SAN DIEGO _ Jayce Tingler grew up rooting for the Kansas City Royals. He was drafted into the Toronto Blue Jays organization. He came of age as a baseball man in 14 years with the Texas Rangers.
To say nothing of Tingler's minimal exposure to the majors, life in the National League will be new to the Padres' 38-year-old first-time manager.
The hope, Tingler said after pulling a 2019 brown Padres jersey over his shoulders Thursday morning at Petco Park, is to lean heavily on an experienced coaching staff while learning on the job in San Diego.
"I hope to learn quick," Tingler said. "I hope to have some people around with different areas of expertise and different experiences. The biggest way to combat it is you have game-plan early. You run through scenarios in your head. Those things come up. It usually slows down, but the reality is the game happens and sometimes you have to draw it up in the dirt."
Staff selection is on the to-do list as Tingler settles in as the 21st manager in Padres history. He and General Manager A.J. Preller have begun talking both with coaches on last year's staff as well as names outside the organization.
Tingler, too, has started connecting with current Padres players since Preller made his hiring official last week after a month-long interview process that included several names more well-known than Tingler's.
In the end, Preller's previous working relationship with Tingler during their days with the Rangers proved a prominent factor in hiring a first-time manager four years after giving Andy Green his first big league managerial job.
"I think the easy thing to do is when you make a decision and you don't quite get the result you're looking for, what you see a lot of times in pro sports is the team goes 180 degrees in a different direction," Preller said. "For us, we understood what we were looking for and the type of person we were looking for. To characterize all first-year managers as the same or all managers of a certain age group as the same, it's the same thing as looking at every scout over the age of 60 believes in XYZ. Everybody is different."
Preller added: "We talked about connecting. We talked about knowledge. We talked about passion and energy. We talked about work ethic. We talked about keeping it fun. ... It's had to know someone until you work with them on a day-to-day basis. That fact that me and Jayce have working experience, I know what to expect."
This time around, the expectations are significantly higher than the grace period that followed Green's arrival as the Padres entered a rebuild in 2016.
Green's dismissal was sealed as the team stumbled to a 29-52 finish on the heels of a 41-40 start, the Padres' first winning record at the 81-game mark since 2010, their last winning season.
With the likes of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Chris Paddack arriving as the Padres began their 10-year, $300 million investment in Manny Machado and more top prospects (MacKenzie Gore and Luis Patino) knocking on the door, neither Tingler nor Preller will have as much slack going forward.
Tingler received a three-year deal. Preller was extended through 2022 in the winter of 2017.
"The fact that we played .347 baseball after the All-Star Game was absolutely unacceptable," Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler said Thursday. "I watched the team on the field. You saw the team on the field. We were an embarrassment the last three or four weeks of the season and we're not going to do that. If we don't perform better in 2020 and 2021, we will make changes. That's absolutely it. A.J. knows that and is comfortable with it and I think so is Ting.
"We have to win and we have to win now. That's the expectation."
Fowler stopped short of putting on number on those expectations, although he indicated it was well over .500.
Tingler, too, said he'd prefer to first discuss those sort of expectations with the team, although he acknowledged he is indeed walking into a certainly more enviable position than most first-year managers.
The Padres have $444 million invested in Machado and Eric Hosmer on the corners of the infield. The 20-year-old Tatis might have stayed in the NL Rookie of the Year race had he not finished the year on the injured list. Paddack looked like ace-in-the-making at times in his rookie campaign, Dinelson Lamet and Garret Richards' have top-of-the-rotation stuff if they come all the way back from their Tommy John surgeries and Kirby Yates is coming off his first saves title.
"You've got a group here dying to win, truly passionate to win," Tingler said. "The reality is this is my first managing job and I don't think a lot of managing jobs the first time you come into a situation have pitchers like Paddack, like Richards, like Lamet, two catchers � one defensively like (Ausitn) Hedges and the upside of (Francisco) Mejia offensively, a switch hitter with a cannon (for an arm). I don't think run into situations on the infield corners with Machado and Hosmer, with arguably one of the best 20-year-olds on the planet at shortstop and the upside of (Luis) Urias in the infield. You can go through the outfield situation and then you look up at arguably one of the best three closers in the game in Kirby Yates.
"What have we inherited? We've got a lot of players with huge upside and in my small beginning phases beginning connecting with players over the phone they share that dying passion to win here in the city of San Diego."
