The greatest Rangers manager ever, not to mention one of the four or five best in the history of baseball, just walked out the door, and his replacement has a big hat to fill.
Bruce Bochy has been the butt of jokes throughout his life in baseball for his size 8 cap, but inside that big head is a big brain.
If his side of what Chris Young called a “mutual” decision was based on what’s coming next season, he’s smarter than we thought.
Because changing out Bochy for Skip Schumaker, the heir apparent, or whoever Young has in mind, is no guarantee to fix what’s gone wrong since Bochy led the Rangers out of the wilderness and into the promised land.
Rangers
In order to believe a new manager is the remedy for back-to-back disappointing seasons, you first have to believe one of the following:
Bochy has lost his fastball in the two years since his steady hand was exactly what the Rangers needed.
He was the reason this team stopped hitting once the parade ground to a halt at the Globe.
Or the Rangers simply tuned out his low-key approach and needed a kick in the pants.
Related
My guess is Young — who said all kinds of nice things about Bochy in a zoom call Monday night, calling him a “legend” and “friend” and “one of the best people the game has ever seen” — subscribes to the last theory. Might be something to it. This time next year, we should have a better idea.
But, if you ask me, the problem isn’t that Bochy is the same manager he was two years ago. The problem is the lineup is basically the same, too.
The Rangers have been built to slug going on three seasons, but what we’ve learned since ‘23 is that Adolis García, Jonah Heim, Josh Jung and, to a lesser extent, Evan Carter, enjoyed career years in that World Series run. Not only that, turns out the Globe is a pitcher’s park. The Rangers should be built to run in an era when the base in front of you has never been more attainable.
Young built the roster Bochy had to work with, and for that he’ll take his share of the blame. He knew what he was getting with Corey Seager, a stoic superstar, and Marcus Semien, lately a faded star. Neither is rah-rah. For better or worse, the rest follow their example because of the weight they carry.
Semien didn’t do himself any favors last week for noting he didn’t build the roster and wants to play for “hungry” players out to win a championship. What he should have done was apologize for failing to hold up his end of his $26 million salary each of the last two years.
Semien also used the word “funk” to describe the Rangers since winning it all, and if that’s all it is, it cost them the services of an all-time great still eager to try to snap them out of it.
When I asked him recently if this season had beaten all the enthusiasm out of him, Bochy made it clear he wanted to come back. He can’t get enough. If loving even this Rangers team doesn’t sell you on his commitment, I don’t know what to tell you.
On a personal note, I just liked him. Hard not to like a guy who came to work every day in a good mood. He didn’t take this season’s frustrations out on anyone as far as I could tell. Not even the media. For that, he gets bonus points.
Hard not to like a guy with a brilliant mind who, save for his actions, does his best to disguise it.
Hard not to like a Hall of Famer in your midst. Not a lot of those around the Rangers anymore. Makes a bigger impact than you might think.
Before everything went south, I asked 29-year-old Jake Latz, one of the season’s few pleasant surprises, what it meant that Bochy had praised him.
“He’s a Hall of Famer,” Latz said.
“It means everything.”
The Rangers will be someone else’s problem next season, and the best you can say about them until then is they didn’t jeopardize Bochy’s date with Cooperstown. He goes out with his big head high.
Twitter/X: @KSherringtonDMN
Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Click or tap here to sign up for our Rangers newsletter.