The San Diego Padres have their next manager, and it’s a name the team knows quite well. Former Padres reliever Craig Stammen was announced as the team’s new manager on Thursday.
Stammed reportedly signed a three-year contract to manage the team, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Advertisement
While Stammen’s hiring comes as a surprise to those outside the organization, he’s well-known to the Padres. As a player, Stammen, now 41, spent six of his 13 seasons in San Diego.
After an injury led to his retirement in 2023, Stammen decided to remain in the game. In January 2024, he was hired by the Padres as a special assistant in player development. In that role, Stammen worked with players in both the majors and minors. He remained in that role for the 2025 MLB season.
The Padres found themselves as a surprising participant in the offseason manager hunt after former manager Mike Shildt announced his retirement in October. Shildt cited the physical and mental toll of the job in his statement announcing the news.
[Get more Padres news: San Diego team feed]
With Shildt gone, the Padres were one of the more desirable openings on the market. The team has won at least 90 games in each of the past two seasons, features plenty of star-caliber players and employs a general manager who makes bold moves in pursuit of winning a World Series.
Advertisement
Despite that, rumors regarding the Padres’ next manager were scarce in the weeks leading up to Stammen’s hiring. Former MLB superstar Albert Pujols — who was also in the running for the Los Angeles Angels’ managerial opening — reportedly interviewed with the Padres in October but was not the club’s choice.
Although he never made an All-Star team, Stammen turned in some excellent seasons during his 13 years in the majors. He reached the big leagues with the Washington Nationals, where he spent the first seven years of his career.
After struggling as a starting pitcher his first two seasons, Stammen was moved to the bullpen. He displayed impressive skills as a reliever, posting a combined 2.54 ERA in 170 innings across the 2012 and 2013 MLB seasons. He posted another solid year in 2014 before missing most of the 2015 MLB season due to an arm injury. He joined the Cleveland Guardians ahead of 2016 but failed to reach the majors.
Advertisement
Stammen signed a minor-league contract with the Padres that winter and exceeded expectations in a major way. After not pitching in the majors for roughly two years, he posted a combined 3.06 ERA in his first three seasons with the Padres. While he was never the team’s primary closer, he was a solid backend weapon in San Diego.
After struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic-shortened season in 2020, Stammen returned to post one more strong season with the Padres in 2021. He struggled in 2022 and was eventually shut down due to a torn rotator cuff. Stammen attempted to return with the Padres for the 2023 MLB season but sustained a torn capsule in his shoulder, ultimately ending his playing career. — Cwik
What to make of the Padres’ choice?
A historically active round of managerial turnover is approaching its conclusion, as the San Diego Padres announced former relief pitcher Craig Stammen as their next manager, marking the eighth of nine vacancies across MLB to be filled since the end of the regular season. The Rockies hold the final vacancy, which is unsurprising, considering Colorado is still searching for a new leader in its front office, which will need to be finalized before the team settles on a new skipper.
Advertisement
Stammen landing the Padres’ gig seems to come as a surprise to both those inside and outside the organization, but his recent experience as a special assistant to president of baseball operations AJ Preller, plus his strong reputation in the San Diego clubhouse from his six years on the roster, evidently put him in position to earn this opportunity. Given that he has never managed at any level, his readiness and qualifications can be debated, but we’ve seen all kinds of out-of-the-box hires already this winter, making Stammen’s relative lack of experience fairly unremarkable.
At the very least, there’s one thing about Stammen that immediately makes him an outlier among his managerial peers: He’s a pitcher. Before he was fired by the Rockies earlier this year, Bud Black was the only former pitcher to hold a major-league managerial position, with the vast majority of current skippers having been catchers or infielders, with a handful of outfielders mixed in. So far this offseason, another round of former catchers (Kurt Suzuki, Craig Albernaz, Derek Shelton) and infielders (Skip Schumaker, Blake Butera, Tony Vitello, Walt Weiss) have been hired, with Stammen emerging as the lone pitcher to hold a managerial post among the 29 positions currently filled. How that informs his perspective as the new leader in the Padres clubhouse — and how he fills out the rest of his coaching staff — will be interesting to monitor.
This move also raised eyebrows regarding two individuals who didn’t get the job: all-time great slugger Albert Pujols and current Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla, both of whom were reportedly finalists for the position. Niebla has already been reported as staying in his current role, which is a big win for San Diego considering his reputation as one of the best pitching minds in the league. But for Pujols to miss out on this opportunity after reportedly interviewing for both the Angels’ and Orioles’ openings is notable; the soon-to-be Hall of Famer’s desire to manage at the major-league level is apparent, but the league might not be interested in his services quite yet. Will Pujols try again next winter? Will such a wide array of big-league jobs be open again anytime soon? For a player of Pujols’ stature in the game’s history, failing to land a managerial position at this juncture is an interesting plot point in his post-playing career. — Shusterman
