Bruce Bochy, the manager who led the Texas Rangers to their first ever World Championship less than two years ago, has left the building.
And the sentiment among many fans seems to be, don’t let the door
hit ya where the good Lord split ya.
Even the more sanguine fans seem to be fine with his departure. Yes, he’s a Hall of Fame manager, he won a ring in 2023, but the last two years haven’t been successful, and really, it makes sense for there to be a change. The team will be better off — or at least no worse — with someone new in charge.
The honeymoon from winning it all didn’t last long.
What were the knocks on Bruce Bochy and his handling of the team, particularly the last couple of years, that fans leveled?
Well, how much time do you have?
He was too locked into his lineups. He relied too much on his veterans. He was too stoic — why, he was probably half-asleep in the dugout during some of these games! He didn’t do a good enough job managing and creating a positive atmosphere in the clubhouse.
He wouldn’t play Evan Carter or Josh Smith against lefties. He platooned too much, except when he wasn’t platooning enough. He gave guys too many days off. He wouldn’t bench guys who were struggling, wouldn’t sit them for multiple days in a row even though “he looks lost at the plate right now.” He used “give up” lineups on Sundays and getaway days.
He wasn’t pro-active enough. He wouldn’t do enough to try to manufacture runs — the Rangers only had 11 sac bunts all year, for crying out loud! He wouldn’t do enough to get guys to try to change their approach, to stop swinging for the fences, to go the other way. He allowed hitters to swing at the first pitch way too often.
He wouldn’t play the young players enough. He buried Justin Foscue and Derek Hill and Dustin Harris and Sam Huff and Alejandro Osuna and Cody Freeman on the bench. He wouldn’t ride the “hot hand” enough — Michael Helman would have a couple of good games and then get a day off! He played Travis Jankowski and Brad Miller and Andrew Knizner and Kevin Pillar too much. And don’t even get me started on Leody Taveras…
And the pitchers? He would leave the starters in too long, except when he pulled them too quickly. He rode his best bullpen arms too hard and burned them out, but also used the bad relievers too often in situations where he should have used his best relievers.
Based on the critiques of Bochy I’ve read on this here internet, I have to assume it was something of a miracle that the team was able to overcome his incompetence and win the World Series in 2023.
All that is in the past, however…the Rangers now have Skip Schumaker as the manager.
We know Skip Schumaker is a good manager. He has two years of managing under his belt, with the Miami Marlins in 2023-24, and he won the National League Manager of the Year Award in 2023. Yes, the Marlins went 62-100 in 2024 under Schumaker, but its Miami and they are a train wreck and what did you expect?
And yeah, the Marlins improved by 17 games after Schumaker’s departure, winning 79 games in 2025 under new manager Clayton McCullough, someone whose name I have no recollection of ever hearing before, despite the fact that the Marlins played the Rangers less than a month ago. In my defense, it was on the heels of that sweep in Houston, and the Rangers were swept by the Marlins, and pretty much all of the final two weeks of the Rangers’ 2025 season is kind of a haze.
Seriously, though, Clayton McCullough? That’s the name of a 65 year old, though McCullough is only 45. McCullough was the Dodgers’ first base coach prior to being hired as the Marlins manager, and was replaced by Chris Woodward, because of course he was.
But we know Schumaker is a good manager because when he opted not to return to Miami for the 2025 season, the Rangers scooped him up as their new manager-in-waiting, with their old manager-in-waiting, Wil Venable, having become the manager of the Chicago White Sox. And the Rangers wasted no time in getting him locked in, hiring Schumaker just four days after it was announced Bruce Bochy would not be returning.
I’ve had hangovers that lasted longer than the Rangers’ managerial search.
Though at least they didn’t hire a podcaster.
Schumaker was introduced as the Rangers’ manager at a press conference last Friday.
There was a period of time where VH1 would do various nostalgia-tinged shows featuring D list comics and celebrities waxing humorous and/or eloquent about things they loved from the 70s, or the like. I used to turn those on because you could turn it on in the middle of the episode and not worry about missing some important plot points, and I could tune out or read or do something else and glance up 10 minutes later and jump right back in.
One of those shows was “VH-1’s 40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs.” I know I had it on countless times, but it left little imprint in my mind. The only thing I remember about it is, when they were doing the segment about the song “Key Largo” by Bertie Higgins, one guy who I can picture but whose name I can’t remember was talking about it. And he said (paraphrasing), “I have never seen Bertie Higgins before, but I can describe him for you. Dark hair, down to the collar, well groomed beard, maybe an earring, kind of doughy, maybe 15-20 pounds overweight.”
Which is an accurate description, as it turns out. Because that’s what every soft rock artist from the late-70s/early-80s looked like — like Long Lost Gibb Brothers.
So yeah, I didn’t watch the Skip Schumaker press conference on Friday, because, as I wrote at the time, these press conferences are all rote and boring. I’d go so far as to say that, if the press conference introducing a new manager is not rote and boring, something has gone wrong.
But I can probably describe the press conference anyway. Schumaker is excited for the opportunity. He’s grateful to Chris Young for believing in him. He is excited to lead this group of players. He wants to install a winning culture. There’s going to be a focus on the fundamentals. He believes in communication. He’s a big believer in information, but understands that it is individuals who play the game, and you have to be able to communicate the information to the players in a way that they can understand and process. Pictures are taken with him standing next to Chris Young while holding up a Rangers uniform with his name on it.
If this isn’t a 100% accurate summary of the press conference, my apologies, but I’m guessing it gets the broad strokes right.
Jason Kirk has a piece up at the Athletic today that talks about Penn State firing James Franklin and their upcoming hunt for a new head coach. Some things he said about the nature of head coaches and the job jumped out at me:
From here, there is zero guarantee that Penn State’s next coach will have as many strengths as Franklin, nor that the next coach’s weaknesses will be less exhausting than Franklin’s turtled-up game planning, inventive clock management and general nervousness. As fans, we always want our coach to be The Current Guy Minus The Specific Things We Hate About The Current Guy. Unfortunately, such a guy does not exist. Do you know how many things Georgia fans hate about Kirby Smart? A million things about the next guy will annoy you, but they’ll be new and different things, and that’s what hope is all about.
* * *
Within the coming weeks, I’m guessing Cignetti gets another billion-year extension of his own at Indiana and/or former Paterno linebacker Rhule goes home to State College. (Nebraska fans would then inform Penn State fans of all the things about Rhule that have annoyed them, and then Nebraska could look into hiring … a coach with a .681 career winning percentage, James Franklin.)
A million things about Skip Schumaker will annoy you…and honestly, they probably won’t be new and different things, because there are only so many things that a baseball manager can do to annoy you. Most of them will probably be things that Bruce Bochy did that annoyed you — if not you, personally, then someone, at least.
But for now, he’s a tabula rasa. Skip Schumaker hasn’t sat Evan Carter against a lefty yet. He hasn’t put Robert Garcia into a high-leverage situation. He hasn’t buried Cody Freeman on the bench or hit Marcus Semien leadoff for two months straight. He hasn’t pulled Jack Leiter from the game when Leiter was dealing or left Nathan Eovaldi out there when it was clear he should have gone to the pen. He hasn’t let a batter swing away when if they’d just gotten a bunt down, dammit, they would have had a chance to tie up the score.
Unlike Bruce Bochy, Schumaker doesn’t even have a lengthy track record we can look at. He’s not someone who managed teams the Rangers played against, where we have some sort of vague memories or general vibes about how he is going to do things. Yes, he managed the Marlins for two seasons, but the Marlins are imminently forgettable, the team that Immaculate Grid plugs in when they feel like the game has been too easy lately and people are getting cocky. Anything involving the Marlins slips away from your mind, is deleted from long-term memory, because, I mean, they’re the freaking Marlins.
I’m still not convinced that Clayton McCullough is a real person, that this isn’t an elaborate prank, by the way.
He’s not a retread that would have us rolling our eyes, someone who prominently flamed out or struggled while managing another team, who would be coming to Texas talking about the lessons they learned there and knowing what they need to do different. He’s not someone where we think to ourselves, damn, the Pirates fired this guy, why would we want him. Quite the opposite — he walked away, hit the bricks, from the Miami Marlins, rather than continue to befoul himself by staying with an organization that didn’t meet his standards.
So yeah, Skip Schumaker has two years managing Miami, but that’s not anything that is going to disabuse of notions of what Skip Schumaker could be, whether or not he is what we think he should be, as a manager. Its something that allows us to nod sagely and be happy that the team isn’t going with an untested first-time manager, and point to the shiny MOTY trophy as proof that Schumaker knows what he’s doing.
New manager Skip Schumaker? He could show us incredible things. He’s a blank slate, baby.
