Bochy’s retirement call: Direct, without ego
After leading the San Francisco Giants to three World Series titles, manager decides to go out on his own terms
The writing has been on the wall for months, and on Monday, Bruce Bochy read it: 2019 will be his last season as the Giants’ manager.
Bochy’s announcement wasn’t surprising. That said, the timing and setting did catch more than a few off guard.
But it’s telling that San Francisco’s greatest manager didn’t want some fussy press conference or a video montage tribute to mark his final campaign — he merely dropped a bombshell during his daily media availability in the Giants’ dugout at their spring training complex in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The announcement was low-key but classy, without ego but direct.
It was quintessentially Bochy.
“I’ve managed with my gut. I came up here in 2007 [from San Di-
ego] on my gut,” Bochy said. “It’s a gut feeling it’s time.”
That gut helped the Giants win three World Series titles and will surely put Bochy in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Sure enough, Bochy’s gut was right again.
There’s no doubt that Bochy has a ton of irreplaceable wisdom and that his exit from the Giants dugout is a big loss. The manager’s ability to connect with players of all experience levels and backgrounds is truly marvelous — he was a wizard of season-long optimism and pitcher management.
But the truth is in this Moneyball-with-cash, everything-is-quantified world of modern baseball, “gut” managers like Bochy are becoming extinct.
Bochy held on for as long as he could. So did the Giants.
And they were justified in doing so. After all, the organization’s top-to-bottom old-school mentality brought the first World Series title to The City in 2010 — and then added two more to boot. It was fair to see if this data-driven decision-making that has swept baseball was a fad.
But since that final championship in 2014, there’s no question that the game has changed. And in 2020, the team needs a new hand filling out the lineup card.
The “quants” have won, all while the Giants have one playoff appearance (2016) and a winning percentage of .475 over the last four seasons.
The past two years have been particularly exposing, with the Giants losing 98 and 89 games.
Is that Bochy’s fault? Not even close. Frankly, had Bochy not been in charge, things might have gone even worse for the Orange and Black.
But the poor play demanded that change be made in the front office — things were clearly not working. So the Giants cleared house this past offseason and put the definitively new-school Farhan Zaidi in charge of everything.
Zaidi, a votary of Oakland A’s Vice President Billy Beane and his Moneyball mantra — he left Oakland to become GM of the Dodgers and led them to backto-back World Series appearances — will have full autonomy over baseball decisions.
And while both Bochy and Zaidi are affable guys, it’s obvious that they’re not right for each other.
Zaidi’s charge is to turn the Giants back into a model franchise, and that means that he needs everyone on the same page as him when it comes to baseball philosophy.
At the same time, Bochy, who turns 64 in April, has earned the right to go out on his terms.
Luckily, those two timelines have one year of overlap — Zaidi will use this season to fill out his staff while Bochy takes his welldeserved victory lap.
Perhaps the transitional season will spark something special.
But no matter how the 2019 season ends — with another losing season or an unexpected parade down Market Street — Bochy’s legacy in San Francisco is unimpeachable.
He was simply the best manager the Giants ever called their own.
And while it’s always hard to say goodbye, it’s always easy to say thank you.
Giants fans have 81 — and maybe more — home games to do just that in 2019.