hire of Stammen speaks to the challenge of finding someone to bridge the gap between the dugout and the front office while maintaining the respect of both. Since taking over the Padres in 2014, Preller has overseen nine different managers. Some, such as Bob Melvin, simply did not click with Preller enough to last. Others, such as Mike Shildt, reportedly struggled with behind-the-scenes relationships, though burnout was his stated reason for stepping down last month.
Regardless of how they ended up with another opening, the Padres’ process for filling it was fascinating: Preller and his staff, including special assistant Stammen, reportedly interviewed several candidates — including future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols, who reportedly spoke with them for nine hours in one session. But ultimately, when nothing was clicking, Preller encouraged Stammen to consider the job himself.
“I thought about [managing] a little bit, but obviously you have the stigma of being a pitcher, then being a relief pitcher,” Stammen said at his introductory news conference. “But you sit on the plane with Manny [Machado] and [Eric Hosmer] and Wil Myers and Ian Kinsler, and we’d talk about those things together. Maybe they mention, ‘Stammen, you’d be all right at that.’ And I thought: ‘Really? You think I could manage you guys?’ Having the support of past teammates has made me think this was possible.”
Stammen has no managerial experience, and as he mentioned, pitchers are not normally considered for managerial positions because of the perception that they can’t relate enough to the experiences of everyday position players. But at 41, he is one of the more universally beloved and respected members of the organization. At this point, perhaps the decision was as simple as that.
“It’s a difficult job. You’re handling a lot of personalities on a daily basis. There’s a lot of moments over the course of a season where you have the ability to gain traction from the team or lose the team,” Perry Minasian said. “… I’ve seen a lot of personalities and a lot of different styles. The one common theme with all those managers is respect. They have the ability to gain respect from the players.”
That ability is a key reason some executives hesitate to hire candidates who have not managed before — or to hire candidates who did not play in the major leagues or even professionally. Would a grizzled veteran listen to a rah-rah college coach such as Vitello? Could a 33-year-old establish a winning culture with more accomplished players around his own age?
“I don’t say this in any sort of crass way, but I don’t really care. I keep saying: I kind of just remove age from the equation. Players — I don’t think folks care about what age [someone] is. They care if they can play, and they care if they can produce,” new Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni said. “That’s how we think about everybody. My guess is that, when we get a year in, whatever it is, it’s going to become less of a topic because folks are going to realize these are just good people in their jobs.”
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