When I first met Blake Butera, we were in his small Spring Training office in West Palm Beach. The main thing I remember is the scented candles, a sign of his youth.
Over the last few weeks, through a series of questions before and after games, I’ve tried to get a better sense of how Butera thinks about the job.
Butera has become a more seasoned and experienced manager since arriving in Jupiter, Florida for Spring Training, but fundamentally, he is still the same person. He still has the same goals and mentality, but Butera, who turned 34 last week, has learned about the realities of managing a big league club.
As Butera put it, he has “been able to see things through a different lens” as he has gained experience. From bullpen management to knowing when to pull starters, Butera feels like he is learning something every game.
For this whole organization, they are constantly thinking about the process. That is something being done from the top down, and something Butera is constantly trying to do.
But it can be challenging for him. His head knows that he needs to be process oriented, but his heart lives and dies with every result.
With how the Nats season has gone, that has surely been on his mind often. There have been plenty of meltdowns this year, but Butera said, “As long as the process is good, you can live with the outcome, at least that is what I tell myself.”
That last part was telling. Butera may be the same person every day, but losing is something that clearly pushes him to the edge.
That combination of consistency and competitiveness is part of what has endeared him to his players. Jake Irvin told me that Butera is “very focused and diligent in his work.” He also mentioned that his new manager is the same guy every day.
But more importantly, Irvin pointed to the trust Butera has built. “The best managers I have had put trust in their players and communicate well,” Irvin said. “Blake has done both those things.”
Butera is a hands-on presence in a clubhouse that desperately needed that. He is constantly asking how to put his players in the best position to have success. That can even mean delivering hard truths to players. Irvin told me that Butera “tells you the truth whether you want to hear it or not.”
Butera is someone you would firmly characterize as a new school manager. However, Thursday revealed an old-school side of him that still matches with his player-first mentality.
He told me that if Cade Cavalli still had a no-hitter going, he would have been out for the ninth inning even if he was above 100 pitches.
For a few years now there have been a lot of debates about whether to let guys throw well over 100 pitches in pursuit of history. Earlier this season, the Marlins pulled Eury Perez after seven perfect innings.
Butera made it clear that was not his philosophy.
“If there was still a no-hitter, Cade would be pitching until he said he could not pitch anymore.”
Despite being a young, analytically minded manager, Butera appreciates the history of the game. He made it clear that he was not the type of manager to stand in the way of a no-hitter.
There have been times where Butera’s bullpen management has been questionable. It is something where he may even second guess himself. He is constantly thinking about the process and how he can get better. But there is another side to that.
You could see how desperate he was to get a victory during the team’s recent seven-game losing skid. That frustration boiled over when the normally even-keeled Butera got his first ejection as an MLB manager.
In a presser, Butera told a story about how his wife was upset that there wasn’t anything “juicier” that led to the ejection. She asked him what the umpire said that made him so mad, and Butera explained that he was just yelling at the dugout.
His wife was confused about how that made him so mad.“You don’t get it,” Butera told her. That angry side of Butera is not the norm. Most of the time he is calm and calculating. But it gets at the tension that has become more apparent as his first season has gone along.
Butera may not cut the most imposing figure and still looks at least five years younger than your average 34-year-old, but the competitive fire is burning.
He is a fresh-faced 34-year-old who loves talking about cutting-edge analytics in his office with scented candles. However, he is not the type to pull someone from a no-hitter and had the loud endorsement of a Hall of Famer in Mike Piazza.
Blake Butera is a process-oriented manager, or at least he tries to be. In a 162 game season, you can’t live or die by every result. But that can be tough for Butera, who leaves no stone unturned in his goal of winning as many games as possible.
Maybe that is why the most revealing thing Butera said was not that he can live with a bad outcome when the process is good. It was what he added afterward. “At least that is what I tell myself.”