Marlins managerial search: what makes Craig Albernaz 'a big candidate'

The Miami Marlins have big shoes to fill after breaking up with manager Skip Schumaker. Although the official announcement didn't come until after their regular season finale, it had been an open secret throughout the 2024 season that change was coming, so the Marlins front office has had ample time to consider what qualities they're looking for in his successor.

In addition to Luis Urueta, who served as Schumaker's bench coach over the last two years, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports that Craig Albernaz is "a big candidate" for the job.

Albernaz is finishing up his 19th season in professional baseball, nine as a player and 10 as a coach. Most of that time was spent with the Tampa Bay Rays organization where he crossed paths with current Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix.

Albernaz was a catcher at Eckerd College, which is practically walking distance away from Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, FL. He signed with the then-Devil Rays as an undrafted free agent in 2006 and played eight minor league seasons with them, tasting Triple-A in five separate years but not showing enough potential with his bat to earn a call-up to the majors. The final season of his playing career was 2014 with the Detroit Tigers' Double-A affiliate.

Per FanGraphs, Albernaz's 50 wRC+ from 2006-2014 was a bottom-10 mark among all MiLB players who had 1,000-plus plate appearances during that same period. On the other hand, it speaks to his defensive ability and character that he was retained for as long as he was despite those limitations at the plate.

Returning to the Rays organization, Albernaz ironically began his post-playing career as a minor league hitting coach in 2015. He managed at the Short-Season A and Low-A levels in 2017 and 2018, respectively, winning Midwest League Manager of the Year honors for the latter season. He then spent 2019 as Tampa Bay's minor league field coordinator before making the leap to a major league coaching staff, serving as bullpen/catching coach of the San Francisco Giants for all four seasons of Gabe Kapler's managerial tenure (2020-2023). Kapler is now an assistant general manager for the Marlins.

It's unclear how much influence Kapler will have on who the Marlins hire, but Albernaz described him as "an elite communicator" on the Elite Baseball Development Podcast in 2022.

When the Giants fired Kapler last year, Albernaz was interviewed by the Cleveland Guardians for their managerial vacancy. As richly reported by Zack Meisel of The Athletic, Stephen Vogt and Albernaz are close friends who navigated the process together even as they were directly competing for the top job in Cleveland. The Guardians chose Vogt as skipper, but he immediately recruited Albernaz to join his staff as bench coach. They have led their new club to within a win of the American League Championship Series (ALDS Game 5 vs. the Detroit Tigers is on Saturday).

More from Meisel's article:

Albernaz spends his afternoons thinking up every possible scenario that might arise during a game so Vogt isn’t caught unprepared. Vogt dubbed him “the hardest-working person in baseball,” an “Energizer Bunny” who stays up “all hours of the night diving into one small thing if it can help one of our players get just a tick better.”

Vogt was ejected only once during the 2024 season, so Albernaz's experience as an acting MLB manager has been limited to a couple innings thus far. That is part of the risk of hiring a first-timer, though Schumaker also came to the Marlins fresh off a single season of bench coach duty and handled the transition well.

Presumably, Albernaz will formally interview with Miami soon after the Guardians' playoff run ends.