Bruce Bochy Will Not Return As Rangers Manager Amid Financial Uncertainty

The Rangers announced this evening that the club and Bruce Bochy have mutually agreed that Bochy will not continue in his role as manager of the club next year. The announcement adds that Bochy has been offered a front office role to remain with the organization in an advisory capacity. As relayed by Jeff Wilson of DLLS_Sports, president of baseball operations Chris Young told reporters on a call this evening that they plan to focus on youth amid financial uncertainty and the sides decided to part ways due to the lack of a clear picture for the 2026 season.

Bochy, 70, has 28 seasons of managerial experience under his belt at this point after getting his start with the Padres back in 1995. He won the NL Manager of the Year award in 1996 and led San Diego to a 98-win season and an NL pennant during the 1998 season, but the club generally struggled throughout the remainder of his tenure until he departed the organization during the 2006-07 offseason to join the division-rival Giants in San Francisco. Bochy rose to his current status as one of the most respected managers in the game during his tenure in the Bay Area, famously leading San Francisco to three World Series titles in five years from 2010 to 2014.

The Giants tried to recreate that even year magic by returning to the postseason in 2016, but fell to the eventual World Series champion Cubs in four games. Bochy’s final three years as the club’s skipper saw them fail to make the postseason with 98-, 89-, and 85-loss campaigns. Bochy stepped away from managing following the 2019 season, making way for Gabe Kapler to take over as manager in San Francisco. With three World Series rings and more than 2,000 wins as a manager in the majors, it seemed as though Bochy’s career in the dugout was coming to a close.

That changed during the 2022-23 offseason, when the Rangers coaxed Bochy out of retirement to take over the helm of their franchise. Texas had signed Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to hefty contracts the prior offseason, but a 94-loss season did not see the club reap the rewards of those superstar signings. Ownership clearly felt new leadership was needed, as Young was installed as president of baseball operations while Chris Woodward was fired during his fourth season as manager. That new leadership turned out to be Bochy, and his first year with the club saw him lead them to greatness. The 90-win 2023 Rangers followed in the footsteps of the 2014 Giants as they failed to secure a division title but went on to achieve something far greater when they were crowned World Series champions.

Unfortunately, that championship was not the start of a period of sustained success. The Rangers has hovered around .500 in each of the past two years, with a 159-165 record in that time. They finished with an 81-81 record this year, six games out of a playoff spot despite the club’s decision to push forward and buy at the trade deadline despite the fact that the decision would push them over the luxury tax, which was known to be something the Rangers were hoping to avoid dating back to October of last year.

Given that the team has failed to make the postseason in each of the past two years and very clearly went over budget this year, it’s not exactly shocking that the Rangers would be looking to take a step back of sorts. Texas has around $131MM in guaranteed contracts on the books for next season according to RosterResource, and that number will jump to around $150MM once Joc Pederson picks up his $18.5MM player option for the 2026 season after a campaign marred by injuries and ineffectiveness.

The vast majority of that money is tied up in just four players: Seager, Semien, Jacob deGrom, and Nathan Eovaldi. While those expenditures weren’t too onerous for a team that was spending in the $240MM range annually, as the Rangers have since the start of the 2023 season, a pullback in terms of payroll would leave less room to maneuver around those hefty contracts. It’s unclear just how much payroll is expected to go down at this point, but the club’s previous high-water mark prior to the past three seasons (according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts) was in the $175MM range. With $150MM on the books already for 2026 before considering arbitration raises for players like Jonah Heim and Josh Smith, it’s at least possible that Young and the front office will be facing a significant budget crunch this winter.

Scaling back payroll doesn’t necessarily have to mean a full rebuild, and Young explicitly emphasized that the club is not intending to embark on a rebuild. That makes sense, given that exciting young talents like Wyatt Langford, Evan Carter, Jack Leiter, and Kumar Rocker are already in the majors with MLB Pipeline’s #4 prospect Sebastian Walcott potentially on the radar to make his big league debut as soon as next season. Good health from stars like deGrom and Seager in conjunction with steps forward from those young players could easily be enough to lift this Rangers team to the postseason next year even with only minimal additions, though it goes without saying that a lot would have to go right for an 81-81 team to substantially scale back payroll while simultaneously improving enough to make it back to October the following year.

From that perspective, the mutual parting of ways between Bochy and the Rangers makes plenty of sense. Bochy’s already stepped away from managing once and may only want to manage a club with genuine expectations at this stage of his career, if he isn’t considering retiring altogether. The Rangers, meanwhile, could perhaps benefit from a younger, more long-term voice in the dugout as their young players reach and develop in the majors. Young told reporters (including Wilson) that he expects the next manager of the Rangers to have roots in player development before adding that Skip Schumaker is a candidate for the job.

That Schumaker would be in the conversation to take over for Bochy is hardly a surprise. Will Venable had served under Bochy as associate manager during his first two years with the Rangers and seemed likely to be the veteran skipper’s successor at some point, though any such plans were dashed when Venable took over as manager of the White Sox last winter. Once Venable exited the organization, the Rangers brought Schumaker in as a senior advisor to the baseball operations department. While Schumaker’s role was not that of a member of the coaching staff like Venable, his well-regarded tenure as manager of the Marlins makes him a somewhat obvious choice to take over for Bochy as far as internal candidates go.