SURPRISE, Ariz. — It’s almost like a test that Rangers president Chris Young is conducting for fans, seeing how much they are willing to take in search of victory. Everyone passed the first with flying colors, and there are signs the second could deliver another A-plus.
For his first manager, Young hired Bruce Bochy, who had won his first World Series at the expense of the Rangers in 2010. When a quick decision was reached following the 2025 season to part ways with Bochy, Young wasted no time, hiring Skip Schumaker — who played for the 2011 Cardinals, the second team to victimize Texas in the Fall Classic — to run the show. What’s next, Jose Altuve as infield instructor?
The hiring that came so quickly was out of necessity, as Young, overseeing baseball operations, explained it.
”When the season ended, there were about eight teams looking for managers. And seven of them wanted to know what we were going to do with Skip,” Young said.
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Rangers new Manager Skip Schumaker, center, poses for a photo with President of Baseball Operations Chris Young, left, and General Manager Ross Fenstermaker during a press conference on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, at Globe Life Field in Arlington.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Schumaker, a special adviser to Young in 2025, had won over more than his share of front offices by winning National League Manager of the Year with the 2023 Miami Marlins, taking a young, small payroll team to the playoffs. When the Marlins fired the general manager who hired him, Kim Ng, and made it clear they were going in a new direction, Schumaker stayed for one more season before getting out after enduring a 100-loss fiasco. No one really faulted him for that season, and so he remained a hot candidate one year later.
“I was grateful for both experiences,” Schumaker said Wednesday. “And I’ll tell you why, because Kim gave me a shot, right? I will always be grateful for that. She had a number of great candidates, and she picked me, and so I was going to do everything I could to prove her right.
“When the regime changed in Miami, ownership can do whatever they want, right? I never wanted to be one foot in and one foot out on anything, and it was trending in a way I wasn’t going to allow myself to do that. I wanted to make sure the players still got the best version of me and the best version of our coaches because they deserved it.”
The Rangers figure to get the best of Schumaker and his young staff, and, yes, that means getting a lot of Tony La Russa influence. The manager who had various levels of rivalries with the Rangers going back to 1983 with the White Sox when Texas’ Doug Rader pronounced Chicago as a team “winning ugly” through the Bash Brothers years with division rival Oakland and, finally, through that still-painful 2011 World Series rally — that is Schumaker’s mentor.
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“I also had a lot of influences with coaches I worked with but, pretty clearly, [No. 1] is Tony. What I saw with him is you weren’t going to beat him. You might put a dent in him, but you weren’t going to beat him,” Schumaker said. “I think it was because of his preparation and, you know, the way he got on the field, he felt like it’s us against you, it’s a fight. And you’re going to feel that type of deal this year.
“That was always how I felt like as a player. The development side was so important. If you weren’t going to help him win the game, you weren’t going to play for him. I kind of think about all of that stuff, I watch every Double-A game, every Triple-A game to make sure it’s mirroring what we are doing up here.”
Young understands he made a dramatic change in age and experience when he went from Bochy, 71 this April and a four-time World Series champ, to Schumaker who turned 46 last month. “I don’t know what Boch was like at 45, but I suspect it was a lot like Skip. Both are aggressive, both are competitive, both are great communicators,” Young said. “It was obviously great having Boch here and winning a World Series. Now I see a team that really looks like it has a lot of energy getting ready for the season.
“I recognize that’s a cliche, that every team has energy right now, but I think you see how Skip and the coaches do things; it’s bringing us to a new level.”
Schumaker says the responsibility of providing a lineup card 162 times keeps him up at night “in a good way,” adding that all things are possible with batting orders. But beyond getting his best hitters near the top, nothing needs to be set in stone with three weeks left in spring training.
He admits he doesn’t even know what kind of home park the Rangers will have because it has been inconsistent the first six years. “I was there [coaching San Diego in the playoffs] in 2020 and the ball was flying during the COVID year. And then it just kind of hasn’t,’’ he said.
“We’ll see what happens. Your guess is as good as mine come opening day. But we want to make it as much of a home-field advantage as we can with elite speed in the outfield, running down things in the outfield where the ball hangs up there.’’
It’s Skip’s second shot at a first season managing a ball club. Bochy won a World Series in his first season in Texas. If Schumaker can repeat as a league’s Manager of the Year, the Rangers won’t complain, whatever those results happen to be.
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