Padres expected to interview Mike Schildt for managerial job, per report

There hasn’t been much noise thus far regarding the San Diego Padres manager vacancy. There have been reports about the front office making their list of people they’d want to interview but nothing beyond that.

On Sunday night, The Athletic’s Dennis Lin reported on Twitter that the Padres are “expected to interview Mike Schildt for their managerial opening”. Schildt was recently fired by the St. Louis Cardinals due to “philosophical differences”, according to Cardinals president John Mozeliak.

Schildt is definitely someone the Padres should at least talk to, as it’s been reported that he has more of an old-school approach and he is liked by his players, including Paul Goldschmidt. “I think the coaching staff did an amazing job of staying positive when we weren’t playing well,” Goldschmidt told The Athletic this season. “There wasn’t many lineup changes or weren’t changes like, hey, we’re just gonna make a change just to make a change. [The Cardinals coaching staff] did believe in us.”

Schildt, of course, led the Cardinals to the postseason three years in a row, most recently here in 2021 where St. Louis fell to the Dodgers on a Chris Taylor walk off home run in the NL Wild Card game. It was just a few years back (in 2019) that the Cardinals were four wins away from the World Series.

One problem that could arise with Schildt possibly being the Padres next manager is his relationship with A.J. Preller. The Padres front office values analytics and it doesn’t seem like Schildt was ‘all in’ on analytics, so that could provide a disconnect between the manager and the front office, which is something Preller doesn’t want.

However, some of the names we’re hearing, such as Buck Showalter and Bruce Bochy, aren’t known to be ‘all in’ on analytics either. They, like Schildt, prefer managing more with feel, so Schildt’s managing style might not hurt him.

It’ll be interesting to see if anything more develops with Schildt and San Diego. He has proven he can get his team to October consistently and at the end of the day, that’s what the Padres should want in their next manager.