© David Kohl | 2018 Aug 18
In the midst of a nightmare streak in which they’ve lost six of their last seven games, the San Francisco Giants are well on their way to missing the postseason of the second consecutive year. With a roster chock-full of aging stars, and a farm system that ranks near the bottom of the league, the near future is also murky, not just for the club, but for longtime manager Bruce Bochy.
Giants beat writer Andrew Baggarly joined Murph & Mac on Thursday morning and broke down how long he expects the three-time World Series champion — who has one more year left on his current contract — to remain in Orange & Black.
“I think so,” Baggs said when asked if he thinks Boch will return next year. “I do wonder if (the Giants) did sort of pull an about-face and say ‘we really don’t expect that we’re going to be a winning team maybe in 2019, and we’re going try to reassemble and go for it in 2020 again,’ and they go to Bruce and they say ‘Look, do you want to be a part of this, if this is going to be our mode in the last year of your contract?’ I still think he would — and this is just purely my personal speculation — I think he still would want to manage. He’s making a lot of money in the last year of his deal, I don’t think he’s a quitter, I don’t think he walks away from anything.”
Bochy, 63, is in his 12th season as Giants manager, compiling a 964-946 record while leading the team to World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and 2014. The Giants haven’t missed the playoffs in consecutive years under Bochy since 2008-2009.
“I do think that they’re looking at the way the situation has played out in Anaheim, where it’s Mike Scioscia’s final year and it came out a couple weeks ago that he would be stepping away and he had to come out and deny that and it was a bit awkward. I do think that they are going to be very, very respectful of each other. I do expect that 2019 it’s probably very, very likely his last year as the Giants manager, but I think maybe they do it like Bobby Cox in Atlanta where everybody knows in advance, and you can have a real appreciation tour, and you can do other things behind the scenes where you can sort of move the changing of the guard so to speak when it comes to making decisions or hiring other people who start to pave the way for the next managerial era, however they decide to go.”
“That’s sort of how I would sketch it out but again, that’s just sort of me knowing how the organization works and how some of the people there think. That’s just completely speculation.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Baggarly on Bochy, start from 6:45.