Craig Stammen

Did You Know?

• He was introduced to his wife, Audrey Ludwig, by his former college coach Tony Vittorio.
• Stammen became MLB's only current manager who is a former pitcher when he was hired in 2025.

Amateur career

Stammen began playing baseball in North Star Little League alongside future MLB pitcher Cory Luebke. He graduated from Versailles High School, where he participated in football, basketball, and baseball, earning all-Miami Valley baseball honors and Academic All-Ohio recognition in 2001. He attended the University of Dayton, playing college baseball for the Dayton Flyers and majoring in entrepreneurship and business management. Over three seasons he made 81 pitching appearances and also pitched in the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League in 2004. He was an Atlantic 10 Conference Academic All-Conference Pick in 2005 and was teammates with future Nationals pitcher Jerry Blevins.

Professional career

The Nationals grabbed Stammen in the 12th round of the 2005 draft and sent him to the Vermont Expos. The next year, he split time between the Savannah Sand Gnats and the Potomac Nationals. He spent most of 2007 with Potomac, making a single appearance for the Columbus Clippers. In 2008, he bounced between Potomac, the Harrisburg Senators, and Columbus, earning a Carolina League Mid-Season All-Star nod and being named Eastern League Pitcher of the Week on July 14.

Stammen began 2009 with the Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs before getting called up to the majors on May 20. He made his first big-league start the next day against the Pirates, picking up his first win on June 18 against the Yankees. On July 11, he threw his first complete game, a two-run, nine-hit effort against the Astros. He stayed in the rotation until early September, when a sore elbow led to an MRI that revealed a bone spur.

Arthroscopic surgery on September 6 cleaned it up, and he was ready for spring training in 2010. That season, he returned as the Nationals' third starter.

Pitching style

Stammen relied on a sinker that sat between 90 and 93 mph, leaning on it heavily when facing lefties. Against right-handed hitters, he complemented that pitch with a mid-80s slider. The sinker was his go-to for generating ground balls, while the slider, which produced a 44% career whiff rate, accounted for the bulk of his strikeouts. He also turned to his curveball often in two-strike counts, especially against left-handers, and mixed in a four-seam fastball.

Personal life

Craig Stammen calls North Star, Ohio, home, a small village about 11 miles northwest of Versailles, where he grew up and still lives. His parents are Jeff and Connie. A devout Roman Catholic, Stammen first visited Afghanistan in 2012 to spend time with military personnel, a mission inspired partly by college friends who joined the Army and Marines. He has continued supporting the military throughout his career and received the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award in 2020.

Stammen married Audrey Ludwig, an assistant volleyball coach at the University of Dayton, on January 21, 2017, at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Dayton. Their honeymoon in Hawaii included Audrey hitting a hole-in-one on their last day. The couple has four children: sons Chase (2018) and Ty (2021), and daughters Summit (2019) and Cece (2023). Stammen co-owns Orion Sports Medicine in Miamisburg, Ohio, with fellow former Dayton Flyers and professional athletes Mike Hauschild and Chris Wright.