Jarrod Saltalamacchia: From Fenway Park to the Cape Cod Baseball League and the Falmouth Commodores Dugout
This article was written by Mike Richard
This article was published in Cape Cod Baseball League: From College Stars to Big League Futures (2026)
Jarrod Saltalamacchia, with Falmouth. (Photo: Alexa Harbach)
After spending three previous Cape Cod League baseball seasons as an assistant coach under Scott Landers with the Bourne Braves, Jarrod Saltalamacchia was named field manager of the Falmouth Commodores in 2025.
Saltalamacchia, a catcher on the 2013 World Series champion Boston Red Sox, played with seven different teams over a 12-year major-league career.
“I’m pumped (about being named the Falmouth manager),” said Saltalamacchia. “I love this location on the Cape. I think it’s one of the best and the fan base has been phenomenal, especially early in the season.”1
Prior to his elevation to manager, the last former major leaguer to manage on the Cape was catcher Pete Varney, who piloted Cotuit in 1988-89. Varney played four seasons with the Chicago White Sox (1973-76) and the Atlanta Braves (1976).
Seeing that many catchers, including Bruce Bochy, Mike Scioscia, Joe Torre, Mike Hargrove, and Yogi Berra have become successful managers, Saltalamacchia sees a parallel.
“I think the catcher is like the second coach on the field. You see the whole field in front of you,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff that happens that your middle fielders don’t see going on behind them, and a lot of times their backs are turned on the play when they look in the outfield. As a catcher, you kind of view everything. You have to also work with hitters. So I think that as far as situational and game-calling style, it fits the catching or other things.”
Saltalamacchia was drafted right out of Royal Palm Beach High School in West Palm Beach, a first-round selection of the Atlanta Braves. Initially, he had been heavily recruited and planned to attend Florida State University.
“I was supposed to play at Florida State and was committed to them. I remember sitting in (coach Mike) Martin’s room in his house and his only request from me was, ‘If you get dropped to the second round, please come to school’ and I was like ‘all right, I can do that.’”
Saltalamacchia recalled. “At the time, I wanted to play, and I was a huge Florida State fan. But I ended up getting drafted in the first round and had to call them and give them the news.”
“I think coach Martin was happy for me, maybe the recruiting guy wasn’t as happy. I think he thought I was coming to school,” he added.
Not going to Florida State prevented Saltalamacchia from playing in the Cape Cod League as a collegian.
“I know I always kind of regret not having the opportunity to play down here, because (the Cape League) was somewhere I always wanted to be,” he said.
So he embarked on the next best thing when his playing career ended, inquiring about a coaching position in the league.
“I think I reached out to (Yarmouth-Dennis manager Scott) Pickler first, and he had a position for me, but he’s like, ‘Listen, I don’t know if this fits you, because there’s a lot of field work, a lot of stuff that you don’t need to be doing,’” he recalled, noting that field work and groundskeeping also came with the job.
“Honestly, I didn’t mind doing the grunt work, but Pick said, ‘All right, but do me a favor, call (Bourne manager Scott) Landers first, and then see how that goes. And if he doesn’t take you, I’ll take you,’” he said. “So, I hit up Scott right away and I wound up there (in Bourne), and you can’t knock it.”
The first two seasons, 2022 and 2023, Saltalamacchia was an assistant coach at Bourne, the Braves won back-to-back Cape Cod Baseball League titles. Then in the 2024 season, Bourne wound up back in the finals and just missed a three-peat, losing in a five-game series to Harwich.
“What a great run that was. Scott does a phenomenal job recruiting. He’s always on the phone with somebody getting players in,” said Saltalamacchia. “It’s tough because these kids use (the league) as a tool to get drafted, so they’ll come out for a short period of time, then leave, and agents are in their ears nonstop about the portal.
“It’s made things a little more difficult, but just trying to talk to coaches early and find the right guys that want to be out here that have no problem with staying the whole summer,” he said. “It’s getting tougher and tougher, but I feel like we’ve got a good nucleus of kids right now in Falmouth.”
Jarrod Saltalamacchia, with players in Falmouth. (Photo by Alexa Harbach)
After the death of legendary Falmouth coach Jeff Trundy, who managed the Commodores for 26 years, the franchise was looking for someone to take the reins and continue the excellence that the Trundy teams always exhibited on the field.
Saltalamacchia was the right person.
As Falmouth Commodores President Bob Curtis noted in his welcome in the 2025 team yearbook, “Salty brings excitement and expertise, having coached the Bourne Braves of the CCBL and currently coaches high school teams in Florida. He has assembled a staff of coaches who collectively have decades of experience at the college and high school levels.”2
Saltalamacchia realizes that the seven or eight weeks he gets to spend with these college kids are meant to be enjoyed, while he teaches them firsthand how to approach a major-league life.
“It’s definitely a business for these kids, and they’re coming in, but I do want them to have fun and enjoy. Their minds are wide open, wanting any information you can give them,” he said. “So I do enjoy that. I don’t have all the answers, and they know that, and I think that they’re smart enough to understand when you’re being full of crap or not. I try and be open and honest and transparent. And, you know, it seems to be working well.”
There has been a lengthy lineage of former major leaguers taking managerial jobs in the Cape Cod Baseball League going back to the first official season of the league, 1923 when former Red Sox player Wally Snell managed the Hyannis team during that inaugural season.
A more recent managing job by a former major-league player occurred in 1980 when former reliever Al Worthington served as skipper for Falmouth and led them to the championship over Chatham, 3 games to 2, posting a 26-15-1 record. (As of 2025, Falmouth had not won another championship.)
As it turned out, Saltalamacchia’s tenure was one-and-done as he left Falmouth after one season when he was appointed director of player development with the University of Miami.
MIKE RICHARD has been the historian of the Cape Cod Baseball League since 2018. He spent 35 years in public education, both as an English teacher and later a guidance counselor before retiring from Gardner (Massachusetts) High School in 2013. A longtime columnist for the Gardner News, he also wrote sports columns for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Barnstable Patriot, and the Cape Cod Times. He has authored two sports history books: Glory to Gardner: 100 Years of Football in the Chair City, and Super Saturdays: The Complete History of the Massachusetts High School Super Bowl, as well as contributions to many SABR publications. Also known for his exhaustive research of Massachusetts high-school sports history, he is historian of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association and is responsible for all records and statistics for the annual state tournament programs. He and his wife, Peggy, live in Sandwich on Cape Cod and are the parents of two grown children, Casey and Lindsey, and two grandchildren, Theo and Grace.
NOTES
1 Interview by the author with Jarrod Saltalamacchia on June 24, 2025. All quotations attributed to him come from this interview.
2 2025 Falmouth Commodores Yearbook, 9.