Mike Shildt retires as Padres manager

SAN DIEGO — Mike Shildt stood in a corner of the visiting clubhouse at Wrigley Field after the San Diego Padres’ final game of 2025.

He spoke in a soft voice about the love he had for his players and the culture that had been built in his two seasons as manager.

He was devastated and proud and tired.

And he was done.

He was fairly certain of that as he looked around the room that night after a 3-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs in Game 3 of the National League wild-card Series.

Nine days later, Shildt made his retirement official.

After two seasons as the Padres’ manager, he is walking away from a contract that has two years remaining, citing a “severe toll” the job has taken on him “mentally and physically.”

Shildt, who has led his team to the postseason in each of the five full seasons he has managed, informed the Padres of his decision on Saturday.

In a letter he emailed to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Shildt said, “It’s time I take care of myself and exit on my terms.”

Shildt and two Padres sources said that the decision to retire was Shildt’s alone.

The 56-year-old Shildt finishes his managerial career with a 435-340 record. That .561 winning percentage is tied for 20th all-time among those who managed at least 750 games and ranks seventh among men whose managerial careers extended past 1951.

His teams won at least 90 games in each of the four 162-game seasons he managed, 2019 and ‘21 with the Cardinals and in 2024 and ‘25 with the Padres.

The Padres won 93 games in 2024 before losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Division Series and 90 games in 2025 before the NLwild-card loss to the Cubs.

In a statement, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said: “We would like to congratulate Mike on a successful career and thank him for his significant contributions to the Padres and the San Diego community over the last four years, including consecutive 90-win seasons and two postseason appearances as manager. His dedication and passion for the game of baseball will leave an impact on our organization, and we wish him the best in his next chapter. The search for a new manager of the Padres will begin immediately with the goal of winning a World Series championship in 2026.”

The new manager will be the Padres’ third since 2022 and the fourth since Andy Green was fired near the end of the 2019 season.

There are now eight managerial openings across MLB.

The Padres will likely interview some members of the organization.

Pitching coach Ruben Niebla, who has molded a successful pitching staff that has been in nearly constant flux over the past four seasons, would seemingly be a lock to be interviewed.

Baseball operations special assistant A.J. Ellis, a longtime major league catcher who worked closely with Shildt this past season, is widely considered a future manager.

Scott Servais, who managed the Mariners from 2016 to ‘24 and was a catcher in the major leagues for 11 seasons, is now a special assistant in player development who is highly regarded in the organization.

The Padres could also interview bench coach Brian Esposito and former player Mark Loretta, who serves as a special assistant to CEO Erik Greupner.

Whoever replaces Shildt will inherit most of the core from a club that won 183 games over the past two seasons, most in franchise history over any two-year span. The 2026 Padres will try to do something unprecedented in the franchise’s existence by becoming the third consecutive Padres team to make the postseason.

It is safe to say Shildt left the team in better shape than he found them.

The North Carolina native, who never played professionally, came to the Padres after 18 years in the Cardinals’ organization, where he rose from regional scout in 2003 to big-league manager in 2018.

He became a minor-league coach in 2005 and managed in the minor leagues from 2009 through 2016 before joining the Cardinals’ major league staff in 2017. In June 2018, when Mike Matheny was fired, Shildt took over as interim manager.

The Cardinals went 41-28 the rest of that season, and he was given the job on a permanent basis.

Shildt was named NL Manager of the Year and the Cardinals advanced to the NL Championship Series in 2019. They lost a wild-card series to the Padres after the covid-shortened 2020 season and made the NL wild-card game in 2021.

A little more than a week after the Cardinals lost that game to the Dodgers on a walk-off home run in the ninth inning, Shildt was fired for what the Cardinals termed “philosophical differences.”

He spent the next two years working for the Padres as a “player development consultant.” The role evolved into his spending the majority of his time with the major league team, and he served as a fill-in coach at first base and third base.

Shildt was the favorite from the start to get the managerial job vacated by Bob Melvin, who departed in October 2023 to manage the Giants.

The Padres were coming off a highly disappointing season, in which a team with the third-highest payroll in the major leagues went 82-80 and missed the postseason.

There was discord between Melvin and the front office and a lack of cohesiveness in the clubhouse.

Just eight days before Shildt’s hiring was announced, beloved team chairman Peter Seidler died.

Shildt entered the job with eyes wide open, having observed all facets of the organization.

Perhaps his greatest contribution — even before instilling a style of play that emphasized winning on the margins — was changing the leadership dynamic in the clubhouse.

Within five weeks of his hiring, he had traveled the country, as well as the Caribbean, to meet individually with several players who had been with the team for multiple years. He listened to what they said, made suggestions and then brought them together. Those players credited him with fostering cohesion and empowering them to run the clubhouse in ways that were important to them.

Shildt then got the players to buy into a brand of baseball that was fundamentally sound and often relied on manufacturing runs and out-executing opponents.

He managed virtually every game with an urgency that was uncommon in a sport that has 162 of them in a season. He was worn out at the end of days that involved spending 12 hours at the ballpark. He is unmarried and essentially never stopped thinking about the players, the opponent, the best ways to win.

And, by his telling, his single-minded devotion to all aspects of the job came at the expense of his overall well-being.

So the man whose path to becoming a big-league manager was extremely unique — given that he did not play past college and got his start as a high school coach — made a rare decision to call it a career.

It was in the season’s last month, he said, that he came to the realization he might need to step down.

In his open letter, Shildt said: “After 34 years of dedicating myself to the rigors of coaching and managing, I can with great enjoyment look back on achieving my two primary goals: To help players get the most out of their God-given ability and become better men. Also, to win games. I move forward with a smile on my face, contentment in my soul and genuine excitement for what God has next.”

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