Bruce Bochy Interested In Managing After 2020

Former Giants and Padres skipper Bruce Bochy is taking the year off, but it seems increasingly likely that he’ll eventually return to the dugout. Bochy had previously left the door open to a managerial comeback, but his recent chat with MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM (as passed along by Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle) represented a much clearer indication of his future intentions.

 “I’m just hitting the pause button,” Bochy said, at Russo’s suggestion that the three-time World Series winner would manage again in the near future. “That’s all, you know, and taking a sabbatical here for a year and then, you know, I’ll see where I’m at. I don’t know how I’m gonna feel but I’d love to have one more shot.”

As Schulman points out, Bochy often struck a coy pose with reporters in the 2019 retirement tour that saw him receive numerous “sendoff” gifts in pregame ceremonies planned by rival teams. The 64-year-old event went so far as to remark on Feb 19 that “Never is a long time” when asked if he was truly retiring in the strictest sense of the word, but he never went so far as to say that he would “love” another opportunity.

This previously indefinite stance, coupled with the fact that Bochy’s February retirement announcement coincided with the installment of Farhan Zaidi as San Francisco’s president of baseball operations, led many to speculate that Bochy’s retirement from the Giants dugout was as much about retaining goodwill as it was about marking the end of a career. This is personal speculation, but considering Zaidi took over an organization that had seen two consecutive losing seasons under the veteran skipper’s command, it’s possible that the two sides came to the conclusion this Spring that a pause for Bochy and a change in leadership would be mutually beneficial. This latest chapter would seem to mesh with such a scenario.