It's been a shade over 36 hours now since his purportedly mutual separation from the Texas Rangers and Bruce Bochy has not yet been hired as the new/old manager of the San Francisco Giants. Somewhere beneath the surface of the earth, conspiracy geeks are getting nervous and considering turning their attention back to the asteroid flight maps.
That was how this was supposed to fit, right? The Giants had just cardboard-boxed Bob Melvin 12 hours earlier, Bochy had been deflecting cagily about his future in Texas, and San Francisco baseball ops president Buster Posey did his best work under Bochy's managerial care a decade ago. Half a day later, Bochy and another of his former charges, Rangers POBO Chris Young, decide that Bochy was welcome to stay with the team provided he didn't try to pull a uniform shirt over his massive skull any longer. It's hard to tell whether this was a firing too or just a "come sit with me upstairs" call. We know which way we're leaning.
Either way, the serendipity screeched through the night. One manager gets canned, the other one kind-of-quits, and then the second one takes the first one's gig. Couldn't be simpler, right? Just draw up a contract that gives Bochy everything he asks for plus a C-note to tip the waiter, and the deal, she is done, no?
Well, no. Not yet anyway. As perfect a fit as this would be for Posey's desire for the Giants to get back into the business of making memories, this feels almost too pat, cheesy, and ancestor-worshippy to be true, let alone like a flawless idea—making a memory is one thing, but Remembering A Size-9 Hat as a business practice is another. Winning managers have a time and a place, and while Bochy had a Hall of Fame run with the Giants before his Hall of Fame run with the Rangers, teams that aim at making history repeat in this way very rarely hit the mark. The last team to try was the 2008 Blue Jays, who brought back Cito Gaston after 11 years of retirement; they got parts of three mostly forgettable years and zero playoff berths in return. Even the Billy Martin follies—George Steinbrenner hired and fired him six times—was a dangerous idea that became a comedy.
Add to this that Bochy is 70, and while he doesn't lift anything heavy or do ladder work in his paying gig, he is also at an age where a consultancy seems like a far more responsible way to tax one's aorta. These Giants are not the ones that he won three World Series with, the presence of Posey notwithstanding. And since Posey's not playing, he sort of doesn't count in the way that would do the franchise the most good.
But these are odd days in sport; 70 is not quite 70 anymore and being AARPy is less of a barrier to new work than it used to be. Ask Bill Belichick, or put in a request with his momager; hell, go back two days and ask Bobby Petrino. That's not retreading the tires, that's taking the tires off the car you sold in '97 and putting them on your new hybrid.
Still, this is Bruce Bochy, and this is the Giants, and so it's just absurd enough for you want it to happen. The sooner the better, though. We have stuff to do, like watching the Tigers and Guardians combine for 70 bunts this afternoon. Of the eight managerial vacancies this year, only Pittsburgh has made up its mind, such as it is, staying with former interim choice Don Kelly for 2026, and that's probably just because search firms cost more than Bob Nutting wants to pay to fill a job he barely notices. As it stands, there are eight current vacancies, including Baltimore which hasn't replaced interim guy Tony Mansolino yet and Atlanta's parting with Brian Snitker, who was kicked upstairs 90 seconds after this post went on the website. In a perfect, or perfectly Bizarro, world, we'd be able to tick two of those off here—Bochy would take the Giants job and Melvin would be hired in Arlington, if only for snicks and giggles, and preferably at the same time.
Would this work? That's none of my business, really, but it's a better idea than the ghost runner. Then again, pouring hot grease on your bare foot is a better idea than the ghost runner, so maybe there is a universe in which a Bochy-Melvin swap could happen. It would fine if it were this one. It would just depend on your attitude toward strange for weird's sake. And on whether Bruce Bochy really wants to keep dressing up like the player he hasn't been since 1987.
