Bochy's bullpen mastery is on stage again

The three-time World Series champion manager is back with Texas.

Bruce Bochy

Bruce Bochy walks like a lot of ex-catchers walk, with knees that should be in receivership. Going from the dugout to the mound is easier than he makes it look. But when he’s done, the opponents feel his pain.

Bochy won three World Series in a five-season span with San Francisco. He is one of two managers to take San Diego to a Series. Now he’s back with the Texas Rangers, in his first season there, with a franchise that lost 196 games the previous two seasons and hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2016.

That, remember, was the year of the Chicago Cubs, who took a pioneering ride to a world championship and stopped by San Francisco on the way. The Cubs won the Division Series in four games over the Giants, scoring four runs in the ninth inning of the clincher, against four San Francisco relievers. That broke a string of nine consecutive series won by teams Bochy managed.

So the old backup catcher for Houston with the Neptune-sized head has a Cooperstown speech in his future, and they should build a mound on the premises that day, along with a moving sidewalk.

Although the Rangers had the best offense in the American League and a pretty spiffy defense as well, Bochy’s ability to manipulate a bullpen has been the theme of those championships, and will be again when Texas begins the World Series versus Arizona Friday night.

Neither team had any business visualizing this game when their 162-game seasons ended. Texas had just finished fumbling away the A.L. West title to Houston. Instead of kicking back and regrouping, the Rangers had to fly from Anaheim to Seattle to Tampa Bay to Baltimore and then back home. In the NLCS, they brought a 2-0 lead back from Houston and lost three games at Globe Life Park. Then they returned to Houston and basically pillaged the place, scoring 20 runs in Games 6-7.

The reason Houston was able to win that West title is that it was in the process of sweeping Arizona on the final weekend. Then Arizona had to pack up for Milwaukee, then Los Angeles where it faced a team that had finished 16 games beyond them in the standings. After the Diamondbacks passed that bar, they were ravaged in two games at Philadelphia, somehow booked a return trip down 3-2, and then silenced the werewolves by winning Games 6 and 7.

So the Diamondbacks are 3-for-3 against their skeptics and still feel shortchanged. They have Torey Lovullo, another savvy manager, and a bullpen they basically ordered from Sam’s Club in midseason.

But Bochy has set the standard for bullpen maneuvering. In 2010 the Giants’ relievers gave up three home runs in 38 and one-third playoff innings, and a .200 batting average with a 1.07 WHIP. In the World Series win over Texas, they gave up no home runs in 10 innings and a .145 average.

The Giants swept Detroit in the 2012 World Series. Their postseason ERA was 2.35 with an 0.88 WHIP. That means they averaged fewer than one baserunner per inning, and the Giants’ victims hit .180. In the Series, their WHIP over four games was an impossible 0.43, and the Tigers hit .053 off the bullpen, which gave up two hits in 11 and two-thirds innings.

The 2014 journey was the most special, ending in a difficult 7-game win over Kansas City, which would come back for the big trophy the next season. But the bullpen was still front and center. It had a 2.11 ERA and gave up 44 hits in 64 innings, with a .176 batting average. In the World Series, the relievers posted an 0.98 ERA and doled out a .235 average, with two home runs in 28 ⅔ innings, and a 22/4 strikeout/walk ratio.

Bochy has credibility and authority. The latter is natural, the former is earned through years of stubborn decision-making. The towering figure in that postseason was Madison Bumgarner, whose work earned him Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year honors after the Kansas City series. He won Game 1, but then the Giants lost Games 2–3.

The intelligentsia went into full howl when Bochy refused to alter Bumgarner’s schedule so he could pitch Game 4 and save the day. No, his best pitcher was going to be given a chance to be at his best when needed the most. If that meant the Giants would fall behind, 3-1, so be it. Bochy stuck with Ryan Vogelsong, the scheduled Game 4 pitcher, and it looked bad when Kansas City led 4-1. But the Giants won 11-4, and Bumgarner, on his usual rest, won Game 5 as the series returned to the heartland.

Kansas City won Game 6 to set up a Game 7. No one had won a World Series Game 7 on the road since the 1979 Pirates. With no further games until Scottsdale in March, Bochy could bend the rules. When the Giants took a 3-2 lead, he revved up Bumgarner, on two days’ rest, and Bumgarner took the Giants home with five shutout innings. His playoff ERA that year was 1.03.

Another key to that postseason was Yusimero Petit, who had been a starting pitcher and wasn’t a part of the late-inning posse. When the Giants needed to go 18 innings to win Division Series Game 2 at Washington, Petit handled Innings 11 through 17 and gave up one hit in 80 pitches. That meant that no other Giants’ reliever had to get more than four outs that day, and Brandon Belt won it with a home run off Tanner Roark.

Bochy does believe in closers, but doesn’t believe in typecasting. The Rangers have gone through them like boots. The man was supposed to be lefty Will Smith, whom Bochy had managed in San Francisco and who had saved 37 games for the Braves in 2021, but he lost that niche during the season. Aroldis Chapman was once a ninth-inning phenom but Bochy currently uses him as a setup man for Jose Leclerc, who was doing fine until Game 5 of the NLCS, when Adolis Garcia and Martin Maldonado turned the top of the ninth into WWE. It created a delay that did not help Leclerc, who had pitched in the eighth and then went back out there to give up Jose Altuve’s 3-run shot.

Brian Wilson was the Giants’ closer in 2010, Sergio Romo in 2012 and Santiago Casilla in 2014. There was always lefthander Javier Lopez who, 12 times during the Giants’ runs, came in to set down one batter. 

Now the rules have changed but Bochy is back again, looking ahead to the big outs, thinking long-term until either the wolf or a trophy is at the door.

Josh Sborz has been this year’s revelation. The former Dodger (gee, we’re saying that a lot in these playoffs, aren’t we?) has given up two hits in eight and two-thirds innings. The Rangers won Games 6 and 7 in Houston by blowout scores, but that’s deceptive. Texas was only leading 3-2 in the sixth inning of Game 6 when Altuve singled off Eovaldi with one out. Sborz came in and got a double play ball from Michael Brantley. His fist pumps were the harbinger for Mitch Garver’s RBI double in the seventh, and then Leclerc cleaned up Sborz’s mess in the seventh and struck out Jon Singleton with the bases loaded. Yeah, but who would pitch the bottom of the eighth? After Garcia’s grand slam in the top of the eighth, it didn’t matter..

There are erstwhile starters like Dane Dunning, Martin Perez, Andrew Heaney and Jon Gray to handle emergencies, if needed, and to start games in the middle of the Series. There’s Max Scherzer, too. But the Rangers are most comfortable with Jordan Montgomery and Nathan Eovaldi up front, then turning it to over to Sborz, Chapman and Leclerc, in whatever order Bochy decides.

It’s not the same turnkey crew that Bochy had in San Francisco. Ranger relievers have given up seven postseason home runs and walked 25 in 48 and one-third innings. But in late October and early November, you’re not playing for stat supremacy or fantasy titles, and the heavy bettors and their money will soon be parted. Everything at this point resembles Bruce Bochy’s creaky walk to the mound. All that matters is that he gets there. And back.