I was surprised as anyone by Mike Shildt’s retirement. I wasn’t a big fan of his stubbornness and how he constructed the lineup (Arraez batting 2nd all season) and his use of the bullpen (sticking with Suarez as the closer after acquiring Mason Miller and the way he used Wandy Peralta in high leverage situations) but considering the Padres won 90+ games in back to back seasons for the first time and made the playoffs in back to back years, it was expected for him to be back another year.

But once he retired and word came out about some of the coaching staff and support staff issues, you can see why he would be burnt out trying to do a tough job and working with everyone in the org. Being a sports manager/coach at the professional or college level isn’t an easy job with all the committments you have with players, coaches, the org and media. Maybe it was better for everyone if he left at this time.

What’s interesting is reading about how Ryan Flaherty was AJ Preller’s preferred choice for manager two years ago but he may have been overruled by Eric Kutsenda and Erik Greupner. When the decision was announced then that Mike Shildt would be the new manager, I liked the decision as you were going with someone who had been inside the team for the past two years to understand the team dynamics and organizational structure and was an experienced winning manager. You figured he would keep going what had been built, better handle some of the issues (like the strife between AJ Preller and Bob Melvin) and could keep it running for several years.

And Shildt did exactly that with how they won in 2024 but 2025 you started to see maybe why he left St. Louis because of “philosophical differences”. It was with the way he managed the team as there’s no way the analytics team wasn’t telling him that Arraez shouldn’t be batting second with how much he struggled throughout the season not should he have continued playing first base over Ryan O’Hearn who is a much better defender by the metrics at 1B.

As the search turns to the new manager, my ideal scenario would be to bring back Bruce Bochy for two years and promise Ruben Niebla to be the next manager. Bochy being 70 isn’t going to manage much longer (if he does manage again) so why not bring him home to take it over the finish line like what he did with the Texas Rangers.

He knows how to win and push the right buttons in the playoffs and someone like him would be respected in the clubhouse to make the tough decisions. It feels like part of the reason Mike Shildt didn’t want to make changes was the relationships he built with players that he didn’t want to upset even though it was in the best interests of the club and that’s where I can see Bochy doing this and getting the players onboard. And it would be great to have Boch finish out his managerial career with his first team and get us the elusive first World Series title.

But realistically it doesn’t seem this will happen from what I’ve read (doesn’t seem the Padres want to bring him back and not sure Bochy wants to come back into this) so will be interesting to see who the next manager is.