What’s new is not necessarily old as nine MLB teams begin the 2026 season with a managerial change. It’s the most in the modern era, and some come from outside the box.
Maybe no anecdote is more fitting with describing the youth and inexperience of Blake Butera than his accepting the MLB managerial job from the rebuilding Washington Nationals on Oct. 31 just hours after becoming a first-time father.
A relative baby himself by MLB managerial standards at 33 years old – and the big leagues’ youngest skipper in 54 years – Butera was technically offered the Nats’ job before his daughter Blair’s arrival. Ultimately, he accepted the job in the afterglow of her birth to Butera and his wife Caroline.
“I got offered the job before (Blair’s birth), signed the contract after. So dad first,” Butera jokingly told reporters upon being introduced as MLB’s youngest manager since Frank Quilici was hired by the Minnesota Twins in 1972 at 32.
Butera’s promotion to try to snap the Nats out of a six-season stretch with losing records stood out even in an offseason when MLB teams tuned mostly to a wave of first-time managers adept at juggling the delicate balance of guiding teams both on gut instinct and with the reams of statistical data at their fingertips. The season begins with nine new full-time hires – the most of the modern era (since 1901).
The new managers will lead the San Diego Padres (Craig Stammen), Colorado Rockies (Warren Schaeffer), Texas Rangers (Skip Schumaker), Los Angeles Angels (Kurt Suzuki), San Francisco Giants (Tony Vitello), Baltimore Orioles (Craig Albernaz), Minnesota Twins (Derek Shelton), Atlanta Braves (Walt Weiss) and the Nationals (Butera), with six doing so on a full-time level in MLB for the first time (Schaeffer endured a 36-86 stretch as the Rockies’ interim manager last year).
Most New Managers to Start an MLB Season (Since 1901)
2026 (9) – Craig Albernaz, Blake Butera, Warren Schaeffer*, Skip Schumaker, Derek Shelton, Craig Stammen, Kurt Suzuki, Tony Vitello, Walt Weiss 1914 (7) – Bill Bradley*, Bill Phillips, Buck Herzog, Doc Gessler, Larry Schlafly, Otto Knabe, Three Finger Brown 1927 (6) – Bob O’Farrell, Dan Howley, George Moriarty, Jack McCallister, Ray Schalk, Stuffy McInnis 1901 (6) – Bid McPhee, Clark Griffith, Hugh Duffy, Jimmy Collins, Jimmy Manning, Jimmy McAleer*Served as an interim but never officially a manager in an earlier season.
One of the new managers, Vitello, traded in the orange and white of the University of Tennessee for the orange and black of the Giants and is the first skipper in the game’s history to go straight from the college ranks to an MLB position. Even today, the 47-year-old Vitello sounds like someone pondering how he ended up in the big leagues and openly wondering if there’s some sort of catch to the position that he finds himself now sharing the same division with the two-time World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Maybe this thing is – if you want to call it this – the guinea pig or a sacrificial lamb?” wondered Vitello, who led Tennessee baseball to its first-ever national championship in 2024. “If it goes well or doesn’t go well, who cares? Well, I guess I should (care).
“I wish there was somebody with a shorter haircut and (is) more reputable up here to say it, but it was time for college baseball and Major League Baseball to be married a little closer for a lot of different reasons. I think working together ultimately makes Major League Baseball a better product.”
Rookies Running the Show
In a sport in which Connie Mack once managed the Philadelphia Athletics for 53 years, John McGraw led the New York Giants for 31 of his 33 years as a skipper, Billy Martin had five managerial stints with the New York Yankees and Tony La Russa piloted the Chicago White Sox three times, MLB teams were somewhat shockingly eager to turn their clubs over to relatively green skippers this past offseason.
Schumaker, who won two World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals as a player, is one of six from the nine to play professionally and then go on to land MLB gigs this offseason. Suzuki and Stammen hung up their cleats as players at the end of the 2022 season. The thinking, of course, is their proximity to the game will allow them to better handle the rigors of managing while also relating to players of today at a higher level.
“I was talking to (Angels legend Tim) Salmon a little while ago because we played together in Washington, and we were just talking about how cool it is to go from playing to managing,” said Suzuki, who hit 143 homers in his 16-year MLB career and beat out Albert Pujols (703 home runs) for the Angels position. The Angels have the majors’ longest active postseason drought. “(Stammen), (Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen) Vogt and guys like that were my teammates and are now managers, which we thought is pretty cool. I got to play with (Athletics manager Mark) Kotsay and I still have a special relationship with him.
“So I’m getting a lot of tips from those guys and I’m always open to trying to get better. It’s a fraternity of managers. You have relationships with these guys from your playing days and with guys who coached you before. I’m always open to having conversations with them to try and get better.”
In 2018, Boston’s Alex Cora became the fifth rookie manager to win a World Series – a group that included Ralph Houk in 1961.Butera couldn’t have possibly gotten a better recommendation than the one he received from Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza while the Nats were looking for a replacement for Davey Martinez. Butera worked under Piazza – Italy’s manager during the 2023 World Baseball Classic – as a hands-on bench coach. Piazza wasn’t bothered at all by the fact that Butera, a 35th-round pick by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2015 MLB Draft, never played in the big leagues after washing out following two forgettable minor league seasons as a light-hitting middle infielder.
Instead, Butera worked his way up through the Rays system by flourishing as a manager at a young age. By 25, he guided Class-A Hudson Valley (N.Y.) to a 45-30 record. After a second season there, he was on to High-A Charleston, where he went 170-82 over two campaigns with consecutive league championships and a minor league manager of the year award.
Whereas the Nats were previously run by baseball lifers Mike Rizzo and Martinez, 35-year-old Paul Toboni, as president of baseball operations, and the 33-year-old Butera are now calling the shots. Butera said the best pieces of advice he got before his first season in an MLB dugout came from Cincinnati Reds manager and two-time World Series champion Terry Francona and Rays skipper Kevin Cash.
“The kind of the advice I’ve gotten from Tito or Cashy is: Don’t change who you are and be who you are,” said Butera, who worked in the Rays’ front office for two years prior to landing the Nats’ managerial job. “There’s a reason why you’re in this role. There’s a reason why you have the relationships you have with staff members and others throughout the industry. Just continue to be who you are. I’m telling (outfielder) Dylan (Crews) this all the time now, and sometimes I need to tell myself the same thing.”
If Butera ever needs to talk to someone who completely understands what he’s going through as a first-time MLB manager, it’s Albernez, who will manage the Orioles about 45 miles up Interstate 95 in Baltimore. Albernaz, 43, managed in the same Rays’ minor league system as Butera, proceeding him as Hudson Valley manager by one season. Now the two friends are a part of MLB’s managerial fraternity at the same time.
“The best part about Alby, you know where you stand. Anything I ask him, he’ll tell me and he’ll shoot me straight,” Butera said of Albernaz, who thinks success in 2026 with the O’s could hinge on a resurgence from catcher Adley Rutschman following a subpar season in 2025. “We’ve talked about this for a long time. We talked about being on a staff together. But to be honest – don’t tell him this – but going against him is going to be a lot more fun. We’ve already joked about the Orioles and Nationals playing against each other and he’s like, ‘Should we get a house somewhere in between (Baltimore and Washington)?’ I’m like, ‘No, man, you do your own thing!’”
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Front-office types looking to shake up sleep-walking underachieving organizations have tended to fall into somewhat predictable patterns through the years. If a team fails to respond to the rah-rah of a players-type of manager, they often opt for the crusty baseball lifer who brings a hard edge and spares no one’s feelings. And vice versa.
In the case of the underachieving Giants – a team that hardly even responded to the blockbuster acquisition of Rafael Devers during the 2025 season – they quickly cut ties with 64-year-old manager Bob Melvin following a disappointing 81-81 record.
That the Giants and president of baseball operations Buster Posey went with a younger, more dynamic coach to replace Melvin wasn’t surprising. That he was willing to gamble on the fiery and unconventional Vitello certainly qualified as an enormous shocker to the baseball world.
Without question, Vitello showed the chops of a cutting-edge manager while at Tennessee and building the Vols into a college baseball disruptor. His teams recruited the best players, won at a high clip, and preened and trash-talked all the while. It made foes fighting mad, but it also empowered Tennessee’s players and Vitello loved every bit of it en route to winning the 2024 national title. On Rocky Top, Vitello was dubbed Tony V – as in Victories.
Posey, the 2008 Golden Spikes Award recipient as the national amateur player of the year before his stellar MLB career, took notice of how confident Vitello’s Vols played and aggressively pursued the manager with the flowing black hair and the swagger oozing out his every pore. In signing Vitello to a three-year deal worth $10.5 million, Posey shunned decades of baseball tradition by going after a retread manager or promoting an up-and-coming type out of the minors. Three-time manager of the year and World Series winner Joe Maddon, for example, managed and worked in the minor leagues for 14 years and spent another 12 years as a base coach or bench coach before landing his first MLB manager job with the Rays in 2006.
Now, Vitello is out to show the gulf between high-level college baseball and the big leagues isn’t nearly as big as some might think. But will he have to change his fiery, often-irritating style of coaching when he’s instructing grown multimillionaires as opposed to college kids willing to run through outfield walls for him? One managerial model that Vitello has studied is that of Milwaukee’s two-time NL Manager of the Year winner Pat Murphy, who spent a combined 22 years as Arizona State or Notre Dame head coach prior to ascending through the big-league ranks.
“Pat Murphy stands out to me because of the college background and having competed against him,” Vitello said. “(Giants director of pitching performance) Frank Anderson knows him well and (former MLB pitcher) Brett (Anderson), his son, knows Pat Murphy even better. (Murphy) was able to kind of, through Frank and Brett, relay some things to me that should help.”
Resurgent Retreads in Texas and Atlanta
Schumaker, the NL’s 2023 Manager of the Year while shockingly leading the Miami Marlins to the playoffs, is getting his second shot at big league managing with the Rangers, who parted ways with future Hall of Famer Bruce Bochy after the 2025 season. Schumaker could also dole out some solid advice to Vitello, who grew up in suburban St. Louis and idolized the teams that Schumaker played on with the Cardinals and won World Series crowns in 2006 and ’11.
“It always comes back to relationships,” said Schumaker, who carefully studied the managerial stylings of La Russa while playing for the Cards. “That’s what this job is – building the relationships and getting the buy-in and the trust from your players and coaching staff.
“That is the job,” Schumaker continued. “The Xs and Os are the Xs and Os. We’re going to mess up quite a bit, unfortunately. And good players, they cover your mistakes. When you make the mistake and Corey Seager hits a three-run home run, thank God. But you can lose the clubhouse quickly and the players don’t want to hear any BS. They want to know the truth. I think if you sugar-coat anything, you’re done. In this seat, it gets hot sometimes. But the last thing they want is anything sugar-coated. They’re big leaguers for a reason and they want to know the truth.”
That’s a lesson learned long ago by Weiss, who started his playing career with La Russa in Oakland in 1987 and ended it with Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox in Atlanta in 2000. Admittedly, Weiss wasn’t even ready to be a manager when he landed the Rockies job in 2013, and he took his lumps over four seasons with mostly overmatched teams.
Weiss, 62, is aware that he’s in a diametrically opposite situation now as the manager of a Braves team that is built to win following a disastrous 2025 season under now-retired manager Brian Snitker. Unlike his challenging tenure in Colorado, Weiss – a bench coach in Atlanta the past eight years – has a team full of veterans and one that could potentially win it all if it can ever get young pitchers Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep and veteran Chris Sale healthy at the same time.
“The circumstances couldn’t be more different from the first time I did this,” Weiss said of his time with the Rockies. He went 283-365 and never finished higher than third in the NL West. “In Colorado, when I got hired, I’d been out of the game for four years and was coaching high school football. … I didn’t even know what was important to me as a manager first time around because I hadn’t done it.
“Very different now, with eight years as a bench coach with a team that is built to win. I know the team like the back of my hand. Did I think I’d get another chance? I didn’t know and I didn’t have to (manage) again. But once Snit stepped away and (president of baseball operations and GM) Alex (Anthopoulos) asked if I was interested, I got pretty excited. I think we have a team that can win.”
Greg Harvey and Brady Olson of Stats Perform’s U.S. Data Insights contributed research to the new managers story. For more coverage from Opta Analyst, follow on social media at Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.
You’re Hired! And You. And You: How Nine New Managers Bring Wide-Ranging Vibes to the 2026 MLB Season Opta Analyst.
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