The 2027 non-player Contemporary Baseball Era ballot has been released today, and former Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy is among the eight candidates up for consideration. Joining Bochy on the ballot are former managers Dusty Baker, Joe Maddon, and Lou Piniella, executives Sandy Alderson and Brian Sabean, broadcaster and former National League president Bill White, and owner Ted Turner.
The cases for Baker and White to be elected are potentially enhanced by the fact that they had long and successful
playing careers. Baker spent parts of 19 seasons in the major leagues, putting up a career .278/.347/.432 slash line and 37.0 bWAR while being a key part of several playoff teams with the Los Angeles Dodgers. White spent 13 years in the majors, won seven Gold Gloves at first base, was named to the All Star team in five different seasons, and finished as high as third place in the Most Valuable Player voting. He ended his career with a .286/.351/.455 slash line and a 38.6 bWAR.
Piniella and Bochy, of course, also had lengthy careers, though neither’s career was as illustrious or successful as Baker and White.
Bochy spent parts of nine seasons in the majors as a backup catcher, with his last season coming in 1987. He managed the San Diego Padres from 1995 through 2006, putting up a 951-975 record with the club and winning the division four times, advancing to the World Series in 1998. Bochy then managed the San Francisco Giants from 2007-19, making the playoffs four times with them as well, and winning the World Series three times with the Giants. Bochy retired in 2019, but came out of retirement to manage the Texas Rangers from 2023 to 2025. I don’t remember if the Rangers did anything good during his time here. Maybe someone can remind me.
Bochy ended his career with a 2252-2266 record. He is 6th all time in managerial wins, and fourth all time in games managed.
Sabean is inexorably linked with Bochy. After coaching at the college level and then working as a major league scout and front office executive, Sabean was hired as the general manager for the Giants after the 1996 season. He ran the baseball side of things for the Giants through 2018, and was in charge for the three titles that the Giants won with Bochy as manager. He has been working for the New York Yankees as an advisor since 2023.
Dusty Baker started his managerial career with the San Francisco Giants in 1993, and in his first year as manager, he was at the helm for what has been described as the “last great playoff race” in MLB. 1993 was the last season when MLB had just two divisions and only the division winners advanced to the playoffs. The Giants led most of the season, but an eight game losing streak in early September saw their lead, once 9 games, vanish.
Down four games in the division with 16 to play, the Giants went on a tear, winning 15 of 17, and heading into the final game of the regular season, Atlanta and San Fran were tied at 103-58. The Giants fell, 12-1, to the Dodgers on the last day, while the Braves beat the Colorado Rockies 5-3, allowing the Braves to win the division by one game and advance to the NLCS.
Baker ended up spending ten years with the Giants, ultimately winning the pennant in 2002, though they lost to the Angels in the World Series in 7 games. Baker left the Giants after 2002 to join the Chicago Cubs, for whom he was the manager from 2003-06. Baker subsequently managed the Cincinnati Reds from 2008-13, the Washington Nationals from 2016-17, and the Houston Astros from 2020-23. It was with Houston, in 2022, that he finally won the World Series as a manager. Baker ended his career with a 2183-1862 record, and is 8th all time in manager wins.
Piniella won the 1969 Rookie of the Year Award for the Kansas City Royals, and spent parts of 18 seasons in the majors as a corner outfielder/DH, most of them with the Royals and Yankees. He had a .291/.333/.409 slash line and a career 12.5 bWAR in 1747 career games.
Piniella debuted as a major league manager for the Yankees in 1986, and moved into the general manager role for the team after the 1987 season. After Billy Martin was fired halfway through the 1988 season, Piniella took over the managerial job for the rest of the season. Piniella was hired as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 and won a title with the team his first year with them. He left the Reds after the 1992 season and joined the Seattle Mariners, where he was managed from 1993-2002. He then managed the Tampa Bay Rays from 2003-05 and the Chicago Cubs from 2007-10. He finished his career with an 1835-1713 record.
Maddon was a largely unknown bench coach who had two brief stints as an interim manager for the Angels when he was tapped by the Rays to take over for Piniella when Piniella left after the 2005 season. Maddon skippered the Rays for nine seasons before a change in management allowed him to exercise an out clause in his contract and join the Chicago Cubs for the 2015 season. Maddon was with the Cubs from 2015-19, and was the manager in 2016 when the team won their first title in roughly a century. He managed the Angels from 2020-22 before being fired a little over a third of the way into the 2022 season. Maddon has a career 1382-1216 record.
Alderson was the general manager of the Oakland A’s from 1983-97, during which time he brought in a former player named Billy Beane, who eventually became the team’s general manager. He subsequently worked for the commissioner’s office from 1998-2005, joined the San Diego Padres as the team’s top executive from 2005-09 (the first two years of which overlapped with Bruce Bochy’s time as manager there), and then joined the Mets as their general manager after the 2010 season. He took a leave of absence from the team in the summer of 2018 due to cancer, and did not return. He spent a couple of years as an advisor for the A’s, then returned to the Mets as the team’s president of baseball operations until the end of 2022.
White was a broadcaster for a number of years after his playing days, doing play by play for the Yankees, and was the National League President from 1989-1994.
Ted Turner is Ted Turner. He raced yachts and owned TV stations and married Jane Fonda and was a rich gadfly.
