Heading into their 52nd season, the Rangers still have not managed to win a World Series. But, for the first time ever, they have a manager who has.
The Rangers agreed to terms with Bruce Bochy to take over as the 20th full time manager in club history, the club announced on Friday. He agreed to a three-year contract covering the 2023-25 seasons. Bochy (pronounced BO-chee), 67, who has been retired for the last three seasons, has taken two different teams to the World Series and won three titles with San Francisco in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
“I am incredibly excited to be joining the Texas Rangers,” Bochy said in written statement. “Over the last several days, I’ve had extensive conversations with Chris Young and other individuals in the organization, and I had the chance to meet with Ray Davis. Their vision and commitment to putting together a club that can contend and win year in and year out is impressive, and I became convinced I wanted to be a part of that.
“If I was going to return to managing, it had to be the right situation. I strongly believe that to be the case with the Rangers, and I can’t wait to get started.”
A formal press conference to introduce Bochy will be held at Globe Life Field on Monday.
It bucks the long-term trend for the franchise: They have hired an accomplished and successful manager with championship credentials. And it speaks to GM Chris Young’s stated intent to build a “championship culture.”
“On behalf of the entire organization, I want to welcome Bruce and Kim Bochy to the Texas Rangers,” Young said in a statement released Friday. “In his 25 years with San Diego and San Francisco, Bruce was one of the most successful and respected managers in Major League Baseball. With a calm and steady presence, he has a remarkable ability to connect and communicate with players, coaches, and staff, and his teams have always played with maximum effort. His knowledge of the game, as well as his integrity is unmatched.
“As we went through the interview process, Bruce’s passion and excitement about returning to the dugout was very evident. It became clear he was the ideal individual to lead our club as we continue to build a championship culture here in Arlington.”
Over the 51 previous seasons, the Rangers’ usual method has been to hire first-time managers on the cheap. The last three hires – Ron Washington, Jeff Banister and Chris Woodward – were all first-time managers. As were 13 of the previous 19 full-timers, including original Rangers manager Ted Williams and his successor Whitey Herzog, who later won a World Series managing St. Louis.
It comes at what will likely be an unprecedented cost for the Rangers: Bochy earned $6 million in his final year with San Francisco; Woodward did not earn that much during his four seasons managing the Rangers combined. The terms of Bochy’s contract, which were not publicly disclosed, are likely to place him among the most highly-compensated managers in the game.
Of the six veteran managers the club had hired, only Darrell Johnson, who managed the last 66 games of the 1982 season, had ever won a postseason series before coming to the Rangers. Johnson managed Boston to the 1975 World Series. He was fired by the Red Sox the next year and never had another winning season. Buck Showalter, the last veteran manager the Rangers hired, had lost his only two postseason series when he came to Texas. Billy Martin had lost one in Detroit.
Bochy, who has managed 25 seasons, has gone to the postseason eight different occasions. He took San Diego to the World Series in 1998 before being swept by a New York Yankees team that qualifies as one of the greatest in history. He left the Padres after 2006; Young was among the pitchers on his final team with San Diego.
When San Francisco beat the Rangers in 2010, it was the Giants’ first World Series win since the team moved from New York for the 1958 season. When he added titles in 2012 and 2014, he become one of only 10 managers in history with at least three world championships. He is tied with Hall of Famers Sparky Anderson, Miller Huggins, John McGraw and Tony LaRussa.
Bochy is 2,003-2,029 in his 25 seasons, including three consecutive losing seasons at the end of his run in San Francisco as the Giants started to rebuild from their playoff window. His 44 post-season wins are tied for the fifth most all-time.
Bochy left the Giants and retired after the 2019 season. Shortly after that, questions about a possible return to the game for the baseball-lifer arose. He already had a Hall of Fame argument, and after multiple heart procedures in San Francisco, would he want to return to managing?
“He’ll never say never,” his wife, Kim, told USA Today before the end of the 2019 season, “But I don’t really believe he’ll manage again.”
The question that Bochy – and all veteran managers – face in the game today: Are they comfortable managing a game in which the front office has more daily influence than ever before and a game in which reliance on advanced probability formulas are heavier than ever?
“I’d say more than anything (analytics) has changed the decision-making that goes on with managing,” Bochy was quoted as saying in former manager Joe Maddon’s just-released book The Book of Joe. “You go back to when I started and just before me and the managers, they drove the bus. You had your checks and balances. You talked to the owner and the GM, but you drove the bus.
“Now, because of analytics, decisions are data-driven,” he continued. “That has been the biggest shift I’ve seen. The front office and their analytics with the coaching staff is more a collaboration. Now, the checks and balances are the manager. As a manager, you might say ‘I see this or that.’ But you’re not driving the bus.
“But you know what: The world is changing,” the anecdote from the book continued. “You are not going to change that. You have to adapt to that style of leadership. … Now it involves a lot of selling. You’ve got to be the one selling now to get all the players to buy in.”
One thing about selling: It helps when you’ve got something to sell. Bochy does: Three World Series rings.
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