A week before Thanksgiving, Nevada baseball coach Jake McKinley received a call from an unfamiliar 619 area code.
“I thought it was spam, honestly,” McKinley said.
He answered the call anyway. On the other end was justin Hollander, the general manager of the Seattle Mariners, inquiring about McKinley’s interest in a potential job with the team.
“Sure,” McKinley replied, not expecting much. But within 48 hours, he was offered Seattle’s major-league field coordinator position. With Major League Baseball operating under a tight permission window, McKinley faced a rapid decision: leave Nevada, a program he’d built over three years culminating in a Mountain West regular-season title last May, or stay.
McKinley, who was alerted to the Mariners’ interest by industry sources and had no prior relationship with Hollander, accepted the position, believing it offered the best path toward his ultimate goal – managing a big-league team.
“I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to manage in the major leagues, especially given my background as a small-college player that was never drafted,” said McKinley, who played at NAIA school Bethany University in Santa Cruz, Calif. “Where the industry is right now, that’s very possible. And I know there are only 30 of those jobs in the world,and thay’re very hard to get. But when you get with a club like the Mariners with a roster that’s as talented as theirs and the people they have,it suddenly feels like it could happen.”
The most challenging aspect of the decision was leaving nevada, which had given him his first Division I head-coaching job in 2022, following positions at Menlo College and William Jessup. McKinley officially informed his Wolf Pack players on Monday, with Nevada later announcing that his top assistant, Jordan Getzelman, would take over as head coach.
“Top-five worst conversations I’ve ever had,” McKinley said of telling his players he was leaving. “It was terrible. There’s no easy way to do it. I did it in three minutes. I think they hear that news and they don’t really hear much else of what you have to say. But what I shared with them is it’s an prospect to be at a high level, at the highest level. It’s a legitimate platform to maybe manage one day. given where I’m at in my life, it was not something I could say no to.
“And as the dust has settled,I know the players get it. They have expressed gratitude and they are happy for me, and I feel the same way about them. But this is bittersweet. It really hurts to walk away from this, and I’d always kind of targeted this team for years now. I had always targeted the ’26 team as a coach’s dream team, and it feels dirty to walk away from it, but I’m also really excited and ready to go two feet in with the Mariners.”
McKinley previously worked for a major-league institution with the Milwaukee Brewers, where he advanced to the franchise’s vice president of player growth. Though, the Mariners job differs significantly from his previous role, which was front-office based. In Seattle, McKinley will be part of the major-league staff, serving as a coach overseeing many day-to-day operations.
McKinley described the position as being the team’s chief of staff,working closely with Mariners manager Dan Wilson and bench coach Manny Acta.”Major-league field coordinator is essentially the person that runs the day-to-day operation for the team,” McKinley said. “So,I’ll run spring training,tying all these entities together,building schedules,overseeing the coaching protocols. And then with the day-to-day in the big leagues, it’s kind of the same thing. You’re running
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