Craig Albernaz and Blake Butera begin their major league managing careers with honest talk — and razzing

It was a little early for Blake Butera’s phone to be ringing.

The sun hadn’t risen, but Butera was in his office at the Washington Nationals’ spring training complex in West Palm Beach, Florida. He picked up the phone and saw his close friend’s name. He answered the FaceTime call, and a gruff Massachusetts accent greeted him.

“Just making sure you’re clocking in,” said Craig Albernaz, the new manager of the Baltimore Orioles, who was starting his day on the opposite coast of Florida.

“I beat you here, buddy,” Butera chirped back. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning!”

This is their relationship. The two first-time major league managers have been close friends since 2015. Over the decade-plus of knowing each other, their love language takes the form of shit-talking bravado, but don’t confuse it for animosity. They are tight. Albernaz even joked to Butera when they were hired by their clubs that they should share a house at the midway point between Baltimore and Washington.

That didn’t happen — their wives may have put a stopper in that roommate idea — but there’s something fitting about Butera and Albernaz beginning their managerial journeys so close together.

“We have a lot of trust in each other,” Albernaz said. “We can tell each other the truth and then not get offended, and so the ability to have that sounding board for both of us is huge for both of us going through our first year.”

This has long seemed the likely path for both. They were mediocre minor league players, but their passion for — and knowledge of — the game made them stand out.

Go back to 2015, when the Tampa Bay Rays drafted Butera in the 35th round from Boston College. His first stop: Princeton, West Virginia, where Albernaz was the hitting coach for the rookie ball affiliate.

The Rays have a 30-day rule for newly drafted players. They instruct their coaching staff to leave the new players alone for a month, giving them no tips or feedback, just letting them play. Butera wanted no part of it.

The young middle infielder, eager to improve, enlisted the help of his teammate Brett Sullivan.

“Hey, Sully, can you ask Alby, if you were me, how would you help me hit right now?” Albernaz recalled Butera saying.

Albernaz saw through the work-around. But that, plus the close-knit nature of the entire team living in a hotel in Appalachia together, meant Albernaz quickly learned Butera had a future in this game, one way or another.

That future came in coaching more quickly than imagined. By 2017, Albernaz had become the manager of the Hudson Valley Renegades. A fresh-faced Butera, two years after being drafted, became Albernaz’s first base coach. They’ve continued rising the ranks together ever since.

“The one thing with Alby is he’s always going to be himself,” Butera said. “He’s never going to fake anything. So the Craig Albernaz we had as a manager in 2017 is the same one we’re going to see this year in 2026 in terms of personality and the way he goes about his business. He’s always going to be first one to the field, ton of energy, always smiling, talking smack to guys. That’s just who he is.”

Butera isn’t much different, which could be why he and Albernaz get along so well.

“He’s very disarming. He’s super smart; he’s detailed; he’s organized,” Albernaz said. “He can literally do whatever he wants in this game. I knew that from that year he was my first base coach and I was a manager. Like, this kid is going to do whatever he wants in this game.”

So here they are, a 43-year-old Albernaz and 33-year-old Butera, leading their clubs. Albernaz earned this opportunity with Baltimore after serving as the associate manager for Stephen Vogt in Cleveland, and Butera was the choice for Washington after serving as the Rays’ senior director of player development.

Their relationship adds an interesting wrinkle to the Beltway Series, with a second exhibition game at Nationals Park on Monday. During the game, they will focus on leading their clubs. But, when they’re away from that competitive atmosphere, the jokes begin again.

During a videoconference this spring for all Grapefruit League managers, Albernaz got a first glimpse of Butera’s office.

“It looked like a prison cell,” Albernaz said. There were no personal effects, just plain walls. So Albernaz texted Butera during the call, “giving him shit” about it.

And, once Butera turned around to see for himself just how bare his walls were, Albernaz jokingly chastised him for not paying attention. (Butera has now decorated his walls, he said, to avoid further rebuke.)

But Butera got Albernaz back on national television. When asked during an MLB Network segment which first-year manager would be the first to be ejected from a game, Butera didn’t miss a beat naming Albernaz. That evening, once Albernaz discovered his friend had called him out, he gave Butera a hard time. But, after the initial indignation wore off, Albernaz realized Butera was probably right.

They know each other well, after all. They know which buttons to press and how to get under each other’s skin. But it’s all good fun between them. One day, Albernaz said, he’d love to be on the same coaching staff as Butera again, just as they were in the minors.

It’s hard to know whether that will happen. For the moment, they have both reached the upper echelon of coaching — two of 30 major league managers. And, apart from the occasional head-to-head matchup, Butera and Albernaz will keep cheering each other on, even if they have a funny way of showing that love.

“Just to have that relationship and friendship with him,” Albernaz said, “knowing that I can call him on anything and he’s going to answer, he’s going to give me his honest opinion and feedback, is something I always hold in the highest regard.”