A Good Manager Is Hard To Find

This week, the baseball world turns its attention to the first round of the playoffs. It’s what we’ve spent the past six months waiting for. Nevertheless, the past 48 hours or so have brought a flurry of news events involving people and teams that (cue sad trombone sound effect) will not be taking part. Since the season ended on Sunday, seven teams made announcements about managers who were on the hot seat and/or wobbly chair:

This is far from an exhaustive list of the teams that had to make a decision about their field manager. Retirement rumors have swirled around Braves skipper Brian Snitker all year, but as of this writing, neither he nor the Braves have announced their plans for 2026. (UPDATE: Eight minutes after this post went live, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Snitker was choosing to step down, and would remain in the organization as a senior adviser.) A.J. Hinch might’ve lost his job had Detroit completed the worst second-half collapse in baseball history; presumably he’s safe for the time being. The Rockies, Nationals, and Orioles all fired their managers during the season and have yet to hire replacements; we’ll check back with those clubs when something comes up.

Let’s take the others, briefly, in alphabetical order.

The least surprising move of the six is that of the Angels. When Mike Scioscia retired at the end of 2018, he closed the fourth-longest continuous managerial tenure since World War II, trailing only the Dodgers’ duo of Walter Alson and Tommy Lasorda, and Bobby Cox’s second stint with the Braves. The Angels have made up for lost time since then, cashiering four full-time skippers in the past seven seasons.

Washington was seen as a bit of a left-field hire even at the beginning; despite almost 30 years of experience as a major league coach and manager, Washington was a decade removed from his best years with the Rangers when the Angels brought him in. He lost 99 games in his first year, then went on medical leave on June 20 of this season.

Since Montgomery was only deputizing for Washington, the second half of the season will technically go on Washington’s career stat line. Montgomery probably won’t mind; under his tenure, the Angels had the second-worst record in the AL. The only teams that were worse across the whole of the majors since June 20 — the Twins, Nationals, and Rockies — are also all in search of new leadership.

I don’t think either Washington or Montgomery is exactly Earl Weaver out there, but there’s probably not a whole lot either of them could’ve done for an Angels team that had just lost Shohei Ohtani. The pitching staff is a wreck, Mike Trout is aging rapidly, and I can’t describe Anthony Rendon’s tenure accurately without violating various norms of editorial decorum and general good taste. This job is a hospital pass. Good luck to whoever ends up with it, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Snitker’s retirement ought to be an emotional moment for Atlanta. He signed with the Braves as a minor league catcher in 1977, and has been with the club ever since, as a player, roving instructor, minor league manager, and big league coach under five different managers. In 2016, the Braves, in the middle of a teardown, dismissed manager Fredi González after a 9-28 start, and promoted Snitker, then manager of Triple-A Gwinnett, to his first big league managerial gig. Snitker led the Braves to a respectable 59-65 record, and two years later to the first of six consecutive NL East titles.

At Snitker’s peak, the Braves were perennial NL co-favorites with the Dodgers. The two teams fought a classic seven-game NLCS in 2020. The next year, the Braves won the World Series, and the two Braves teams after that won 101 and 104 games, respectively.

Injuries blunted the Braves last year and crippled them in 2025. Snitker, who turns 70 this season, has quite reasonably declined to oversee another rebuild. His successor will inherit a team with the talent to swamp many playoff teams, as well as multiple Cy Young-type starting pitchers. But questions of roster stagnation and load management have shadowed this team for the past two years, so this job does present challenges of its own.

As for Snitker, special adviser is the best job in baseball. Play as much golf as you want, make the occasional trip to the complex to give the prospects a pep talk, hang out around batting practice and drop by the press box a couple times a week, and every so often, the GM will call you to bounce some ideas around. It’s way better than a gold watch.

Melvin’s departure from the Giants is a mild surprise, considering he led a team with some star power but lots of weaknesses to a .500 record in a brutally tough division. Melvin is a three-time Manager of the Year, and I’ve long thought he was one of the best dugout bosses in the game, if not the best outright. In 2022, the Padres pried him away from the Athletics, where he’d presided over seven winning seasons and six playoff appearances over 10 1/2 years in charge. This despite well-documented financial and roster limitations.

I thought it was a master stroke, and sure enough, Melvin led the Padres to the NLCS in his first season in charge. But since then, he’s gone exactly .500 over three seasons with the Padres and Giants, and a postmortem by Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic paints Melvin as a well-liked but slightly weary figure working under a front office boss — Buster Posey — who didn’t hire him.

Firing Melvin might be a harsh end for such a venerable figure, but if Posey wants his guy — specifically, a younger, more up-and-at-‘em manager like his former backup Nick Hundley — Melvin didn’t do enough to make such a move unjustifiable.

In general, I don’t intend to run down a list of potential replacements for each of these openings, but Baggarly mentioned one I want to talk about in particular: University of Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello. In a fairly short period of time, Vitello built Tennessee from an also-ran into a powerhouse in the toughest amateur baseball league in the world. He’s as energetic and charismatic a figure as you’ll find in the sport, with an all-gas, no-brakes coaching style. I’ve been joking-not-joking-ly trying to float him as a candidate for Mets manager for several years now, but I’ll settle for any major league job.

Mostly, it’s interesting because baseball — unlike football, basketball, hockey, or even soccer — doesn’t have much movement between the big league dugout and the collegiate dugout. There’s only one ex-big league manager with a Power 4 head coaching job at the moment (Arizona’s Chip Hale), and only one current major league manager with experience as a college head coach (Milwaukee’s Pat Murphy).

But as the college game has gotten better-resourced, we’re seeing assistant coaches and minor league managers move between the two ladders. (Former Twins pitching coach and current Georgia skipper Wes Johnson is the most prominent example. Here I’ll also note that the record of ex-big leaguers in the college coaching ranks remains mixed. Jeff Duncan? Good. Lance Berkman? Not so much.) To say nothing of Murphy’s successful first year in the big chair. Within the past 15 years, college coaches have had to develop proficiencies in analytics and roster management that would be useful in a big league context. I think it’s quite possible that the right coach — whether that’s Vitello or someone else — could make the leap.

My dream of Vitello managing the Mets will have to wait, though, because even after a brutal second-half collapse, David Stearns and Steve Cohen have decided to retain Mendoza.

Even after Mendoza led the Mets to a surprise NLCS appearance in his rookie campaign, and finished third in Manager of the Year voting on the basis of his regular-season work alone, I was mildly surprised to see him given more rope.

I don’t think you can blame the Mets’ entire collapse on Mendoza. This pitching staff was constructed by people who are far more optimistic than I am. It wasn’t good enough even before it was shredded by injuries. Francisco Alvarez couldn’t stay healthy either. I’m not sure John McGraw could’ve figured out how field a respectable defense with Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Starling Marte, Mark Vientos, and Brandon Nimmo on the depth chart and only one DH spot available. I thought Stearns added a lot at the deadline without giving up much, but Cedric Mullins is basically a pariah north of the Quaker Bridge Mall now, and the juxtaposition between pennant run Ryan Helsley and pennant run Jhoan Duran was ugly to say the least.

This is a harder job that you’d think, given the payroll.

Nevertheless, Mendoza got healthy monster seasons from Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and Edwin Díaz. Nolan McLean appeared almost from nowhere at just the right time when the Mets needed an ace. And not only did the Mets miss the playoffs, they’re watching the playoffs on TV after being a coin flip to win the division at the trade deadline, and having 96.6% odds to make the postseason as late as September 5. And they missed out, in a season when 84 wins would’ve done it.

There are relatively few great genius managers and relatively few catastrophic incompetents. I don’t think Mendoza belongs to either group. Like the majority of major league managers, his most important professional function will be getting fired to send a message. Stearns isn’t pulling the trigger now, but I would guess that next April, Mendoza will be seated on the wobbliest chair in the league.

The other surprise managerial retention was Pittsburgh’s Don Kelly. He’d been Derek Shelton’s bench coach for five and a half seasons, and he replaced his old boss on May 8. On record alone, Kelly did a pretty good job; the Bucs went 12-26 under Shelton but 59-65 — which is within sniffing distance of .500 — under Kelly. Hey, that’s the same record the Braves had in Snitker’s first year. Maybe the Pirates will have similar success under Kelly. Really, I said that with a straight face.

Even with a legitimately competitive pitching staff — Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, Dennis Santana, Justin Lawrence, a cup of coffee for top prospect Bubba Chandler — it’s impressive that Kelly came within six games of breaking even with such a paucity of position player talent. Compared to this Pirates team, Melvin was working with the treasury of Ögedei Khan.

Kelly getting the interim tag removed is fair enough given the team’s performance, but I expected him to move on because I could not picture a world in which Pirates ownership would look at the job GM Ben Cherington has done over the past six seasons and sign up for more of the same.

But the Pirates carry the same fetid odor of nihilism as the Angels. I guess a GM who’ll build a roster, such as it is, with a bottom-three payroll and not raise a ruckus is about all Pirates ownership can ask for. The job here is to finish last, but, like, a respectable last. Who the manager is matters little.

Down in the Metroplex, the Rangers and Bruce Bochy have decided to evolve their relationship into something new. Just three seasons ago, Bochy delivered the first championship in franchise history. He’s a legend, a sure Hall of Famer. Only five managers all-time have won more regular-season games; only Connie Mack, Joe McCarthy, and Casey Stengel have won more World Series than Bochy, and only two other managers have led three different franchises to a pennant.

The two years since Bochy’s last championship have been uneven, injury-plagued affairs for the Rangers, who went 78-84 in 2024 and 81-81 in 2025. A younger manager would probably get more rope, but Bochy turned 70 this year, and rather than firing him, the Rangers are making him a front office adviser. As I mentioned earlier in the context of Snitker, this is a pretty sweet gig.

It appears, meanwhile, that Skip Schumaker — currently a special assistant to GM Chris Young — is Bochy’s heir presumptive. Schumaker, 45, did a terrific job in 2023, white-knuckling a heavily outgunned and injury-riddled Marlins team to the postseason. Good enough to survive a 100-loss season in 2024? Perhaps not. But the Marlins are kind of like University of Cincinnati football: If you can punch above your weight there, bigger teams will notice. (In this metaphor, Joe Girardi is Brian Kelly and González is Luke Fickell. Ozzie Guillen is Tommy Tuberville.)

Finally, the Twins are back on the market after letting Rocco Baldelli go. Minnesota is generally pretty loath to turn over a manager. The Pohlad family bought the Twins in 1984, had midseason managerial firings in 1985 and 1986, and has only made three changes since.

Baldelli looked like the next hot manager when he led a hard-hitting Twins team to back-to-back AL Central titles in his first two years in charge. After a couple down years, he became the first Twins manager in 21 years to win a playoff series, and the first in 19 years to win even a single postseason game. But that run is pretty conclusively over, and the Pohlads and baseball ops boss Derek Falvey have spent the past three months tearing the roster down.

Remember when I said most managers are mostly there to be used as a scapegoat when things go wrong?

Even after an ugly end to his tenure, Baldelli is viewed as a smart guy and a good hang, and he only turned 44 last week. Therefore, it would be an enormous shock if this ended up being his last go-around as a major league manager. Perhaps you’ll see his name come up again later this offseason.