Changed landscape greets Bochy
SURPRISE, Ariz. — There has been a lot of change since Bruce Bochy last wheeled out of the Sky Harbor Airport tangle on his way to open spring training as a manager.
The scenery alone was a metaphor.
No more interminable waits for a rental car bus to putter along; now there’s a train! For another, when he exited the airport, he turned left and headed west, instead of right for Scottsdale.
There are no more nights at Don & Charley’s, the venerable ribs and steakhouse where baseball old-timers held court just a few blocks from where Bochy and the San Francisco Giants trained; it’s now a hotel. And some things never change: Bell Road, regardless of where you are in the Valley of the Sun, remains a mess.
A lot of the same applies to baseball as Bochy dives into his first spring as Rangers manager. A lot has changed around the game since he last managed in 2019, but the message Bochy will deliver Wednesday before the first workout remains the same. It is about belief.
That played in 2007 when he took over the Giants. It plays now with a Rangers team coming off six consecutive losing seasons.
“I’ve thought about this all winter,” Bochy said on a cold, wet Tuesday afternoon. “We are a much better club. This team feels it, and they are excited about it. I am, too.
“This is a team that should expect to raise the bar and show a lot of improvement. It should be a team that can play with anybody. We plan on contending.”
The burden of six consecutive losing seasons can weigh a team down, even if there is nobody in camp who’s appeared in all six. (Reliever José Leclerc is the only one to appear in five.)
There is also the task ahead, which is no small matter. The Rangers finished 22 games out of second place in the AL West last year.
Houston, also known as the defending world champion, is not any worse than it was a year ago. The same could be said for Seattle, which finished second. And the Angels only have the two best players on the planet.
For all the additions the Rangers made this winter, all of them revolving around starting pitching, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Keeping those starters healthy is the No. 1 priority. Two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob degrom, who signed a five-year, $185 million deal with the team in the offseason, already missed his first spring workout on Wednesday with tightness in his left side. There is also an unsettled leftfield situation and a bullpen full of yet-to-be-determined roles.
For Bochy, in particular, there are adjustments to the changes in the game since he last managed.
Yes, the pitch clock and bigger bases and limited pickoff throws are all new rules the Rangers, and all of baseball, must adjust to. But two areas in which Bochy excelled are now stored in the reliquary of rule changes.
He can no longer use a reliever for a one-batter matchup, which he did more often than any manager in baseball while with San Francisco. And extrainnings games are no longer about survival, but rather sudden death. MLB this week voted unanimously to make the Manfred Man rule (a runner on second to start each half inning after the ninth) permanent.
Bochy understands and agrees with most of the rule changes designed to create more action and quicken the pace. When he was out of the game, he was the guy people “vented” to, he said. He heard from folks inside the game about how rule changes were frustrating. But he also heard from those frustrated with the slowness of games.
“I think it was time to do something to bring the game back, make things more exciting, to bring action back,” he said.
He will adapt.
After all, he found his way to Surprise.