Bruce Bochy on Rangers: 'It Just Feels Right'
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Bruce Bochy had been out of baseball for three years when he was approached by Texas Rangers general manager Chris Young about managing the club.
Four months after that first conversation — and a handful of days before his first Spring Training in Surprise, Ariz. — Bochy sounds like a man with no regrets.
“It just feels right,” Bochy said recently. “I’m here doing what I love to do and grateful because of it.”
Bochy spent the offseason getting to know a new organization for the first time since he joined the San Francisco Giants as manager in 2007. He led that team to three World Championships in five years between 2010-14.
While away from the game he spent time as a consultant for the Giants, but made his home in Nashville, so he and his wife could be closer to children and grand-children.
When it came time for him to spend some quality time with his new staff, they went to Nashville for a few days in January. Bochy’s staff is largely inherited, led by third-base coach — and former interim manager — Tony Beasley. The only two new faces are both familiar to Rangers fans — associate manager Will Venable and pitching coach Mike Maddux.
Venable played 37 games for the Rangers in 2015 and Maddux was the Rangers pitching coach from 2009-15.
Bochy also spent the offseason watching Young and his front office make good on the Rangers’ primary objective — improve its starting pitching. The Rangers started the offseason with one veteran starter under contract, Jon Gray.
Entering Spring Training the Rangers have six. One, Martín Pérez, was retained on a one-year deal. The Rangers traded for Jake Odorizzi. Then the Rangers signed three new starters, including the top free-agent on the market in Jacob deGrom. The Rangers also signed Andrew Heaney and Nathan Eovaldi.
Was this what Young sold Bochy on when they talked in October?
“We became more pitcher-centric and I’m a big believer in that, especially in the starting rotation,” Bochy said. “I like the fact that every guy we’re going to start is going to give us a chance to win.”
Bochy and his staff still have a ways to go, starting with building an identity for this team in the clubhouse, sorting out the left-field situation, putting together a bullpen and determining whether the team will use a five- or a six-man rotation.
But the long-time veteran knows what’s coming. Retirement hours are at an end. Longer days and shorter nights are coming.
“There are a lot of things on your plate and you’re waking up at five or six in the morning,” Bochy said. “I mean you’re thinking of things … one day my wife, Kim, said ‘I know it’s already started. You’re in that mode,’ where she’s talking and you might not be listening as much as you should.”
Pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training to the team’s facility in Surprise, Ariz., on Feb. 15, with position players to follow by Feb. 20.
The Spring Training game schedule starts on Feb. 24 with a game against Kansas City at the Surprise complex shared with the Royals.
The Rangers wrap up their exhibition season with a pair of games at Globe Life Field against the Royals on March 27 and 28. The Rangers open up the regular season at home against Philadelphia on March 30.
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