WINTER MEETINGS (Orlando, Fla.) — If Major League Baseball’s latest hiring cycle demonstrated anything, it’s that teams are increasingly willing to break from tradition in search of the right voice to chart a new path forward.
Nine of the sport’s 30 managerial jobs were open after the 2025 season ended. The Rockies decided to keep Warren Schaeffer, while the other eight vacancies were filled by new talents — half of them were unorthodox hires.
In 2022, Kurt Suzuki finished his 16-year playing career as a catcher with the Angels while Craig Stammen wrapped up his 13-year career as a reliever with the Padres. Neither has coached professionally since then, yet both will be managing the last big-league team they played for when the 2026 MLB season begins.
Meanwhile, 33-year-old Blake Butera — the youngest MLB manager in more than 50 years — will lead a youthful Nationals club as Giants skipper Tony Vitello makes the unprecedented move from college coach to big-league manager without any prior MLB experience.
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It all begs the question, especially as data-driven front offices become increasingly involved in the on-field product: What is the most important job of a big-league manager in the modern game?
“It always comes back to relationships,” incoming Rangers manager Skip Schumaker told me. “That’s what this job is, is building the relationships and getting the buy-in and the trust from your players and your coaching staff.”
Schumaker, who will take over for Bruce Bochy after serving as a senior adviser with the Rangers last year, has been one of baseball’s most highly-coveted managers since leaving Miami after the 2024 season. He carries with him the perspective of having led both a surprising Marlins team that made the playoffs in 2023 — a run that earned him National League Manager of the Year honors — and a club that fell back down to earth a year later at the start of a Marlins rebuild.
“You can lose the clubhouse quickly,” Schumaker said. “And they don’t want to hear any BS. They want to know the truth. I think if you sugarcoat anything, you’re done. So in this seat, it gets hot sometimes, but the last thing they want is anything sugarcoated. They’re big leaguers for a reason, and they want to know the truth, so you have to give it to them.
“But I also think … I’m an intense personality in general, but I think you have to be positive as much as you can throughout the season because they’re going to get hit on a lot of negative the whole year. So as intense as I can be, also as positive as I can be I think is always the goal.”
These are aspects of the job that Vitello, Stammen, Suzuki, Butera and Baltimore’s Craig Albernaz will have to navigate as big-league managers for the first time.
The only way to learn is through experience.
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Schaeffer found that out last year in Colorado when he inherited a Rockies team that had lost 33 of its first 40 games under Bud Black. The interim manager did his best to keep spirits up the rest of the way amid a 119-loss 2025 season, but he learned “innumerable” lessons that he’d like to take into 2026 after being given the full-time role by new head of baseball operations Paul DePodesta.
“I learned that I would love to have more conversations on a daily basis with players,” Schaeffer said. “I think that’s a big strength of mine. I need to utilize it more often, develop leaders behind closed doors.”
Almost universally, front-office executives and big-league skippers polled at the Winter Meetings agreed that the ability to communicate well was the most vital trait of a good manager in today’s game.
“Being a strong communicator, a great connector and the curiosity and feel to put guys in the best positions to succeed,” one high-ranking team executive explained.
In theory, while professional experience is beneficial, a coach at a major college program could possess many of the right qualities.
“Can you impact players in a positive way? I think that’s the most important role,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy, who spent decades as a college coach at Notre Dame and Arizona State, told me. “Is that leadership? I don’t know. Maybe. It can be a lonely job. It can be lonely in that, to truly try to do that — impact players and all that kind of stuff — you’re not always the most popular or you’re not always taking the safe way. Sometimes, there’s a little risk involved.”
In the Giants’ case, there’s a lot of risk involved.
Whatever happens with Vitello in San Francisco after he transformed the University of Tennessee into a national powerhouse, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey will either be lauded or lambasted for his decision. Posey believes in the 47-year-old’s natural leadership qualities, motivational skills and ability to shape and build a culture.
“There’s an expectation that he’ll get the best from everybody he comes in contact with,” Posey said as he introduced his new manager.
(Photo by Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images)
As Vitello embarks on a journey no other manager has taken before — at the Winter Meetings, Vitello jokingly referred to himself as either a guinea pig or a sacrificial lamb, depending on how his tenure in San Francisco goes — he enters his new role with a respectable level of humility for a coach who just led his college program to six NCAA regional appearances, three College World Series appearances and the Tennessee’s first ever national championship.
He is wise enough to recognize that he does not know everything, which is why he values Murphy’s advice and looks forward to getting to know the Brewers manager better.
Vitello and Murphy do not have a personal relationship, but they had a mutual connection in Tennessee coach Frank Anderson, whose son, Brett, pitched for the Brewers in 2021 and 2022. Through the Anderson family, Murphy was able to relay some advice to Vitello about transitioning from the college game.
“You don’t want to give up too many ingredients or the secret sauce, but some of it is pretty obvious,” Vitello said. “When [Murphy] was at Arizona State or Notre Dame, it was competitiveness at an incredibly high level, to an extreme really. That should carry over at any level, you’d like to think.”
BEHIND THE PLATE: Tony Vitello Is Setting Example To ‘Marry’ MLB and College Baseball
Vitello still hadn’t actually seen Murphy at the Winter Meetings until minutes after his media session ended, when he walked out of a ballroom at the Signia by Hilton in Orlando and just happened to run into the Brewers manager. Vitello approached cautiously, like a kid that just saw his favorite player. Soon, the two struck up a lengthy conversation. Minutes into their talk, Dusty Baker stopped by and joined them, as if they were all longtime friends.
“There’s a high level of respect for these people that are in the game, but for me, maybe because I was around my dad and all these athletic teams, I think it changes when you’re in a building together as a group,” Vitello said. “Like, we’re a part of a team. In order to be a good teammate, I don’t think you can see yourself as above somebody; I think it would be crazy to see yourself as below somebody as well because you’d be cheating yourself and them.”
Only time will tell how the experiment goes as Vitello transitions from a 56-game college sprint to a 162-game big-league marathon and from leading teenagers to managing the personalities and egos of wealthy adults.
(Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
Whatever happens, the hirings of Vitello, Stammen and Suzuki weren’t the best sign for coaches at the lower ranks of the minors with dreams of working their way up the traditional path. They also weren’t a great sign for former skippers such as Brandon Hyde and David Ross, who have yet to receive another opportunity, or for former big-league superstars such as Albert Pujols, a popular managerial candidate who ultimately did not land a job.
With more information than ever at their fingertips, it’s possible that some front offices would prefer to hire novice managers who won’t question their influence or decision-making.
Through a more optimistic lens, perhaps the latest round of hires were just an example of MLB catching up.
It’s not as foreign to see a direct jump from college to the pros at the coaching ranks in the NFL (e.g. Jimmy Johnson) or NBA (e.g. Billy Donovan) as it is in MLB, nor is it strange to see a coach in his 30s thrive in other sports (e.g. Sean McVay, Joe Mazzulla), as Butera is now trying to do in Washington under a new Nationals front office led by 35-year-old president of baseball operations Paul Toboni.
“You have to adapt,” Butera said. “The game’s moving faster than ever. The information we have access to now is more than it’s ever been. It’s just going to continue to become more. It’s not just having information; you want to bring in coaches that want to understand how to interpret the information and, two, understand when to deliver to players and what to deliver to players.”
In the NBA, J.J. Redick had no professional coaching experience before he started coaching the Lakers, who believed in his basketball IQ and ability to connect and communicate. The Lakers won 50 games in his first season, the third-best record in the Western Conference.
Two years ago, the Cleveland Guardians took a similar chance on manager Stephen Vogt for similar reasons and have reaped the rewards of their decision. Vogt, a former All-Star catcher who had no managerial experience when the Guardians hired him, played his last big-league season in 2022 before spending the next year as the Mariners bullpen and quality control coach. In 2024, he replaced future Hall of Famer manager Terry Francona in Cleveland and went on to earn AL Manager of the Year honors in each of his first two seasons with the club.
(Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images)
Vogt considers consistency to be the most important part of the job — an understandable notion for a manager who helped his team overcome a 15.5-game deficit in 2025, the largest ever to win a division.
“You have to be the same person every single day, whether things are going well, things are going poorly,” Vogt told me. “You can’t have bad days. You can’t be in a bad mood. You show up every day, choose to be in a good mood and choose to lead with a smile on your face. That consistency is an absolute must for a manager.”
Vogt’s success helped pave the way for the latest crop of incoming managers. He believes the period in which he came up, as baseball was undergoing its analytics revolution, makes players from his era distinctly equipped for the role in the manager’s chair.
“We were raised in an old-school world, but then we played through the transition,” Vogt said. “So now I feel like we have a very good understanding of how to apply information while not losing sight of maybe the gut feel.”
Clearly, the Angels and Padres shared a similar belief with their hires. Vogt’s final season as a big leaguer was the same year that Suzuki and Stammen wrapped up their playing careers.
In Anaheim, Suzuki is following a similar trajectory to Vogt as a former longtime MLB catcher. Vogt’s advice to Suzuki: “Be yourself,” Vogt said. “It’s OK to not have any answers. It’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know,’ or use the resources around you.”
In San Diego, Stammen’s hiring was more atypical, not only because he was a pitcher but also because he went from interviewing potential candidates for the job following Mike Shildt’s retirement to suddenly becoming the answer.
Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller thought Stammen was “super genuine” and “comfortable in his skin,” traits that were attractive as he tried to find the right person to keep the Padres’ window for contention open.
What does Stammen believe is the most important part of the job?
“I think the veteran managers probably have a lot more to say about it, but from my perspective, what I can bring to the table that’s valuable is relatability, doing things with integrity, trust, honesty,” Stammen said. “I think those leadership qualities go a long way.”
The Rangers (Schumaker), Rockies (Schaeffer), Braves (Walt Weiss), Twins (Derek Shelton) and Orioles (Albernaz) all went a more conventional route than the Giants, Nationals, Angels and Padres with their managerial decisions.
Albernaz, who will get his first MLB managing opportunity this year with the Orioles, worked his way up in a more conventional manner than many others in this hiring cycle. He climbed the minor league ranks before joining the Giants coaching staff and then spending the past two seasons on Vogt’s staff in Cleveland, an experience he considers the best he has had in baseball.
Through those various stops, he feels that he gained a grasp on the most important part of his new job.
“It’s people,” Albernaz told me. “At the end of the day, you’re a manager of people. That’s something that’s never going to change in this game, that people still play. Front-office members don’t play. Coaches don’t play. The players play. And for a big-league manager, for anyone, even a coach, you have to be a connector of people.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
