Where did new Marlins manager Skip Schumaker get his drive to succeed? Start with his high school days

Mike Chapman saw the qualities early in Skip Schumaker.

Before his 11-year MLB baseball career, before being part of two World Series teams with the St. Louis Cardinals, before he became a quick riser in the front office and coaching ranks over the past five years, Schumaker laid the foundation for his success — and his ability to get the best out of those around him — on the fields at Aliso Niguel High School in Southern California.

Aliso Niguel was in just its second year of existence when Schumaker was a freshman, a fledgling program yearning for a player or two to step up and set the standard early.

Schumacker became that guy.

He was incredible on the field, hitting .492 over his four seasons there. Aliso Niguel went undefeated in the Pacific Coast League during Chapman’s senior year and he was a two-time All-State selection.

But when Chapman reflects on his time coaching a teenage Schumaker, he focuses on what happened away from game day.

“I can’t even tell you the number of times, regardless of whether we were doing a baserunning drill or an infield drill or if we were playing wiffle ball in the mud because the fields got shut down that I would say ‘Guys, you see what Skip’s doing? Just do it like that’ when it came to effort and professional approach,” Chapman said in a phone interview with the Miami Herald earlier this week. “If we were sitting in my classroom, going over charts and scouting reports and looking at pitching tendencies, whatever it may have been. He just approached every one of those things the right way. He was a guy you could lean on with good players behind him and be able to always point them in the right direction.”

Nearly 25 years since his high school days ended, Jared “Skip” Schumaker has reached the newest height of his baseball career.

On Tuesday, the Miami Marlins announced Schumaker as the 14th manager in franchise history (not including one-game stints by Cookie Rojas in 1996 and Brandon Hyde in 2011).

While there are a plethora of highlight moments from his time in the big leagues to draw on, the 42-year-old Schumaker generally finds a way to tie his success back to those early high school days.

“This is where it all started,” Schumaker said in 2016, according to the Orange County Register, during one of his trips back to Aliso Niguel to talk with the baseball team. “I was very lucky to have a good coach here. I wasn’t born with any great talent. I worked at it here in high school. If these kids pick up one thing, I did my job.”

Now, he is preparing for the latest job, one that very well might be an uphill climb. Schumaker is inheriting a Marlins team five years into a rebuild and still failing to get over the hump to the winning ways that the Marlins have been preaching about attaining and with which Schumaker is accustomed over his career.

“Delivering a winning, sustainable culture with the expectation of getting into the postseason is the next step for this organization and South Florida,” Schumaker said in a release announcing his hire.

Schumaker’s hiring came at the end of a nearly month-long managerial search process for the Marlins that included at least 10 in-person interviews.

He was one of four finalists for the post along with Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro, Astros bench coach Joe Espada and Yankees third base coach (and former Mets manager) Luis Rojas.

General manager Kim Ng and chairman and principal owner Bruce Sherman interviewed the finalists. Ng and a select group of front office members handled the initial round of interviews.

Schumaker, 42, appeared to be a finalist from the start. His interview “wowed” the Marlins front office, and Miami identified him early as a possible successor to Don Mattingly.

In the press release announcing his hire, Ng cited three qualities that led them to hiring Schumaker: He was “an individual who had been a part of a winning culture,” his “reputation for tenacity and getting every ounce out of his ability” and his “leadership style, teaching skills and attention to detail.”

And while he’s in this position now, Schumaker initially wasn’t interested in coaching once he retired during spring training ahead of the 2016 season after initially signing a minor-league deal with the San Diego Padres. Sure, he had learned a lot being around the likes of Tony LaRussa and Dave McKay in St. Louis, but at that point, his focus was on his family. He had two kids — son Brody was 8 at the time, daughter Presley was 6.

“I knew I had a lot of information to give to players, but to be honest with you, I thought I had so much stuff to give to my son and high school kids in the area,” Schumaker said in a Q&A with The Athletic in 2018. “I wanted to be home with my family. I think the only time I thought this could really work is because it was close to home. I wouldn’t even consider a job that would uproot my family. If it was outside that hour-drive, I was out.”

Luckily for the Padres, San Diego was just about an hour away from Ladera Ranch, where the Schumakers live in the offseason.

And maybe no one was happier about that than then-Padres manager Andy Green.

Green was in his first year managing the Padres in 2016 when Schumaker signed that minor-league deal and eventually retired before playing a regular-season game with them. Schumaker stayed in org as assistant to baseball operations before joining Green’s staff in 2018 as first base coach.

“To find somebody who’s going to passionately convey the message and the fine details of the game, it’s harder than you think,” Green said in 2018 of Schumaker, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, “because most people end up brushing them aside at time. … Coaches tend to get complacent. That’s not gonna happen with him. He’s going to be on it all year long.”

Those characteristics were on display during his playing career.

It began at Aliso Niguel High and then at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he tied the single-season program record for hits (100) while batting .400 as a junior before being selected in the fifth round by the Cardinals in the 2001 MLB Draft.

“He was a great player for us,” former UC Santa Barbara coach Bob Brontsema said. “He was undersized and there’s some challenges in that type of stuff, so the mindset was always ‘Hey, can he make it to the big leagues?’ I know he had the talent to do it, but sometimes you don’t get the opportunity based on certain things.”

And then in the big leagues, where he carved out an 11-year playing career — eight with the Cardinals (2005-2012), one with the Los Angeles Dodgers (2013) and two with the Cincinnati Reds (2014-2015) — as a second baseman and outfielder. He was never the headliner on his team, but understood how to adapt to his role. He hit .278 with 28 home runs, 284 RBI and 416 runs scored over 1,149 regular-season games. The biggest hit of his career, though, was his go-ahead RBI double against Roy Halladay in the first inning of the Cardinals’ 1-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 5 of the 2011 National League Division Series en route to a World Series.

“I only know the way I grew up and the way I am, which is a little more intense than maybe the normal person,” Schumaker said in the 2018 San Diego Union-Tribune story. “That was the only way and I knew I needed it. If I had stepped off the gas even a little bit, I would have never gotten to Triple A, let alone the big leagues. I had to keep going.”

It continues in his post-playing career. After six years with the Padres — two as an assistant to baseball operations (2016-2017), two as first-base coach (2018-2019) and two as an associate manager to then-manager Jayce Tingler (2020-2021) — he returned to the Cardinals and served as first-year manager Oli Marmol’s bench coach.

“He’s a teacher, he understands and appreciates the fundamentals of the game, which we value here,” Marmol said about choosing Schumaker as his bench coach, according to The Athletic. “The guy is super detailed, very organized, which in that role you have to be.”

Those qualities he has shown his entire baseball life will be paramount as he heads to Miami.

“The sky’s the limit for him,” Chapman said. “I’ve never been around a person that worked harder and took things more seriously.”