Come on in, you’re welcome here. What’s more, there’s no shame
in admitting you’re a member of the Bruce Bochy Reconsidered
Society. Nearly everyone here will tell you they always respected
the Giants manager and appreciated his work as a baseball lifer.
Then came the stunning events of last fall and, well, you can’t
help but look at a fellow in a new light after a run like that.
Come on in, you’re welcome here. What’s more, there’s no shame in admitting you’re a member of the Bruce Bochy Reconsidered Society.
Nearly everyone here will tell you they always respected the Giants manager and appreciated his work as a baseball lifer. Then came the stunning events of last fall and, well, you can’t help but look at a fellow in a new light after a run like that.
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Give you an example. On Monday, the day pitchers and catchers straggled into camp, Bochy got to discussing the National League regular season that won’t begin for another six weeks. Here is part of what he told reporters in Scottsdale, Ariz.:
“Because of the track record, I think you would have to look at (the Philadelphia Phillies pitching) staff as the best in baseball. I think everybody in the National League would tell you the road to the World Series has to go through Philadelphia, with the quality of their staff.”
Clearly, there’s a “duh” factor in play here. As in, the Phillies had a formidable pitching staff when the Giants ran them from the playoffs last October. Then they signed free agent Cliff Lee during the offseason. So duh, the Phillies are loaded with great arms.
It wouldn’t have surprised us had Bochy made an observation like that last year at this time. Those of us new to the BBRS would have seen it as an outgrowth of his flair for the obvious.
We say that with all due respect. Bochy is rarely as expansive as outsiders want him to be. He doesn’t let you behind the ropes, and he acts as a firewall between you and his team. We’ve understood that all along, and understood the reasoning — even as he wore us down with methodical, drawling answers to even the most urgent questions.
“Timmy? He’ll be fiiiiine. It’s just a tweak, narhm, narhm, narhm.”
Oh, every once in a while he lets you see the twinkle in his eye. But he isn’t duplicitous or provocative or a practicing prevaricator. Ask a question, and you usually get a feel for what he thinks about something.
Only this time he was praising the Phillies staff above his own world champion pitchers. Not only that, he began construction of an ethereal superhighway to the City of Brotherly Love and christened it as the route conventional wisdom insists that all World Series contenders must travel.
We might not have considered his comments twice back when we weren’t convinced that guile was a major component of Bochy’s game, back when we regarded him as slightly more reactive than proactive. You say he likes the Phillies’ pitching? Hey, who doesn’t?
That was then, when we were more inclined to leave Bochy’s words unparsed, before he ambled out of the dugout on a tumultuous Dodgers-Giants night, with a million things screaming for his attention, and informed the umpires that acting L.A. manager Don Mattingly had set foot on the pitcher’s mound one more time than he should have. Narhm, narhm, narhm.
Now we slap his comments between glass and shove them under a microscope. The first thing we surmise: He has no expectation of his comments being taken so literally that Phillies pitchers either crumple under the weight of expectation, or let down their guard. This isn’t high school. It’s not as if they’re going to nudge each other in the ribs and say, “Did you see? Bochy thinks we’re hella-good.”
Nor are Giants pitchers going to issue a call to arms, believing they’ve been dissed by their own manager. There appears to be a more subtle message here:
“Yes, as a matter of fact, we understand what’s ahead of us. Sure we respect the Phillies—they took steps to be more competitive this postseason than they were last year. They wanted to be favorites, and now they are. They’ll wear it just as we will.”
It’s not an obvious ploy for the underdog status the Giants enjoyed last year. It’s more a gentle framing of the season ahead, of context being applied before the fact. Bochy managed with pants-on-fire urgency last fall. That doesn’t fly during the spring-to-fall regular season. That’s a time for gently nudging events in the direction you’d like them to travel.
Maybe this is giving him too much credit, of overanalyzing his managerial methods. If so, consider it payback for the years we weren’t watching closely enough.
Narhm, narhm, narhm.
— Column by Gary Peterson, Contra Costa Times
