If you had asked me 48 hours ago if Bruce Bochy would be back with the Rangers in 2026, I would have said yes.
Not, I should note, with a great deal of confidence. I wouldn’t have bet the house on it. Bochy is 70 years old, his contract was up, and the Rangers had fallen short of the playoffs two years in a row. Bochy being ready to return to retirement, or wanting to pursue another opportunity with another team, or the organization wanting to make a change…all those were realistic possibilities.
So even if I didn’t expect it to happen, Bruce Bochy not returning in 2026 isn’t a surprise.
It is mildly surprising, though, that the news broke so quickly. The long fly ball off the bat of Brayan Rocchio hit the foul pole at Progressive Field at roughly 5:25 p.m. on Sunday. Less than 24 hours later, the Texas Rangers sent out a press release announcing Bruce Bochy would not be back as manager in 2026 by “mutual agreement.”
Mutual or not, at least one party presumably had already made up their mind on Bochy’s future by the time Jose Corniell and Donovan Solano and Billy McKinney and Rowdy Tellez and the rest of the Rangers team started walking off the field late Saturday afternoon. Whether that was Bochy, or Chris Young, or Ray Davis, or some combination, the decision had already been made. We presumably will get some more information on who wanted what, and when, and what led to the decision, and what frictions there were, in the coming days.
Were I to guess, I’d say that Bochy will be joining the San Francisco Giants in some capacity. Bochy came out of retirement to join the Rangers in 2023 in no small part because of the relationship he had with Chris Young, dating back to when he was Young’s manager in San Diego. As we discussed yesterday, when the news broke that the Giants had fired manager Bob Melvin, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey most of his major league career playing under Bruce Bochy. Posey replaced Farhan Zaidi as president of baseball operations in San Francisco almost exactly one year ago and inherited Melvin, who Zaidi had hired a year earlier.
Whenever there’s a replacement of the top guy in the front office, there’s often a lame duck element with the manager he inherits, with the axe swinging after year one if the team doesn’t exceed expectations. Melvin being fired by Posey after the Giants finished at 81-81 wasn’t necessarily a tell as to what would happen in Texas. But I do wonder whether the trigger would have been pulled — or pulled so quickly, before 10 a.m. West Coast time on Monday — were Bochy staying put.
Maybe Bochy returns to San Francisco, where he won three titles, for a last hurrah as the team’s manager. Maybe he becomes a special assistant, an advisor, to Posey, helps guide the search for a new manager, acts as the seasoned voice for a very inexperienced executive. Or maybe Bruce Bochy accepts the nebulous front office role the Rangers have offered him for 2026.
I suspect we will know pretty quickly.
Bruce Bochy’s tenure with Texas wasn’t a particularly long one — just three years, with a 249-237 regular season record. A much shorter run than Ron Washington, and Johnny Oates, and Bobby Valentine — the three managers who had extended stints in Texas. A shorter run than Jeff Banister and Buck Showalter. He managed fewer regular season games than Chris Woodward.
But the most important thing — the only thing that matters, really, when it comes to how Bruce Bochy’s time in Texas will be remembered — is that Bruce Bochy went 13-4 in the playoffs as the Rangers’ manager. He was at the helm when the Rangers won their first ever World Series title. And so he will always be remembered fondly by Rangers fans.
I don’t tend to have strong opinions about the efficacy of managers. I don’t think there’s a big difference between a great manager and a run of the mill manager, as evidenced by the fact that Bruce Bochy, one of the highest paid managers in the game, was paid $4.5 million per year, which is fourth outfielder money. But I don’t have nearly enough information to weigh in on whether a manager is good, bad or mediocre.
As I think most of y’all know, my real job is being a lawyer — a divorce lawyer, specifically. Its an area of work that gives you the opportunity to learn a lot about people and human nature. One of the things I’ve learned is that, when couples are splitting up, the thing that attracted each partner to the other early on is often what they complain about at the end. The fun, free-spirited nature that was so thrilling early in the relationship ends up being viewed as flakiness and irresponsibility at the end. The levelheadedness and stability that was so attractive at the start of the relationship gets seen as dull and controlling when there’s a split. The very things that you sought out and desired in a partner often are the same things that end up driving you away.
Thus it is with managers. When micro-managing, mind-game-playing, detail-obsessed Buck Showalter — who was hired because the Rangers wanted someone who was detail-oriented and would run a tight ship — was fired by the Rangers, he was replaced by Ron Washington, who was loose, fun, and honest, almost to a fault. Washington resigned, and the Rangers replaced him with Jeff Banister, someone with a football coach’s mentality, someone stricter. Banister was replaced by Chris Woodward, more laid back, looser, more of a player’s manager (and also someone who was tight with Corey Seager, if you think the Rangers were playing the very long game with that hire).
After Woodward, an inexperienced manager who ended up over his head, the Rangers wanted someone proven, a veteran manager with skins on the wall who could take a high payroll team with high expectations and lead it to the promised land. And thus, we got Bruce Bochy.
Especially during that wild 2023 season, one of the things you always heard about Bochy was that nothing fazed him. He didn’t get ruffled. He had seen it all, he had been through the wars, he was going to be calm and steady throughout. His stoicness and even temper was praised as something that kept the players from getting too high or too low, kept them believing even when things weren’t looking good.
The last two seasons, what is the criticism you hear? Too unemotional. Not willing enough to shake things up. Not acting swiftly enough when things are going bad. The same traits that were praiseworthy two years ago, that were credited with helping the team navigate a difficult final stretch before tearing through the playoffs, are now the reasons fans want someone different.
It sounds like Skip Schumaker is the odds-on favorite to be the next Ranger manager. He had an 11 year major league career, spent four season as a coach with the San Diego Padres, spent a year as the bench coach in St. Louis, and then was hired as manager of the Miami Marlins for the 2023-24 seasons. He spent 2025 as a senior advisor to Chris Young, and the perception seems to be that he will be a better fit with a team that is expected to be younger, expected to incorporate more inexperienced players, expected to need more guidance in the clubhouse than the team that Bruce Bochy was hired to lead.
I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on Schumaker, and what kind of manager he might be. I just hope he, or whoever ends up getting the job, will be as good a hire as Bruce Bochy was.
