Former SF Giants manager Bruce Bochy gets milestone win

Fewer than 10 MLB managers have ever won as many games as former SF Giants manager Bruce Bochy after a Texas Rangers win over the weekend.

Bruce Bochy won 1,052 games as manager of the SF Giants. That's second in the history of the franchise. But with his 38th win of the season for the first-place Texas Rangers, Bochy is now 10th in managerial wins in major league baseball history.

This jersey which Bruce Bochy wore on Sunday, when he moved into 10th place all-time with 2041 managerial wins, will be donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. pic.twitter.com/Dtn65xnkgf

— John Blake (@RangerBlake) June 5, 2023

Bochy passed longtime Los Angeles Dodgers manager Walter Alston with the victory, sticking it to the boys in blue yet another time. Earlier this year, Bochy passed another old Dodgers manager, 12th-place Leo Durocher, who also ranks fifth on the Giants franchise list. Durocher jumped to the crosstown Giants from Brooklyn in 1948, winning the World Series in 1954 and getting revenge on the Dodgers by winning the 1951 pennant in a playoff.

In theory, Bochy could catch ninth-place Joe McCarthy this year, but it would require the Rangers to finish the season on an 84-20 run. They've been a surprise contender this year, but not that surprising.

While it seems impossible now, at one point Bochy was the youngest manager in the National League, taking over the San Diego Padres at age 39 in 1994, after a ten-year major league career. Bochy won 951 games in 12 years in San Diego, leading the Padres to four of their five division titles in franchise history and going to the World Series in 1998.

He left the Padres for the Giants in 2006 and won three World Series and a wild-card playoff berth in 2016. At one point, his Giants won ten straight elimination games. He became the 11th manager to win 2,000 games before retiring/getting forced out after the 2019 season.

It was the second time Bochy was moved out of a managerial job in favor of a younger manager. The Padres let the Giants interview Bochy because they wanted 40-year-old Bud Black to take over. The Padres ended up having five different managers by the time Bochy was done in 2019.

The Texas Rangers lured Bochy out of retirement this winter, and he's started the season 38-20 with a team that hasn't had a winning season since 2016. That's with ace Jacob deGrom making just six starts and going on the 60-day injured list.

This is part of deal with deGrom. Rangers knew it coming in, but also knew it would take some time to learn his cues and language and them him. This is not necessarily a physical setback. He will have follow up
MRI this week https://t.co/6eG7DqF0Qc

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) June 5, 2023

The Rangers have been spending big on free agents the last two years, but it's still an impressive start for a team that was 68-94 last year.

The Rangers' hot start also sets up a showdown with a different former Giants skipper. Dusty Baker and the Houston Astros are 3 1/2 games back off Texas in the AL West. Baker's also 8th on the all-time wins list, 87 games ahead of Bochy. He's likely to pass Bucky Walters for 7th place by August, and a late-season Astros surge could vault him past Sparky Anderson and into sixth place.

As for other notable SF Giants managers, John McGraw is third all-time with 2,763 wins, behind Connie Mack and Tony La Russa. Bill Rigney is 42nd with 1,239 (674 with the Giants), Frank Robinson is 58th and Felipe Alou is 63rd. Alvin Dark is 69th, Bill Terry is 82nd and the late Roger Craig is in 92nd place all time.