No Experience Needed

BY KEVIN KERNAN

At this rate, I would not be surprised if some “forward-thinking’’ MLB team soon hires an intern as manager. Now that is out of the box thinking.

That’s how crazy it has become in the MLB hiring world where the only goal seems to be “let’s get rid of as many people as we can who have experience.’’

The recent spate of managerial hiring shows, in most cases, that the No. 1 goal for those running teams is to make sure they get someone in the dugout who will not offer pushback to the Nerds.

These have been referred to as outside the box hires.

I maintain they are nothing close to being outside the box, in fact they are inside the box hires, these people are hired to play the inside game and not create any disturbances in the baseball planning and manipulation by the front office.

For many years, these types of people were hired in MLB as a coach. In almost any clubhouse you entered there was always that one coach who did not exactly fit with the other coaches.

I would ask how did that person get hired and the answer was always the same, “Oh, he’s a spy for the general manager.’’

Okay, makes sense now.

Now the spies are everywhere.

The words they use though are corroboration and collaboration, but what they really mean is they don’t want any dissenting voices in the room. That’s fine, those presidents of baseball operations can hire whoever they want, they are in charge but it sure would be nice if the manager had worked as a manager or a coach somewhere along the line.

Every time they think you have seen it all, you see worse.

Managers, indeed, make a difference. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

And it is not just managers, of course, pitching and hitting coaches are coming almost directly from industrial park workout facilities into the major leagues. Remember how last spring training Hall of Famer Jim Rice was told by someone wearing a Red Sox uniform not to interfere with the hitting techniques being taught in Fenway South.

By the way, the Red Sox got 26 home runs from their designated hitters this past season and 15 of those came from Rafael Devers, who was sent to the Giants for a bag of baseballs.

My response to all this is that this makes life a lot easier for the Dodgers, who have an experienced baseball man at the helm in Dave Roberts and are looking to win three straight World Series. Doc Roberts proved his worth with critical moves made in Games 6 and 7 of the World Series, both wins for the Dodgers, including inserting veteran Miguel Rojas into the starting lineup at second base and then when he needed centerfield defense the most, he put Andy Pages back in center who made the defensive play of the World Series, saving the Dodgers with his catch of Ernie Clement’s high drive to left field, a ball that left-fielder Enrique Hernandez was not going to catch. Pages, who had just been benched in Game 6 by Roberts because he was not hitting, had to barrel over Hernandez to make the play.

Managers, indeed, make a difference. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

By far the strangest hire of the week was the Rockies hiring of Paul DePodesta to run their baseball show. DePodesta hasn’t been around baseball for a decade. He has been too busy being the Chief Strategy Officer of the rotten Cleveland Browns.

Moneyball DePodesta has not run baseball operations since the Dodgers fired him after the 2005 season. He worked for the Mets before jumping to the Browns. I was around the Mets then on pretty much an everyday basis and never saw much of DePodesta, so who knows what he really did for that team, but it did get him the Browns gig.

Good for him. DePodesta quietly knows how to jump from sport to sport and wind up with an amazing job even with all his past failures. So that’s a talent. The Browns have spiraled into one of the worst teams in the NFL, a sport where there is a salary cap, so everyone is playing under the same financial rules, unlike MLB.

Under his watch the Browns made one of the worst QB decisions in the history of the game, acquiring Deshaun Watson. Critics have called that the “worst trade and biggest mistake in Browns history.’’

Sounds like it was a good time for DePodesta to jump from one sinking ship to another in the Rockies. His hiring has dumbfounded good MLB front office people I know who are successful at their jobs but are not moving up the ladder to run a team. How could they when a team can bring in someone who was chief strategy officer of the worst team in the NFL.

Keep doing what you are doing Rockies as long as the fans keep coming from all over the Rocky Mountain region to beautiful Coors Field. As John Denver sang: “Friends around the campfire, everybody’s high.’’

The Rockies lead baseball in losses since 2018. Since DePodesta was hired by the Browns they are 55-99-1 and he once described the $230 million Watson acquisition as “the most detailed and dogged potential acquisition of a player that I’ve ever witnessed.’’

Enjoy the Paul DePodesta experience with quotes like this from this week, “One of the things I talk about all the time in professional sports, certainly we are in this to win and all those sorts of things, but we are really in it for is creating these like salient moments for our fans,’’ Paulie D said.

Now DePodesta has to find a manager.

There have been some interesting managerial hires. Over in Washington the Nationals who are now being run by 35-year-old Paul Toboni, hired 33-year-old Blake Butera, he has managed in the minors so there is that. He may be younger than some of his players. He was teammates at Boston College with Michael King. Butera’s pitching coach is 30-year-old Simon Mathews, who was the Reds assistant pitching coach. There is room to improve in Washington, the Nationals ERA was 5.35, 29th in the league. Who was No. 30? You guessed it, the Rockies at a stunning 5.97. Mathews is from the Driveline tree.

No one likes to change managers as much as the Padres A.J. Preller, and he is once again going the no experience route after having experienced managers Bob Melvin and Mike Shildt. They say Shildt was hard on his coaches and this year Melvin got fired by the Giants, opening the door for the no pro experience Vitello. Preller chose former middle reliever Craig Stammen, 41, as his fourth manager in six seasons.

Stammen has zero experience leading a team on any level, but he was a reliever who outsmarted hitters, so there is that, and he took the ball whenever needed so there is a competitive level to his mindset. Some of Preller’s previous hires include Pat Murphy, manager of the year again with the Brewers, and Andy Green and Jayce Tingler. This is an interesting hire simply because Stammen is well respected as a competitor. More competitors and less yes-men need to be hired as managers. The Padres are on the decline, and the Dodgers own the division. “I’ve got a big learning curve,’’ Stammen admitted.

Managing used to be somewhat of an old boys’ network. Welcome to the new Learning Curve Club (LCC) of 2025.

Another LCC member is Kurt Suzuki, 42, who was hired to manage the Angels. He has no pro managing or coaching experience, but he fits the former catcher turned manager profile, which is usually a safe bet, since in Suzuki’s time the catcher managed the game. Now they are pretty much analytical robots, witness the fact that Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman for some reason threw a terrible slider to No. 9 hitter Miguel Rojas when Rojas could not catch up to his fastball and Rojas saved the day for the Dodgers with that ninth-inning Game 7 home run.

Then there is newbie manager Craig Albernaz over with the Orioles, who comes from the Guardians coaching staff. The Twins recycled Derek Shelton after his disaster years in Pittsburgh. Baseball gym rat and second-time manager Walt Weiss was hired by the Braves, after being their bench coach and the Rangers went with Skip Schumaker, who did a good job in a tough situation with the Marlins and has spent the last year studying what is wrong with the Rangers. Here is a hint: They hit .234.

Lots of changes. Lots of learning the learning curve. And, of course, lots of corroboration and collaboration.

We will see how much winning comes out of all that.