From Menlo College to the majors: The unlikely rise of Jake McKinley

Considering these renegade Dodgers fans were leaning against the fence of Cartan Field, home of the Menlo College Oaks baseball team, maybe the phrase they should have embraced was: “Go Brewers.”

A playoff team for the fourth straight year, the Milwaukee Brewers and their winning ways have several key architects, including Matt Arnold, who Wednesday agreed to a contract extension as Milwaukee’s general manager. Among Arnold’s brain trust is Jake McKinley, director of player development initiatives, who formerly served as the head coach of Menlo College baseball from 2014-17.

“If you Google me or you look at the stats I made before I joined professional baseball, no one is going to be blown away,” McKinley said. “I spent a lot of time at small-college levels as a head coach where … you’re the scouting director, you’re the GM, you’re the manager, you’re the field crew. You have to wear so many hats. So, when I got to pro baseball, there still is culture shock to be honest with you.”

When McKinley was hired by the Brewers in 2018, he was coming off a historic season at William Jessup University.

And after posting a 131-91 record in four years at Menlo College, the Placerville native moved to his hometown school at William Jessup in Rocklin where he inherited a Warriors team coming off a 10-win season. In his first season at the helm, McKinley achieved a feat that was the baseball equivelant of walking on water, leading William Jessup to a 41-17 record.

“That was the biggest single-season turnaround in college baseball history at any level … so I think that kind of got my name out there,” McKinley said.

The constant through McKinley’s years as a player, a coach and now executive, is he has won at every stop along his extraordinary journey. It started as early as his varsity playing career at Union Mine High School, where the program won the Golden Empire League championship for the first and second time in program history during his junior and senior seasons.

During his collegiate career at Bethany University in Scotts Valley as a two-way player, however, McKinley — at a self-described “horribly coordinated” 6-5 — already knew where his career ambitions lied.

“I always knew I was going to be a coach,” McKinley said.

McKinley wins — a lot

From there, his resume touts a landslide of wins.

McKinley returned to his alma mater Bethany to start his coaching career. In his only year there as a volunteer assistant, the Bruins won a program-record 31 games. From there he moved to Campbellsville University in Kentucky, and as a graduate assistant helped the Tigers to the NAIA World Series. He returned to California at West Valley College-Saratoga, with the Vikings earning a playoff berth his one season there.

And in one year as a volunteer coach at Sacramento State in 2011, the Hornets won the Western Athletic Conference championship. The significance of McKinley’s year at Sac State was it marked the first time he got paid as a college coach. And the paycheck came in his final weeks with the program — when he was promoted to baseball recruiting coordinator — after serving most of the season as a volunteer coach.

“Just very humble beginnings, I guess,” McKinley said. “I just had to make some sacrifices.”

McKinley said the prospect of working in affiliated pro baseball was not even on his radar at the time. How could it be? He did dream of eventually landing at an NCAA Division I program, which he never did. Nonetheless he kept looking upward.

“When I was back doing that, my goal was to be a college head coach,” McKinley said. “Because at that time in the industry, somebody with my profile would have never had a chance of getting into a major league club because I didn’t play (professionally).”

Menlo give him his first head coaching gig

Keith Spataro, current Menlo College Vice President of Athletics, opened the door toward that goal when he hired McKinley for his first head coaching position in 2014.

“One of the reasons I did hire him is he had the ability to make people feel good about themselves and make people want to give him their best effort,” Spataro said.

In four years, McKinley became Menlo College’s all-time winningest coach. His 131 wins surpassed Ken Bowman’s 111 wins from 2003-08.

“Jake’s legacy, I think, is really geared towards … being able to identify talent that just wasn’t getting a shot somewhere else and being able to give them an opportunity, and really expose them to pro scouts,” Spataro said.

MLB comes calling

As things unfolded in the year after McKinley resigned his post at Cartan Field, he was the one drawing attention from pro scouts. Following his historic season at William Jessup, McKinley fielded several professional offers. He turned down a job offer to join the Minnesota Twins’ organization two weeks before the Brewers came calling, he said.

Pro baseball is a business

While McKinley has spent four years with the Brewers, he has worn different hats each season. He was hired as minor league co-pitching coordinator and then in December 2019 was promoted to director of player development. Focusing on that job was delayed a year, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic, during which McKinley was one of several executives assigned to run the Brewers’ alternative site at Appleton, Wisconsin.

In addition to presiding over emerging journeyman Jace Peterson — who taxied between Appleton and Milwaukee in 2020 before establishing himself as a major league regular down the stretch and through the playoffs in 2021 — McKinley said he formed a close kinship with pitcher J.P. Feyereisen, having breakfast with him almost every day.

With the Brewers making a push toward their franchise-record fourth straight National League postseason appearance in 2021, the theme of changing tides throughout McKinley’s career rolled another way, this time when Feyereisen was shipped out along with fellow relief pitcher Drew Rasmussen at the trade deadline to land shortstop Willy Adames from the Tampa Bay Rays.

“There’s a piece of it where you’re just bummed to see him go because you enjoy the company of those people,” McKinley said. “But then when you get pieces in return that help your team win, it’s just kind of the way the industry goes. But at the same time, I’ve just come to the point where any decision made by our front office, I just trust it.”

Enjoying the camaraderie

Amid those changing tides consistent throughout McKinley’s career in baseball, the camaraderie still surfaces.

“It’s way more important to me than any of the wins,” McKinley said. “You hear that a lot as a young coach — ‘just focus on your culture; the wins aren’t going to matter down the road’ — and, shoot, I can say on this end of it, it’s true.

“Especially at the college level, I’m really proud of the fact that our players liked coming to practice. They actively looked forward to coming to practice. When they stepped on the field, I think there was a belief that they were going to win; and if we didn’t win there was a belief we were going to win the next time.”

Those wins have been the constant during McKinley’s rise toward the top of the baseball world. There certainly have been plenty of them every stop along the way.