A week before Thanksgiving, Nevada baseball coach Jake McKinley got a phone call from a 619 area code that wasn’t listed in his contacts.
“I thought it was spam, honestly,” McKinley said.
In case it wasn’t, McKinley answered the call. On the other end was Justin Hollander, the general manager of the Seattle Mariners. Hollander asked McKinley if he was interested in discussing a potential job with the Mariners.
“Sure,” McKinley said, not thinking it would amount to much. But 48 hours later, McKinley was offered Seattle’s major-league field coordinator job. And with Major League Baseball operating in a tight permission window, McKinley had to quickly make a decision on whether to leave Nevada, which he had built up over three years to achieve a Mountain West regular-season title last May.
McKinley, who was tipped off to the Mariners by industry sources and had no previous relationship with Hollander, accepted the position with the belief that would give him the best chance of achieving his ultimate dream — managing a big-league team.
“I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to manage in the major leagues, especially given my background as a small-college player that was never drafted,” said McKinley, who played at NAIA school Bethany University in Santa Cruz, Calif. “Where the industry is right now, that’s very possible. And I know there’s only 30 of those jobs in the world, and they’re very hard to get. But when you get with a club like the Mariners with a roster that’s as talented as theirs with the people they have, it suddenly feels like it could happen.”
McKinley said the most difficult part of the decision was leaving Nevada, which gave him his first Division I head-coaching job in 2022 after stints leading lower-level California schools Menlo College and William Jessup. McKinley officially informed the Wolf Pack players of his decision Monday with Nevada announcing his top assistant, Jordan Getzelman, would replace him as the team’s head coach.
“Top-five worst conversations I’ve ever had,” McKinley said of telling his Wolf Pack players he was leaving. “It was terrible. There’s no easy way to do it. I did it in three minutes. I think they hear that news and they don’t really hear much else of what you have to say. But what I shared with them is it’s an opportunity to be at a high level at the highest level. It’s a legitimate platform to maybe manage one day. Given where I’m at in my life, it was not something I could say no to.
“And as the dust has settled, I know the players get it. They have expressed gratitude and they are happy for me, and I feel the same way about them. But this is bittersweet. It really hurts to walk away from this, and I’d always kind of targeted this team for years now. I had always targeted the ’26 team as a coach’s dream team, and it feels dirty to walk away from it, but I’m also really excited and ready to go two feet in with the Mariners.”
McKinley previously worked for a major-league organization with the Milwaukee Brewers where he held a variety of roles, rising to the franchise’s vice president of player development. The Mariners job is far different from that one, which was a front-office position. In Seattle, McKinley will be on the major-league staff and serve as a coach who oversees many of the day-ot-day operations.
McKinley compared the position to being the team’s chief of staff where he’ll working closely with Mariners manager Dan Wilson and bench coach Manny Acta.
“Major-league field coordinator is essentially the person that runs the day-to-day operation for the team,” McKinley said. “So, I’ll run spring training, tying all these entities together, building schedules, overseeing the coaching protocols. And then with the day-to-day in the big leagues, it’s kind of the same thing. You’re running the day-to-day operation. Obviously you have your manager and your bench coach that handle things like media, locker room, culture, but I do a lot of the heavy lifting as it relates to our process and making sure we are training and doing things that are aligned with the Mariners way but also communicating to the players strategy. ‘Hey, this is what we’re gonna do today. This is how we’re gonna try to beat this opponent.'”
McKinley said one of the most attractive parts of the job is the Mariners’ personnel, both on the field and in the front office. He called it a “no-ego organization,” adding he wouldn’t have left Nevada for every major-league team. But the Mariners were one win — and just a couple of innings — shy of winning the American League and playing in the World Series last October.
McKinley said the role will fit him well because of the Mariners’ willingness to adapt and his ability to be a generalist who can impact multiple parts of the on-field product. Asked why he feels ready for a major-league job, McKinley joked, “I’m not.”
“I was added to the team chat today, and you scroll through it and at the end of the day, it’s just baseball,” McKinley said. “It’s 27 outs, the bases are 90 feet, the mound is 60 feet, 6 inches. It’s just the players are so, so talented. But I do think the skills that it takes to win in college can really scale to the major leagues because in college you’ve gotta be really creative. You have to make more work with less. And when you enter these new entities, you do have more. But it’s also on a scale. Every club is a little bit different in terms of what they have. But just as I talked to the people with the Mariners, I feel like I’m prepared to work for the Mariners in this role.”
After inheriting a Wolf Pack team that was decimated by transfers after accepting Nevada’s job in 2022, the team went from 20 wins in McKinley’s first season to 25 in his second and 34 in his third, the school’s most victories since 2016. That came with a MW regular-season title in McKinley’s third season after the team finished last in the league in his first year.
“Having such a hard first year and then people sticking with you, that was another thing about this community,” McKinley said. “I know there’s challenges right now in Nevada athletics. You see it. But I just always felt like this community stuck with us through the thin and as things got thicker they were excited. But more than anything, it’s the players. So many of the guys that were here today were guys that were with me in year one or year two, and some of those guys had opportunities to transfer and they didn’t. It’s a throwback. It’s almost like an old-school college team where it’s guys that have been together for a long time.”
Nevada athletic director Stephanie Rempe, who hired McKinley within a week of accepting the Wolf Pack job, said she will miss her first head-coaching hire.
“I love Jake McKinley,” Rempe said. “He just does everything right. He does everything you ask him to do. He cares, he works hard, he develops. You watch him talk in front of his team and it’s pretty cool.”
Leading Nevada into the future will be Getzelman, who played for McKinley at Menlo College before working with him at multiple stops since. Getzelman was Nevada’s hitting coach and recruiting coordinator the last three season and promoted to replace McKinley on Monday. McKinley is excited to see what Nevada can do under his leadership this season, comparing this Wolf Pack roster to that of Murray State, a fellow mid-major that reached last season’s College World Series.
“Some of the metaphorical paychecks you get in this profession are when people you coach get to do great things,” McKinley said. “I’ve been with Jordan as his head coach when he played, he was my volunteer assistant at William Jessup, he was with me in the Brewers organization as an assistant hitting coordinator, he was here with me at Nevada. I was the best man in his wedding. It just means so much when you see people that you coach, people that you work with go on to do great things. I’m just so happy for him. He deserves it. They’re not gonna skip a beat. He’s gonna be fantastic.”
Columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter @ByChrisMurray.