Here's the most important trait for today's modern manager to succeed

It was 65 years ago next month that owner Philip K. Wrigley used the Cubs’ annual press luncheon to make a bold announcement about the club’s next manager.

Namely, that there would not be one.

“This is the day of specialists,” Wrigley was quoted in the Sporting News, “and I think it makes good sense to get the best men for each individual job. They do it in football, and it works quite well.”

With that, the Cubs, in 1961, became the first -- and last -- MLB team to pivot away from a traditional skipper and instead use what they called a “College of Coaches.”

Over the next two seasons, a “faculty” of guys named El Tappe, Charlie Grimm, Goldie Holdt, Bobby Adams, Harry Craft, Verlon Walker, Ripper Collins and Vedie Himsl all temporarily occupied the “head coach” position at one time or another.

Amid all that rotating, the only constant was the losing. The Cubs dropped 90 games in 1961 and 103 in 1962.

By the spring of 1963, even President John F. Kennedy was roasting them, in the midst of a speech about automation reducing the American workforce.

“Chicago… provides the exception to this pattern,” said Kennedy, “since it now takes 10 men to manage the Cubs instead of one.”

When it comes to rethinking the manager role, nothing could possibly rival that ill-fated and short-lived Cubs catastrophe.

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But the MLB skipper world is intriguingly odd these days.

Ten of the 30 MLB teams formally filled their managerial roles this winter, whether it was by removing the interim tag for a skipper who had been thrust into duty midseason in 2025 (the Pirates’ Don Kelly and the Rockies’ Warren Schaeffer), by promoting from within (the Braves’ Walt Weiss, the Rangers’ Skip Schumaker, the Padres’ Craig Stammen and the Angels’ Kurt Suzuki) or by hiring from the outside (the Giants’ Tony Vitello, the Nationals’ Blake Butera, the Orioles’ Craig Albernaz and the Twins’ Derek Shelton).

The only hires in that group who have managed a full MLB season at any point were Schumaker, Weiss and Shelton. The others are all examples of teams giving new blood an opportunity to shine, and some of those decisions demonstrate the extremes of who qualifies as a managerial candidate in the modern game.

Stammen, for instance, was a Major League pitcher as recently as 2022 and, though he served as an assistant on the big league coaching staff and in the baseball operations department, he had never formally served as a coach or managed a game at any level. That he went from relieving games to managing them only adds to the historical oddity of his hire. He went from helping the Padres interview candidates to becoming the guy who got the job.

Suzuki is another former MLB player who has never previously managed a game, and Kelly was in that same category at the time the Pirates installed him as Shelton’s replacement midway through 2025.

Butera traveled a slightly more traditional path, having at least managed four Minor League seasons in the Rays’ organization (albeit none above Class A, with his most recent managerial duty in 2022). But it was his expedited path -- elevated to Major League manager at the age of 33 – that makes him an outlier. He’s the youngest MLB skipper since the Twins hired Frank Quilici way back in 1972.

And then, of course, there’s Vitello, who, after a successful run at the University of Tennessee, is making history as the first college head coach to become an MLB manager without any previous professional coaching experience.

All of which is to say that there was no paint-by-numbers or groupthink approach applied to these hires. Teams went about it in wildly different ways.

And some, while not quite as creative as the 1961 Cubs, weren’t afraid to go rogue.

“It’s awesome,” said Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, “to see our position grow.”

Back in May 2009, Hinch was named the manager of the Diamondbacks, replacing Bob Melvin midseason. Hinch had been Arizona’s farm director and had never managed before. He was only 34 years old.

The D-backs’ players, by and large, were aghast, and their displeasure was a big reason why Hinch, who was fired in July 2010, didn’t last long in that particular experiment.

“A lot of the guys were like, ‘We fired a good manager, and [Hinch] hasn’t even been on the field,’” catcher Miguel Montero told The Athletic in 2018. “He hadn’t even coached."

Obviously, as this batch of hires indicates, times have changed.

So if coaching experience, or a 40th birthday, or even a previous tie to affiliated professional baseball is not necessarily a prerequisite to be an MLB manager, just what the heck is?

What makes for a good managerial candidate in the modern game?

At the Winter Meetings, we posed that question to a number of the people currently filling the jobs, and you know what we didn’t hear?

Nothing about bullpen management.

Nothing about lineup construction.

Nothing about deciding when to bunt or when to let a hitter swing away at a 3-0 pitch, or when to hit and run or when to make a mound visit.

No. We heard some variation of the same sentiment, over and over.

“It’s your messaging to the group,” said White Sox manager Will Venable, who was hired prior to 2025, “and being able to connect with the group.”

Added D-backs manager Torey Lovullo, who has been on the job since 2017: “Being able to connect people,” said D-backs manager Torey Lovullo, who has been on the job since 2017. “The X's and O's? We’re all the same. We're not any smarter than the next manager. We can do what's right. But I think handling personalities is going to be the most important thing.”

Also Hinch, now on his third team and entering his 13th season as a skipper: “The ultimate is communication skills. Those communication skills are important to the player to get buy-in, and also important in partnership with the front office to be a leader in the organization.”

And Schumaker, who was NL Manager of the Year while with the Marlins in 2023: “The relatability is a big deal for a lot of people in the game today and a lot of how the players think.”

Being an effective communicator has always been important in this or any management position.

But in baseball, that trait means something much different now than it did in generations past.

Rosters expanded to 26 players this decade. Everything else has expanded, too.

Managers have larger coaching staffs than they once did. The baseball operations staffs, which today include research and development (aka analytics) groups and medical groups, have exploded in size. (At the Winter Meetings, some teams had their staffs scattered across several area hotels because it was impossible to house them all in the same place.)

“There's a lot of bodies,” said Venable, “and a lot of people you have to communicate with.”

Obviously, the front-facing duties with the media in what has become a 24/7 news and social media environment is its own animal. The modern manager has been compared to a White House press secretary, but not even the White House press secretary speaks at the podium twice a day like MLB managers (and never after a late lead is blown by the bullpen).

That’s why teams try to find the best of both worlds -- someone who can say the right thing both publicly and privately.

(And yes, hopefully they know how to manage a ‘pen, too.)

“It's okay to not have the answers,” said the Guardians’ Stephen Vogt, who has managed two seasons and won AL Manager of the Year after both of them. “It's okay to say, ‘I don't know’ or to use the resources around you. I think that's one of the things that I learned really early was that if I don't know, I'll ask the smart people around me to hopefully have the answer.”

Given his rapid success as a skipper after his own playing career wrapped in 2022 (with one season as the Mariners’ bullpen coach in-between), Vogt is considered by some to be a model for what teams are currently seeking. He is affable and approachable, a lover of people and also humble enough to know what he doesn’t know.

But when asked why people like he and Suzuki and Stammen are getting these manager opportunities so soon after retiring as players, Vogt gave an enlightening answer.

“I think the people right around my age or that era of player, we played through a very unique time where we broke into the big leagues and came up through the Minor Leagues with absolutely zero information,” Vogt said. “And then, during our big league careers, we had every piece of information thrown at us, and we were expected to go use that on the field. And so I think we were raised in an old-school world, but then we played through the transition.

“So now I feel like we have a very good understanding of how to apply information, while not losing sight of maybe the gut feel. And so I think it's a really unique time period from like 2008 to 2020 that we learned all of that.”

It's probably not simple enough to suggest that the ideal managerial candidate will have played in MLB from 2008 to 2020 (though that just so happens to be the exact range of the MLB playing career of catcher Francisco Cervelli, who will manage Team Italy in the upcoming World Baseball Classic), but that ability to navigate the game’s overload of information is essential.

Reds skipper Terry Francona is, alongside Brewers manager Pat Murphy, one of only two current managers to have been born in the 1950s. And Francona is the only current skipper to have managed an MLB game prior to the 21st century. So to point out to him that the managerial pool is getting younger is blatantly stating the obvious.

But Francona, too, made an interesting point when he noted that team baseball operations groups increasingly shaped by young and analytical minds must be careful not to base their managerial hiring decisions too much on how the prospective skipper communicates with the front office.

“Is [the hire] for [the front office] or for the players?” Francona said. “Somebody who can talk to the front office is great. But you’ve got to be able to talk to a player, too. And sometimes that’s very different. If you can do both, you’re good.”

As this new batch of hires indicates, managers can come from all kinds of different experience levels. And considering six of the 12 Manager of the Year honors handed out this century went to guys who are no longer with those clubs, the job is always subject to change.

But at least we can say the importance of communication is a constant, even if its application is evolving.

And at least we still have a manager for every team… until or unless a club goes really rogue and brings back the College of Coaches.