The Texas Rangers held a press conference today to officially introduce new manager Skip Schumaker.
Schumaker, of course, is replacing Bruce Bochy, who led the Rangers to their first ever world championship
in 2023, and has overseen a couple of disappointing seasons since then. It was just 11 days ago that the Rangers announced that Bochy would not be back, and just seven days since it was announced that Schumaker had been hired as the new manager.
Usually there’s a longer interim period between the announcement a manager is leaving/has left and the introduction of the new manager. For that matter, the interim period between the new manager being announced and officially introduced is usually shorter than the period between the old manager leaving and the new manager being hired. Hiring on Friday the replacement for the manager you announced on Monday was not coming back is not usually how these things go.
But really, Schumaker replacing Bochy seemed like a done deal from the moment that it was announced Bochy would not be back. Or, maybe, from the moment it was announced that Schumaker was joining the Rangers’ front office, a little less than a year ago:
[Evan] Grant indicates that Schumaker will be part of Chris Young’s inner circle with the Rangers, as well as being the leading internal candidate to take over for Bruce Bochy whenever Bochy decides to retire.
These press conferences introducing the new manager are rituals that rarely offer much of interest. Whoever is the HMFIC on the baseball side of the organization comes out and spouts platitudes about how excited he is about the new guy, the new guy spouts platitudes about how excited he is to be hired, media members ask run of the mill questions, photos are taken with the new guy holding up his uniform. The new uniform in this case is #55, which the beats say is in honor of Orel Hershiser, the former Los Angeles Dodgers great who Schumaker met as a kid.
Hershiser stars of one of the numerous cursed footnotes in Rangers history. In December, 1982, the Rangers and Dodgers agreed to a trade that would have sent Jim Sundberg to the Dodgers for major league starters Dave Stewart and Burt Hooten, minor league outfielder Mark Bradley, and minor league pitcher Orel Hershiser. Sundberg had a no-trade clause, however, and wanted the terms of his contract re-done to approve the deal. An agreement on those issues couldn’t be reached, and the deal fell apart.
Hooten and Stewart each ended up eventually in Texas anyway — Stewart as a result of a trade involving Rick Honeycutt, Hooten as a free agent — and both disappointed massively. Hershiser finished third in the Rookie of the Year voting in 1984, had four top five Cy Young Award finishes from 1985-89 — including winning the CYA in 1988 — and was one of the best pitchers of his era.
Jim Sundberg ended up getting traded to Milwaukee a year later for Ned Yost.
Schumaker replacing Bochy is an example of the Fat Pope/Thin Pope phenomenon in action. Schumaker is a quarter-century younger than Bochy. While Bochy was brought in to handle a veteran team, Schumaker is being asked to integrate more young players into the squad. Schumaker will probably a little more expressive than the stolid, stoic Bochy.
