BREAKING NEWS: San Diego Padres name former reliever Craig Stammen as next manager!

BREAKING NEWS: San Diego Padres name former reliever Craig Stammen as next manager!

All right, we got some breaking news on this Thursday and no sooner did we speculate about the Padres managerial opening as we did regarding Don Mattingly earlier than we have an answer. And this from the Padres official X feed, they have agreed to terms with former Padres pitcher craig Staman on a three year deal to become their new skipper. 41 years old had multiple stints as a player in San Diego had been a part of AJ Preller front office staff for the last number of years. They stay in House and it’s a former pitcher that gets the gig to manage the Padres. What are your initial thoughts? Well, um I’m surprised because I really thought it was gonna be flaherty. Maybe Albert, somebody like Pho that is somebody like that, but he’s been around in the circle. We’re seeing this a lot, you know, where you spend that time as an assistant to the GM or to the president or to whoever it might be in this case AJ per, that’s how his predecessor got hired. Mike Schultz had been along as an advisor. Pre you gotta have that comfort and that the relationship is a big thing. And the, the one thing that stands out, I don’t know his managerial past if he has experience in that at all. Seems not matter in baseball today. We’re seeing that an awful lot. Good point. Good point. Another young dude uh that’s hired to manage for the first time at the major league level. 41 years old replacing mike Schult who was there for a couple of years. Let’s bring JP Morosi in on this JP. Uh I’ve got some specific questions for you, but first big picture, what are your initial reactions to this move? Well, matt, it’s exactly what harold said that the way in which we are seeing teams view the managerial role those decades of, of running games in the dugout as a manager. It’s no longer a main prerequisite for the major league managerial role. That is I think a trend across the game when you think about other decisions that have happened here. In the case of the Padres with Staman, I was told and checked in with some people in the organization today right after the announcement of, of the hiring, they love his communication skills, they love his familiarity with the organization. Of course, it was just now basically three seasons ago, he was still an active player in this organization as recently as 2022. And from that pocket of time that he was a Padre after he began his career with the Nationals he was one of the most reliable and available relief pitchers in the national league. He was a consistently available guy. In fact, during those those years, we were the only one that was involved and appeared in more national league games was Kenley Jansen. So craig Staman is a, is a very much a respected player because of that reliability that he had in the clubhouse for so many years. And I was also told Matt, he is someone that has a very strong relationship with both Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis junior. He was a teammate of theirs, former multiple seasons. So yes, there were some other really strong candidates, pools flaherty and others, but certainly Staman is someone that has a lot of credentials and respect in that clubhouse. And that is one of the reasons why at a very young age, he’s the new manager of the San Diego Padres. So these managerial vacancies and there were a lot of them exiting the 2025 season are all sapped up with the exception of the Rockies. And before we speculate on that , I want to ask about the others that were involved in this process. You mentioned ryan Flaherty mentioned Albert Pujols, those were names that were kicked around who else was out there. Uh That was potentially in the mix for this gig. One name that I know was considered as Ruben, the their outstanding pitching coach and I think it’s probably going to be one of the key questions for Craig Staman, it’s again, still rare in the industry that you see a former pitcher hired as a manager. It’s not the most traditional of Pats. And so now the question is, how would Craig Staman as a former major league pitcher? Now manager work with his pitching coach and certainly, I’m sure the Padres hoping to retain Ruben Nel. He’s so important. He, I think he’s one of the best in the entire industry and he was considered for this job as a potential manager. But again, we’ll see if he ends up staying there as, as the pitching coach, Ryan Flaherty, I believe strongly as is the case with pools, both of them will be major league managers at some point in the future. And I think that we have seen Flaherty considered certainly highly regarded now as a coach with both with two organizations. Now, of course, with the Cubs, I think that Flaherty’s time is coming again, not now with the Padres, I’ll be curious to see too once things get resolved with the Rockies, do some of these names potentially get, get considered there in Colorado too. I would say with Albert again that the Padres were unique because he had some strong relationships there with people in the organization. And of course, the Angels, he was thought of it and really considered there strongly too. I would not expect Albert to manage the Rockies. But again, in this, at this time , we’re seeing a lot of newer candidates who do not have major league managerial credentials elsewhere. Getting hired into some big time jobs. That’s really was the case with Craig Salmon in San Diego. Yep, some good perspective. JP. Thanks for weighing in on it. Craig Staman in, in San Diego. And I guess Herald for the Rockies gig, like, got to get a GM in place. First one would imagine before the, the manager is hired. How about this? The fact that craig Staman 41 no previous managerial experience, not only is that part of his resume, uh pretty much canvas clear. He’s the only ex pitcher now who’s managing in the big leagues. You know, buddy Black’s not managing anymore. The few pitchers that were out there as Skippers are gone. It’s a first timer who’s the only pitcher in the managerial. It’s a little bit surprising to me, I would think in this analytic driven time that we’re in not saying the Padres are necessarily as much analytically driven as so many other clubs. But what do pitchers do from the minute? They, they sign up a, a contract , they keep data, they keep statistics. I do believe the big rush with why analytics took off was because you had so many pitchers who got it on TV. The most, the guys that were used to be pitchers were the ones sharing the most data, most information. Who does it affect the best? Give me all the information I got as a pitcher, as a hitter, you can’t tell me 80% of the time he’s gonna throw this pitch and that’s gonna do me a benefit. But if I’m a hitter, if I’m a pitcher and you can tell me if you put it there, 80% of the time they’ll never hit it. What a benefit. So I think analytics really took off because of pitchers. So I’m a little shocked that you don’t have more pitchers sitting in the manager seat, right? Just one now. And I, I don’t know if you remember this and I could be misremembering this, but I wanna say we had craig Staman on this show in around 2012, 1314 after he had done a visit to Afghanistan because he’s, he, he supports the military community. Remember that way better than I did. He, he’s got friends and family. I wanna say, who are active military members and he went on a, like a baseball tour and, and we had him on the program having just come back from there. Uh, the kind of hire the kind of came out of the sky for some of us, right. We were thinking it was gonna be someone else internally AJ Preller and his staff do a pretty good job keeping things in House and I don’t think anybody saw this coming today now. Well, I think the biggest thing here too is the, the the manager is the messenger for the organization. He is the face of the organization and this is AJ Preller driven. This is all about, you gotta have a relationship with him and he’s got to feel comfortable. That’s what he felt like with Shell and that’s what he’s feeling like here, he’s around this guy. That’s why the guys that are outside is privy. I mean, they operate differently , man. Let’s think about some of the previous hires there under AJ Andy Green. Yeah. Uh, Jace Tingler, both of whom are on major league staffs elsewhere now, they’re great baseball guys, but they weren’t the first people you thought of at the time, but they were around AJ. Yes. And they’re in a J’s circle.

The San Diego Padres have named Craig Stammen as their next manager. Stammen played six seasons for the Padres, and spent the last two seasons in the Padres’ front office as an assistant to the major league coaching staff and baseball operations department.

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