Texas Rangers Manager More 'New School' Than Image Suggests

Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy is open to the use of analytics when it comes to strategy and preparing for games.

The prevailing thought is that Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy is "old school" that makes decision mostly by his gut. In some ways that’s true.

It’s also a perception driven by his 25 years as a manager, along with his three-year break before rejoining baseball to take over the Rangers this season.

In his short time with the team, he’s talked about his openness to the new rules, saying it make the game faster and more exciting. He’s also talked about his openness to analytics and changing with the times.

A recent article in The Athletic shed light on three particular areas of interest when it comes to analytics, along with Bochy’s respect for and use.

During his time leading the San Francisco Giants to three World Series championships, he referred to the analytics staff as “propeller heads.” It was a loving nickname for the team responsible for bringing him data every day. Turns out he was open to it.

“You’re crazy not to listen and get all the information you can. I don’t want somebody to have the edge on me,” Bochy said.

When Rangers general manager Chris Young visited Bochy in Nashville in October in an attempt to lure him out of semi-retirement, analytics came up again. 

Young played for Bochy in 2006 with the San Diego Padres when analytics were a more nascent part of the game. Young wasn’t sure where Bochy stood on the topic. What was one of Bochy’s first questions to Young?

“Talk to me about your R&D team.”

One of the members of that R&D team, Bobby Bandelow, is the Rangers advance scouting coordinator. He brings Bochy the data the analytics team assembles.

He meets with Bochy and the coaching staff for 10 minutes at the start of each series, and then separately with Bochy and associate manager Will Venable for another 10 minutes, to share different types of data. What Bochy does with the data is up to him.

Bandelow likened how Bochy looks at the data — and how to use it — as something most of us learned in junior high.

“In my opinion, he follows the scientific method,” Bandelow said. “He starts with a hypothesis. He asks you to find numbers to either validate or debunk his hypothesis. And if it debunks his hypothesis, then he has the ability to rethink. I think that is what sets him apart.”

He said that Bochy starts from an “objective foundation” and that most people that don’t know him don’t understand it.

However Bochy is using the data, it’s working. The Rangers (41-24) are in first place in the American League West.

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You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.

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