This is the first time that TalkNats has published a separate part of this annual-ish guide for the coaching staff. But these are unusual times.
The manager and all but one of his twelve coaches are entirely new to the Washington Nationals organization. All but one of them are younger than the oldest active MLB player. Some confusion, as we try to figure out who’s who in the dugout, is understandable.
The first two parts of this feature covered pitchers and position players. Now, here’s a quick guide to the Nats’ new manager and coaches.
#7 – 3BC Víctor Estévez
2025 role: Manager, High-A Wisconsin
Age on Opening Day: 37
The Nationals’ new third base coach had a very brief playing career in the low minor leagues before moving into coaching at age 24. He has since been twice decorated as Manager of the Year. Along with coaching and managing in the Milwaukee Brewers organization for well over a decade, he’s also been a popular name in the Dominican Baseball League, coaching and managing there during the past few offseasons.
Víctor Estévez will handle a portfolio in Washington that also includes coaching the Nats’ infielders. Given this group is, nearly to a man, very young — and that the Nats have had among MLB’s worst infield defenses over the past several seasons — he has his work cut out for him. As he hasn’t coached at the major league level before, we don’t have much of a sense how aggressive we can expect him to be with his sends. His extensive experience in player development, however, makes him a good fit on paper for a group of players who still have a lot to learn.
#9 – BC Michael Johns
2025 role: First base coach, Tampa Bay Rays
Age on Opening Day: 50
Most of the new coaching staff look like they could still be playing in MLB. Michael Johns, maybe not so much. Turning 51 in August, he’s the graybeard of the new staff. If age is experience, that’s what he brings to a group of coaches whose average age is around 37. (Johns is still younger than the average age of Davey Martinez’s 2025 staff.) And if experience is experience, Johns is one of a handful of members of this new crew who has coached in MLB before. He spent the last two seasons as the Tampa Bay Rays’ first base coach.
Johns will be the Nationals’ bench coach, taking over a position that is traditionally considered the manager’s second-in-command. The Nats’ last full-time bench coach, Miguel Cairo, wound up finishing out the 2025 season as interim manager. (We certainly hope Johns doesn’t follow in Cairo’s footsteps.) However, Johns is also known as a skilled baserunning coach from his time with the Rays. His role in shaping the Nats’ approach on the basepaths is not yet clear.
#10 – MGR Blake Butera
2025 role: Senior director of player development, Tampa Bay Rays
Age on Opening Day: 33
The Nats were linked to a whole lot of names in their search for a full-time manager to replace Davey Martinez. Blake Butera was not one of them. The news of his hiring came as a total surprise — especially since most Nats fans had probably never heard of him before.
Butera has never played nor coached in MLB before. A former minor league infielder, he was a back-to-back Manager of the Year for Low-A Charleston in 2021 and 2022, then moved into an organizational player development role. He was also the bench coach for Italy in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. At just 32, he’s younger than some of the players in camp this spring. In fact, he’s the youngest manager in MLB in over half a century.
President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni has taken a big swing by hiring Butera as manager. Very highly regarded in and around the Rays organization, Butera still would ordinarily have been expected to “pay his dues” and work his way up the ranks before being considered for major league managerial jobs. Toboni evidently saw things differently: If Butera was a “future manager”, why not make him a manager now? It remains to be seen how Butera’s minor league experience will translate and how he will turn around a clubhouse that often seemed disorganized and apathetic under the ancien régime.
#23 – 1BC Corey Ray
2025 role: Manager, ACL Cubs
Age on Opening Day: 31
Despite being drafted fifth overall back in 2016, Corey Ray has just one major league game to his name, in 2021 with the Brewers (he went 0-for-2 with a walk and scored a run). But his major league career is alive again, as he will coach first base for the Nats in 2026. Ray has never coached in MLB before, but he’s one of several members of this coaching staff to have managed in the minor leagues.
Well-muscled and athletic, with a prototypical “baseball body”, and still just 31, Ray looks every bit like he could still be playing. Instead, the Nats will call upon him to impart his wisdom and knowledge of the game as he coaches baserunners and outfielders. He ought to be able to relate to fellow first-rounders James Wood, Daylen Lile, Robert Hassell III, and Joey Wiemer, among others — and hopefully help them unlock the potential he wasn’t able to reach as a once-touted prospect himself. It’s definitely not too late for Ray’s second act in MLB to be a big hit.
#51 – FC Tyler Smarslok
2025 role: First base coach, Miami Marlins
Age on Opening Day: 34
A four-year player at Kean University, Tyler Smarslok moved into coaching for his alma mater immediately after his collegiate career came to a close. After several years as a college coach, Smarslok was hired by the Minnesota Twins. He joined the coaching staff at Triple-A St. Paul in 2021. He broke into MLB for the first time last season, after the Miami Marlins hired him to coach first base, infield, and baserunning. After just one year in Miami, Smarslok takes on the role of major league field coordinator in Washington.
As for what Smarslok’s duties are, it’s a black box right now. We haven’t heard much about Blake Butera’s vision for this role. Presumably, Smarslok will work with infield coach Víctor Estévez and outfield coach Corey Ray in some capacity. Perhaps we’ll get to learn more about how things are meant to work this spring.
#53 – PC Simon Mathews
2025 role: Assistant pitching coach, Cincinnati Reds
Age on Opening Day: 30
One of a few Paul Toboni hires this offseason who formerly worked for Driveline Baseball, Simon Mathews coached in MLB for the first time in 2025. The Nats offered him a bump up from assistant to head pitching coach, bringing the Georgetown alum back to D.C.
Mathews, who briefly lived in Spain as a child, minored in Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown. That’s a big plus for communicating in professional baseball. He also knows and previously worked with one of his two assistants, Sean Doolittle, both at Driveline and in the Reds organization. Mathews brings an interesting blend of practical MLB experience and work at the sport’s best-known performance lab to Butera’s staff. Despite his youth — he’s the second-youngest coach on staff — he’s well-regarded as a baseball mind and pitching guru. Expectations are high that he can teach Nats pitchers some new tricks, after five increasingly bleak seasons under the far more old-fashioned Jim Hickey.
#60 – AHC Andrew Aydt
2025 role: Hitting coordinator and manager of hitting business, Driveline Baseball
Age on Opening Day: 30
While Mathews did his time in organized ball, Andrew Aydt comes to the Nats straight from Driveline. Aydt is an atypical hire for a major league coaching staff. He has never held any sort of role in pro ball — neither as a player nor a coach. He went straight from four years as a player and student at McKendree University, a Division II school, to working for Driveline. He’ll play a part in molding the Nats’ hitters at the highest level, applying his analytics knowledge and experience breaking down the swings of players from across the country at Driveline.
Perhaps notably, the Nats gave Aydt the secondary title “assistant director of hitting”. It’s unclear whether that title means Aydt will work with CJ Gillman, the Nats’ new minor league director of hitting. If so, that would likely mean that in addition to his role on the major league staff, Aydt will continue working with former Driveline colleague and new Triple-A Rochester assistant hitting coach Travis Fitta. If it turns out Toboni and Butera are onto something with these Driveline hires, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see other teams try to hire their own baseball lab instructors in the future.
#62 – HC Matt Borgschulte
2025 role: Hitting coach, Minnesota Twins
Age on Opening Day: 35
Matt Borgschulte has been a hitting coach in the majors since 2022, but he’s still just 35. Borgschulte joined the pro coaching ranks after playing and coaching college baseball. He is well-regarded for his work with the Baltimore Orioles from 2022 to 2024. A yearlong stint last season with Minnesota didn’t go as well. He’s now with the Nats, seeking a return to success coaching young hitters who appear to still have potential to unlock.
Borgschulte’s mantra is “own the zone”. He said in a recent interview that we (and his players) can expect to hear it quite a bit from him. What he means is that hitters should be patient and not try to put pitcher’s pitches in play, forcing them to eventually make a mistake over the heart of the plate. He also stresses the importance of trying to take the extra base. It will be interesting to see how his approach influences players like Dylan Crews, Brady House, and Harry Ford, and how it meshes with the advice of bench coach Johns and base coaches Estévez and Ray.
#67 – AHC Shawn O’Malley
2025 role: Hitting coach, Triple-A Tacoma
Age on Opening Day: 38
A former utilityman with a rather undistinguished three-year MLB career, Shawn O’Malley has recently found new success as a coach. After two years coaching Triple-A in the resurgent Mariners organization, O’Malley finds himself on an MLB coaching staff for the first time. He’s one of two assistant hitting coaches under Borgschulte.
Despite not playing in an especially hitter-friendly environment — Tacoma, after all, is a port city in a temperate climate, a far cry from the scorching high desert of Reno and Albuquerque — the Rainiers were among the Pacific Coast League’s top-hitting teams under O’Malley’s tutelage. The Nats hope he brings that success with him and helps his hitters get and stay on time. Exactly how he’ll fit into a three-man band isn’t yet known. In any case, he brings solid credentials for a first-time MLB coach.
#68 – APC Dustin Glant
2025 role: Pitching coach, Indiana University
Age on Opening Day: 44
Dustin Glant coached at the collegiate level, then at Triple-A, then back in college ball, and now he’s in MLB. The former Diamondbacks pitching prospect reached as high as Triple-A before his playing career petered out. Now he’s in the Show, albeit as a coach. The native Hoosier brings years of experience coaching young players at Indiana and Ball State, among others.
Glant was seen as an innovator in college ball. One such innovation was a drill in which he’d have pitchers practice aiming throws toward a specific numbered quadrant of their catch partner’s jersey. We could see exercises like that come into vogue as Glant makes his mark on the Nats. Interestingly, Glant was announced as both an assistant pitching coach (one of two reporting to Mathews) and bullpen coach. That suggests he may end up working mostly with relievers.
#83 – DC Grant Anders
2025 role: Major league development coach, Baltimore Orioles
Age on Opening Day: 29
How many MLB coaches never played baseball at the collegiate level or higher? Grant Anders, for one. The youngest member of this year’s coaching staff, Anders will serve as development coach/bullpen catcher after two years in a similar capacity with the Orioles.
What does a major league development coach do, exactly? Well, that’s really up to whoever writes the job description. But make no mistake: Anders’ background is in analytics. The Radford grad first broke into MLB as a video intern. He has progressed up the chain by focusing on using technology and data to help players reach the next level. Exactly where he slots into this particular group of coaches is yet to be seen, but he’s of a kind with Toboni and Butera’s other hires, despite his unique background.
#88 – CC Bobby Wilson
2025 role: Catching coordinator, Texas Rangers
Age on Opening Day: 42
The most experienced Nationals coach both as an MLB player (2,641 innings caught over parts of ten seasons) and coach (five years as the Rangers’ major league catching coordinator), new catching coach Bobby Wilson has one of the most fascinating assignments on this staff. He’ll play a huge role in shaping the careers of Harry Ford, whose MLB dream is just beginning, and Keibert Ruiz, who is fighting to keep his alive.
Toboni has name-dropped Wilson in interviews for exactly this reason. Whether Ruiz can rebound and become an effective MLB player, in a full- or part-time role, is one of this Nationals season’s biggest storylines. Wilson will be at the center of it — as he will be in top-100 prospect Ford’s rookie season. The Nats have perennially posted among MLB’s worst defensive and framing metrics at the catching position. That dubious distinction goes back many years now. So, Wilson has a tough assignment ahead. But it could be vital to the Nats’ success — if he can get his catchers on the right track.
Related