Last week, Alyssa Nakken had an official interview for the Giants’ vacant managerial position. Nakken has been on the Giants coaching staff since 2020, and in that time she has worked with the team on outfield drills, baserunning, and the occasional stint as first base coach. Every player who’s spoken publicly about her has praised her ability to teach and her knowledge of the game, and she’s clearly been considered a key member of the staff since she’s been around. Now she is (at least believed to be) the first woman to ever be a serious candidate for manager of a Major League Baseball team.
Oh, that was all per a report at The Athletic. Where’s my shout out, Baggs?
So it makes sense that she would be one of the current Giants coaches, along with Kai Correa and Mark Hallberg, who gets an interview for the big job. She’s qualified, she’s well regarded, she’s popular among the fanbase, she’s popular among the players, she’s an effective communicator and teacher, and she has a bright future in the game. Alyssa Nakken checks all the boxes.
I mean, they’re not going to hire her, but she checks all the boxes of someone they could hire.
Nakken has coaching experience, but not bench coaching or managerial experience. She has some experience with evaluating pinch hitting options, but nothing like the gamut of in-game decisions a manager has to make. She’s respected as a coach, but it takes years in the game to build the kind of respect you have to have as a manager, and she’s already got a strike against her due to not being a man. And also, and possibly most importantly, the Giants very badly want to look outside of the organization for some new blood.
The 2023 Giants didn’t only collapse on the field. They also collapsed in public perception. Nakken was personally insulated from that — I haven’t seen people mad at her in the same way they’re mad at Kapler or Justin Viele, for example — but she was still a part of the old guard that failed. What the team seems to be looking for is an outsider, because they need the new face of the team to be someone who hasn’t been around for the mediocrity (and worse!) of 2022 and 2023. Whether that’s Donnie Ecker or Stephen Vogt or whoever else, they want that fresh start in the minds of fans. Fans have not been invested in this team at all over the last couple of years, and changing that perception is a vital part of changing the manager.
Nakken would do that to an extent — hiring the first female MLB manager would change perceptions — but would that be enough to overcome her lack of outsiderliness? Would the first woman to be an MLB manager be seen as her own person or as an extension of her team’s front office? And would the pluses (both the PR aspect and the fact that Alyssa Nakken is good at coaching) outweigh the minuses (her lack of experience in an awful lot of areas where a manager needs experience)?
I think the team is serious about seeing what she has to say and how she represents herself, and it’s serious about giving her the opportunity to be in that room, getting the experience of having that interview. One day, she’ll have a longer resumé and she’ll be a little more prepared than she otherwise would have been. One day, she’ll be making the decisions. She’ll be in charge.
Unless she does too well and guides her team into the playoffs, in which case they’ll decide to hire someone to supersede her authority. You know, like Kim Ng!
Ng stepped down as Marlins GM yesterday, declining a mutual option after she built a postseason team in South Florida for the first time since 2020, and only the second time since 2003. After the first couple of hours, which included all the typical “The Marlins thank Kim Ng for her time with us” and “I thank the Marlins for my time with them” boilerplate, the truth finally came out: Kim Ng was a GM, and the Marlins wanted to hire a President of Baseball Operations to be her new boss.
She had just done her job better than anyone in her position in 20 years (no, I am not counting 2020 as a real postseason, and honestly, 2023 barely counts itself), and her reward was an effective demotion. Instead of giving her a new 3-year deal, the Marlins picked up her option, making her a lame-duck GM who was about to lose her autonomy. Obviously, that was not going to be acceptable, and so she left. Perhaps she’ll go to the Red Sox, always a good landing spot for executives looking to escape dysfunction.
As to the specifics of why she’s out in Miami, some information has trickled out. Ng wanted to make changes in the front office that ownership didn’t want. Ownership was strongly in favor of using analytics in ways that Ng disagreed with. A couple of the free agents she signed — Jean Segura and Yuli Gurriel — flopped, and for a team as notoriously cheap as the Marlins, that’s a tough pill to swallow.
But you have to imagine her gender played a part in this. You have to think that a man in Ng’s position would not have been treated in the same way. There are similarities to Derek Jeter’s exit from the Marlins in early 2022, but that team wasn’t coming off a playoff berth, which historically speaking are popular among fans and owners. It seems like Bruce Sherman didn’t like the direction of the franchise, and wanted to make a correction. There are legitimate criticisms of the season the Marlins had (their phenomenal record in one-run games is unsustainable and points to a team due for regression in 2024), but they seem less important than the undeniable fact that the team won this year.
Is this what Alyssa Nakken would have to look forward to as Giants manager? No matter what she does, how successful she is, would she always be just one owner away from being out of a job? We like to think the Giants are better than that, and maybe they generally are, but front offices change. Ownership groups change. Even if you think they wouldn’t do that, you don’t know who “they” will be tomorrow, and that they could do anything, and not in a fun Girl Power way.
I mean, also in a fun Girl Power way, but not necessarily. Probably not, if we’re being honest.
What Kim Ng did was hard. What Alyssa Nakken is trying to do is hard. It’s hard for anyone, but it’s triply hard for women. Even if you do a good job, or a great job, there’s not necessarily a reward coming. It’s a lot more likely that you won’t be a trailblazer than that you will. But it would be worth it to see Nakken leading that dugout one day. It would be thrilling. It would be inspiring. It would be something that Giants fans could be proud of for a long, long time. I’m rooting for Nakken, even if I’m expecting Stephen Vogt.
Maestro - I agree with everything you said, but Alyssa was never a catcher. (Also, she's not ready yet.) I'm rooting for Stephen Vogt.
I posted this, half tongue-in-cheek, on los Gigantes blog (togetherweregiants.com) yesterday:
Since los G's are extending courtesy interviews to all their coaches, why not include Taira Uematsu? They both started as interns and worked their way up the ladder and into the dugout.
No offense meant to Allysa Naaken whatsoever, but I think they're just using her for PR cred. At least she can add it to her resume when Katy Ng interviews her for a job with her next team.