I had a thought process.
Early this morning, I was reading about the Nationals’ trifecta of relative youngsters:
Paul Toboni, their new head of baseball ops, is 35. Newly-hired manager Blake Butera is 33.
And now, Toboni has added Ani Kilambi to do the day-to-day stuff as GM, and Kilambi is 31. You add any of those two ages together, and you get, if not the median baseball ops honcho and manager, maybe something pretty close.
So, first I was thinking about whether we’d ever see a younger GM. But then I remembered that Theo Epstein and Jon Daniels were both GMs before they turned 30. Those cases were a little different, because Epstein was under Larry Lucchino (was in his 50s at the time) and Daniels “replaced” John Hart while Hart still stuck with the organization as a “senior adviser” forever. But, in any case, neither Toboni nor Kilambi are setting any records in terms of age (except maybe combined age, as noted above).
Then I wondered who the youngest on-field manager was. But, it turns out… back in 1914, Roger Peckinpaugh was an interim player-manager for the Yankees at age 23. Plus, some guy named Frank Quilici managed the Twins back in 1972 when he was even younger than Blake Butera will be when managing the Nationals next season.
So, anyway, Roger Peckinpaugh! He was pretty good. He had over 40 fWAR in his career. (Hilariously, he won the MVP award in a routine 2ish fWAR season. Oy.) He was only player-manager because the team’s manager resigned with a few weeks left in the season. But, anyway, too bad for Blake Butera and Frank Quilici and anyone else.
So, all that aside — if there were ever going to be a player-manager again, in the near future, which current MLBer do you think fits those shoes best?
I think the obvious choice is someone like Salvador Perez (because Yadier Molina isn’t even around anymore). Albert Pujols was interested in managing shortly after he was basically taking up space on a bench and occasionally pinch-hitting. A backup catcher who rarely plays may as well be a player-manager in some respects, too. And Ehire Adrianza specifically expressed interest in being a manager while being a rarely-used utility player. Maybe Kurt Suzuki could come back and also be a backup catcher for the Angels this year?
Anyway, who ya got?
