On Bruce Bochy, Playoff Manager Extraordinaire

And how folks in some corners are not thrilled he's elsewhere

Bruce Bochy’s Texas Rangers, as you may have heard, are currently up 2-0 in the best-of-5 American League Division Series. They’re getting clutch hitting performances at the right time, and their bullpen is shutting down the Orioles when the game is on the line. Everything is clicking for them when it matters most, kinda like it did for Bochy’s previous team when they were in the postseason, as you perhaps recall.

And hey, you know what team didn’t have clutch hitting at the right time or a lockdown bullpen when the game was on the line? Why, that would be your 2023 San Francisco Giants.

Which means that there is a natural question that arises. What if…those San Francisco Giants…who recently fired their manager…were managed by Bruce Bochy?

They’d have still been bad.

I don’t want to overlook that Bochy didn’t really want to manage under Farhan Zaidi and Zaidi didn’t really want Bochy to be his manager. 2023 would have been their fifth year working together, and while all accounts are that they didn’t have a bad relationship when Bochy managed the Giants in 2019 or when he was an advisor from 2020 through 2022, that scenario wouldn’t have been ideal for either man.

But everyone else is overlooking that, so why can’t I?

Because you see the comments on social media all the time, and the undertones are very clear. “Miss you, Boch.” “Wow, can you imagine the Giants having a manager like Bruce Bochy? Pretty wild!” “It’s not like the Giants could have used a calm, steadying presence with a history of postseason success.”

Or, from the national media, who are less Giants-focused for some reason:

Here’s the thought process: 2022 Rangers bad. 2023 Rangers good. Credit to new manager? Yes! Good job, new manager!

I don’t want to make it seem like coaching has nothing to do with the Rangers’ success this year. Jonah Heim, Marcus Semien, Corey Seager, Adolis Garcia, and Mitch Garver all had better offensive seasons in 2023 than in 2022, and in the case of Seager and Garvey in particular, much, much better seasons. Coaching absolutely plays a part in that, and creating a good environment for the players plays a part in that, and if you’re going to credit anyone for that, Bochy has to be at the top of the list.

But also…Seager drastically underperformed in 2022. Semien underperformed. The 2022 Rangers were a trainwreck at third base, and they were somehow worse in left field. The roster, in other words, was much less good than it was this year. They had hole after hole in the lineup, and thought that adding two stars in Seager and Semien would fix that, which probably wouldn’t have worked even if they’d had the excellent seasons they did this year. The 2023 pitching staff also seems much better, with fWAR

So, some of the improvement probably had something to do with Bochy. But more of it simply has to do with having better players. Manager with bad players = bad manager. Manager with good players = good manager, or Bob Melvin.

So, uh, you know, what the hell would Bochy have done with the 2023 Giants?

Nothing. He’d have done nothing. They’d have still been bad.

The 2023 Giants were not The Right Manager away from being a good team. They were maybe a manager and a shortstop and an entire outfield and a couple starting pitchers away, but the mere presence of Postseason Wizard Bruce Bochy would not have moved the needle at all. Really, considering his managerial style, it would have been more frustrating.

Because Bruce Bochy would not have gotten us a definitive answer on David Villar. He would not have gotten Luis Matos as much playing time as Matos got. He probably wouldn’t have pinch hit as aggressively or gone with openers so frequently, which admittedly would have made the team less frustrating to watch on a moment to moment basis, but also would have probably meant they won fewer games. And once the team acquired AJ Pollock — oh boy, would AJ Pollock have played literally every game possible because “Polly’s a big bat and we gotta get him on track.”

Maybe you think I’m being too harsh. Maybe you’re right. But it’s not like it’s impossible for Bruce Bochy to manage a bad Giants team. We saw him do that for his last three years in San Francisco. The 2017 team was godawful. I know we talk a lot about how bad the team was this year, and they were bad, but they were regular bad. They were in the high 70s in wins. September was a disaster, of course, but as a whole, the team was just a little under .500, which is just a regular bad season.

2017? 2017 was a travesty of a baseball season. Last year, the Giants were two games away from .500. In 2017, they were two games away from their worst record since moving to San Francisco. And who was managing? Bruce Bochy! Yes, Mitch Haniger got 229 plate appearances with a 73 OPS+ last year, but at least there was a reason to think he could be an impact hitter. In 2017, Gorkys Hernandez got 348 PAs with an OPS+ of 74, and he was literally Gorkys Hernandez. There were no 30 homer seasons in either his past or future. No reason to think he’d ever be good. And he got more than a half season’s worth of at bats. Truly dreadful.

Also, I can tell you from some things I heard from Sources back in the day, the clubhouse culture was pretty awful in some of those bad years. It was probably worse than it was under Kapler this year.

The point here is not to denigrate Bochy, but to point out: a manager is as good as his players, full stop. We all miss Bochy now because of (A) nostalgia and (B) we’re watching him succeed elsewhere. But the nostalgia isn’t really relevant, and that success is coming because he has a phenomenal lineup and a strong pitching staff. It’s not rocket science.

I’m happy for Bochy to have success, even if that success means that both Texans and Aroldis Chapman will be happy. But if he had somehow stayed with the Giants — which he wouldn’t have — then he wouldn’t be enjoying that same kind of success. The team we watched all year wasn’t good enough. The talent wasn’t there. All I’m really learning from watching the Rangers is confirming that, yep, having good players is helpful. Let’s all be sure to file that away, and then credit Bruce Bochy for teaching it to us.