MLB San Francisco Giants

San Francisco Giants’ Bruce Bochy Is Most Underrated Manager Ever

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By @bradberreman24

Bruce Bochy, San Francisco Giants, World Series

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

The San Francisco Giants have now won three World Series in the last five years, which has cemented their status as a modern-day dynasty despite not having a lot of widely recognizable players or star power in a traditional sense.

Bruce Bochy is the 10th manager to win three World Series, and the previous nine are all in the Hall of Fame. Bochy was already a sure-fire Hall of Famer himself simply by leading the Giants to another World Series, but if he wasn’t firmly in the conversation already, he is now clearly the most underrated manager in baseball history.

Bochy currently has 1,618 regular season wins as a manager, which is good for 18th all-time, along with a winning percentage of .502 over 20 seasons with the San Diego Padres (1995-2006) and the Giants (2008-present). He needs 54 wins in 2015 to move up to 16th in regular season wins, which looks fairly certain, and at age 60 next April, Bochy will presumably be around for at least a few more seasons. That puts 2,000 regular season wins well within reach for Bochy, with Leo Durocher (2,008 wins-1oth) and Walter Alston (2,040 wins-ninth) likely to be bumped down a spot on the all-time managerial wins list. That of course assumes no major health concerns surface for Bochy in the coming years, which are unpredictable and also don’t necessarily mean he would quit managing immediately.

The other nine managers who have won three World Series is a virtual “who’s who” of all-time greats, including Connie Mack, John McGraw, Alston, Tony LaRussa, Casey Stengel, Joe Torre, and Sparky Anderson. The World Series-winning rosters available to each of those nine managers were full of players that were among the best of their era and, in a lot of cases, a laundry list of all-time greats and Hall of Famers, which is an advantage that needs to be noted when considering a manager’s iconic status.

Bochy’s three World Series-winning teams in San Francisco have had one likely first-ballot Hall of Famer in catcher Buster Posey, and a pitcher that may be building a Hall of Fame resume in 2014 NLCS and World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner. Going back to his time managing the Padres, Bochy managed one Hall of Famer in Tony Gwynn and another Hall of Famer as soon as he’s eligible in closer Trevor Hoffman (601 career saves). We also can’t forget San Diego won the National League pennant in 1998, before losing to what may have been Torre’s best New York Yankees team.

Bochy won National League Manager of the Year in 1996 with the Padres, and he has finished in the top-10 in the voting nine other times in his previous 19 combined seasons as a manager. It seems ridiculous that Bochy has only been a Manager of the Year once to this point, but since it is a regular season award and he only has four 90-plus win seasons under his belt, it makes some sense. This year’s voting has not been announced, but even if he wins National League Manager of the Year, Bochy will remain under-appreciated in light of his overall accomplishments. But something tells me that’s just the way he likes it.

Bochy’s combination of guts and strategy stood out in Wednesday night’s Game 7. From the decision to start Juan Perez in left field over Travis Ishikawa, to removing starter Tim Hudson in the second inning with the score tied to being willing to use Bumgarner after he threw a complete game in Game 5 against the Royals. Having his ace available, willing to pitch and able to shut down Kansas City for five innings on short rest obviously helps, but Bochy never wavered from saying he would use Bumgarner if need be and he followed through when faced with the decision in the moment.

It also seems that Bumgarner had some say in his availability and how long he would pitch on Wednesday night, which is power a lot of managers would not give to a player and Bochy deserves a lot of credit for that as well.

Bochy is now also the fifth manager to win three World Series in a five-year span, and he joins Mack as the only managers to accomplish the feat for a team other than the Yankees. That fact alone puts Bochy in an even more exclusive class, and adds perspective to a legacy he is frankly still building. But when talking about the best managers of all time, Bochy seems destined to remain toward the end of the conversation, if not excluded completely since his name does not carry a lot of clout on a national perspective.

Someone would have to make a compelling case to convince me that Bochy is not the most underrated manager of this, or any other, era. Buck Showalter deserves some mention among current managers in terms of being underrated, but he has not accomplished as much as Bochy and until he does, the current Giants’ skipper will remain at least a few notches above anyone else in that regard.

Brad Berreman is a Columnist at Rant Sports.com. Connect with him on Twitter or Google +.

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