{"id":120938,"date":"2025-09-05T15:03:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/120938\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T15:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:03:07","slug":"bruce-bochy-has-rangers-once-again-in-the-playoff-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/120938\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Bochy Has Rangers Once Again in the Playoff Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPHOENIX \u2014 This September, Bruce Bochy finds himself in a familiar spot. His Texas Rangers<\/a> are still in the hunt for a playoff spot despite a massive number of injuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut this time, he\u2019s not under contract for next season\u2014and whether he wants to keep managing is up to him. His Rangers won the World Series<\/a> only two years ago, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games, his fourth title with two teams plus a National League pennant with another.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt 70 the former backup catcher is finishing his 28th season as a manager. Only six men have done it longer; if Bochy returns for his fourth season in Texas, he will tie Bucky Harris, Bobby Cox and Joe Torre at 29 next season. That would leave only Connie Mack (53), and John McGraw and Tony La Russa (both at 36) ahead of him.<\/p>\n

\n\tBochy sounds like he\u2019s on board, but he wouldn\u2019t formally commit. He\u2019s the second-oldest manager in the game behind Ron Washington of the Los Angeles Angels, who, at 73, missed a good part of the season after heart bypass surgery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI still love what I\u2019m doing,\u201d he said during multiple interviews this week at Chase Field. \u201cI look forward to coming to the ballpark every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRangers\u2019 president of baseball operations, and Bochy\u2019s friend, Chris Young was just as noncommittal about Bochy\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ll worry about that down the line,\u201d Young, a former big-league pitcher, said in a brief interview. \u201cLet\u2019s get through all of this [season] first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Rangers have their fate right now in their own hands. They play six of the next 12 games against American League West-leading Houston, trailing by only a handful of games. They\u2019re right there in the AL Wild Card race. They open a three-game home series against the Astros on Friday night and play three more at Houston beginning Sept. 15.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBetween those critical series, the Rangers play Milwaukee and the New York Mets, two more playoff-bound teams.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re missing some key players, yes,\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Bochy said after completing a 4-2 road trip with two tough losses to the D-backs. \u201cSome of them are irreplaceable. But the young guys have stepped up. There\u2019s no point in being negative. I like where we\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s no question the Rangers try. They are ranked ninth in MLB with a payroll of $237 million for luxury tax purposes, according to\u00a0Spotrac. The eight higher-spending teams above them are all on their way to the postseason this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCredit to the Rangers for their consistency; the team that won the World Series in 2023 had an eighth-ranked $242.1 million payroll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut you can\u2019t change fate. The Rangers have 10 players on the injured list right now accounting for $111.1 million worth of talent. That list includes Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Nathan Eovaldi, who all starred on the World Series-winning team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat list doesn\u2019t include Adolis Garcia and his $8.25 million. Garcia has a Grade 2 right quad injury suffered late in Monday night\u2019s game and is out indefinitely.<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of them are expected back before the end of the regular season, if then.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat leaves the Rangers playing late in the season with a host of young and untried players. Managing players like this has never been Bochy\u2019s specialty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah, that\u2019s been my reputation, but we\u2019ve developed some good young players over the years,\u201d Bochy said.<\/p>\n

\n\tBochy won the World Series three times with the San Francisco Giants and once in Texas with a host of veteran players, although the mid-season 2010 emergence from the minors of Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner played a big role in the Giants\u2019 winning it all three times in five years.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven Bochy\u2019s 1998 San Diego Padres that were swept by the 125-win New York Yankees in that World Series were loaded with veterans such as Tony Gwynn, Kevin Brown, Greg Vaughn, Steve Finley and Ken Caminiti.<\/p>\n

\n\tBochy is a players\u2019 manager, as some members of his current roster will tell you.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s awesome,\u201d veteran pitcher Jacob deGrom said. \u201cYou can look up what he\u2019s done in his career as a manager. You see that and then coming over here in 2023 and how he is with the guys. You just have that kind of confidence in your manager. He knows the right moves and knows winning baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe last time Bochy worked a season without an extended contract was 2019, his finale of 13 seasons with the Giants. In that case he announced in spring training he wasn\u2019t coming back in 2020. But there were plenty of extenuating circumstances. He was having health issues and his relationship with then-new general manager Farhan Zaidi was strained at best.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe wasn\u2019t ready to retire, but at 64 he needed a break. COVID then hit in 2020 and the fact that he was home and out of the game was \u201ca blessing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter sitting out three years, he was ready to come back, and Young came calling. All Bochy did from there is what he does best: win.<\/p>\n

\n\tBochy\u2019s return to the Rangers bench seems to be a no-brainer. But if not, his spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame is beckoning.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked if he was coming back, Bochy relied on a line from the mid-1960s situation comedy Hogan\u2019s Heroes about the zany life<\/a> in a German prisoner of war camp.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSergeant Schultz? \u2018I know nothing!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdmittedly, one has to be of Bochy\u2019s age to remember that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 This September, Bruce Bochy finds himself in a familiar spot. His Texas Rangers are still in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5882,591,85,2367],"class_list":["post-120938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-texas-rangers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}