Marlins introduce Schumaker as manager. His task: Instill winning mentality team has lacked
The nickname is fitting for the job he has now.
But the reason new Miami Marlins manager Jared Schumaker has gone by “Skip” for nearly all of his life has very little to do with baseball.
“There were a few Jareds on my tee ball team, and I could do a lot of things athletically, but skipping for whatever reason was an issue,” Schumaker said. “My dad didn’t love the name Jared for whatever reason, but my mom named me — they’re still married, so that wasn’t a big thing — and he thought it’d be funny to nickname me Skip. Here we are about 40 years later.”
And here he is. Skip is now the Marlins’ skipper.
The Marlins on Thursday introduced Schumaker as the 14th manager in the franchise’s 31-year history (not including the one-game stints by Cookie Rojas in 1996 and Brandon Hyde in 2011). He sat alongside chairman and principal owner Bruce Sherman and general manager Kim Ng at loanDepot park. He put on a Marlins uniform for the first time.
And then the conversation from all three focused on a topic the Marlins have discussed for years but have yet to be able to steadily implement.
“The first thing [Ng] was talking about was winning,” Schumaker said, “and we’re ready to win. How do we get to the postseason is what I’m concerned about every single day as a coach — and not just one year, but year after year after year. That’s the expectation I’m going to bring when I enter that clubhouse.”
As nice as that sounds, the task won’t necessarily be an easy one for Schumaker, the 42-year-old fast riser who is becoming a manager for the first time. The Marlins are coming off a 69-93 season, and while there are some promising players to work with (namely starting pitcher Sandy Alcantara and infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr.), the roster needs upgrades if Miami wants to make that playoff push anytime soon.
Schumaker understands that.
He also understands what it takes to win.
He played 11 MLB seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals (2005-2012), Los Angeles Dodgers (2013) and Cincinnati Reds (2014-2015), winning a pair of World Series titles with the Cardinals in 2006 and 2011. He was never the star on his team, but he managed to carve out a career in which he played 1,149 career games and made the postseason six times.
“You don’t want to be a bench player,” Schumaker said, “but because I was a bench player, I got to learn and navigate the game.”
That helped as he transitioned away from playing. After retiring from playing in spring training 2016, he served as an assistant to baseball operations and player development for the Padres from 2016-17, joined San Diego’s field staff as the first-base coach (2018-19) and associate manager (2020-21) and then rekindled his relationship with the Cardinals as their bench coach in 2021.
“Winning doesn’t come easily, and there are a lot of steps to it,” Ng said. “You not only have the primary process, but then you’ve got the execution. I think for me, one of the things that really struck me about Skip was his steadiness and his consistency. I think that’s one of the things that is just so different about our sport. ... To have that consistency and that level of effort, that stuck with me as well.”
The interview process
Schumaker is quick to admit the start of the process caught him off guard. St. Louis had just been eliminated in the wild card round of the MLB playoffs a few days earlier when Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak called Schumaker to let him know the Marlins were interested in interviewing him for their managerial opening.
“It was a little shocking, you know?” Schumaker said, reflecting on the events from last month. “I was just super disappointed [about the Cardinals being eliminated] and then all of a sudden, I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, this could really happen.’”
The initial interview took place in San Diego, about an hour south of where Schumaker and his family live in the offseason. Schumaker estimated it lasted about three hours (“I think I might have taken a bathroom break and that was about it,” Schumaker said).
(Sherman said the Marlins traveled to most of their managerial candidates during the interview process instead of having them come to Miami.)
Ng said that within five minutes of their first interview with him that it was clear “his vision, his attitude, his work ethic, his attention to detail and his communication skills embodied that desire.”
Schumaker got a second interview a week later, meeting with Ng, Sherman and the rest of the ownership group in New York. Another three-hour round of questioning followed by dinner ensued.
“He did all his homework,” said Sherman, who quipped that he probably asked about 60 percent of the questions during the second interview.
About two weeks after that, Ng called him to inform him he was their guy.
“I saw my family’s reaction when I said ‘Do you want to become a Marlin?’” Schumaker said, “and that was the sign I needed. And here we are.”
What’s next
Schumaker’s next tasks are personal. He has started to get in touch with players over lunch, dinner, phone calls and Zoom calls. He said to this point he has talked with about seven or eight players.
“I don’t want to go to spring training and that’s the first time they see me,” Schumaker said. “I want to build that relationship before and let them know what I’m about.”
Next is finalizing his coaching staff. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. has returned. The rest of the staff is still being sorted out, although Schumaker said “the guys on my staff will be guys I’ve known already in some way: either I played with, coached with or I’ve known from being on the other side.”
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