As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Adolis García and Josh Jung were important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Nathan Eovaldi is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

One note: In the pitching section, I took a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A recent article examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward.

I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round, the various Division Series eliminations, the ALCS, the NLCS, and Torey Lovullo. Today, let’s show some respect to the one of the best to ever do it: It’s Bruce Bochy’s turn.

Bruce Bochy, Texas Rangers
Batting: A
I’m not going to go through each game chronologically in this section, mostly because Bochy didn’t use many pinch-hitters, so there aren’t a lot of individual spots to discuss. Instead, I want to point out some overall patterns to his lineup construction. Evan Carter started the postseason batting towards the bottom of the lineup, but as Bochy continued to get information about him (he kept getting on base), he continued to revise his evaluation and push Carter up the lineup. By the third game of the playoffs, Carter had climbed to fifth in the order, and he was hitting third by midway through the ALCS. I think this is just smart – the Rangers’ evaluation of Carter continued to evolve, and so did Bochy’s usage. Rookies are volatile; some adjust right away, and some take a while. If it works, do it: Bochy is very good at that simple-sounding and yet difficult-in-practice mantra.

Likewise, Bochy phased out Robbie Grossman as the playoffs wore on, in favor of both Carter and Mitch Garver. Grossman might technically be a switch-hitter, but he’s actually mostly a righty; he has massive platoon splits over the course of a long career. He also isn’t a great defender. Bochy had a great plan for dealing with this: he only used Grossman against lefties, and then only until lefty starters left the game. Then he replaced him with Carter, a better defender and superior overall hitter. He also went from starting Grossman at DH against righties (hey, he has the “platoon advantage”) to letting Garver DH both ways. It didn’t hurt, of course, that Grossman had a terrible postseason, but I like my managers getting their best players on the field as often as possible. That’s Garver and Carter, so good work, Bruce.

One wrinkle I really liked: When the Rangers faced a lefty starter, Grossman batted third. That seems pretty high for a platoon-only bat, but it worked out a few ways: it put more pressure on the starter early in the third time through the order, and also left Carter ensconced between two righties when he substituted in. Managing for what will happen after both you and the other team make one move is the kind of thing that good playoff managers do. Maybe you’ve heard, but that’s Bochy.

While there weren’t many opportunities to pinch-hit in Texas’ playoff run, there were some good spots to pinch-run; the Rangers trailed late in several games. Bochy never hesitated to sub out his catchers or slow DHs for someone with a little more juice in high-leverage situations, exactly as you should do when the run that matters most is the next one to cross the plate.

Overall, I just don’t have anything bad to say. The Rangers had the kind of team that required Bochy to figure out who his best players were and then plug them in every day. He did just that, particularly with Carter, and then didn’t mess with what worked. It’s great to see a plan come together.

Pitching: B+
The Rangers came into the playoffs with a clear bullpen hierarchy: José Leclerc was the closer, Aroldis Chapman was the primary setup man, and Josh Sborz was the one other guy Bochy trusted. With that in mind, he tried to get a lot of innings out of his starters; this was just not a team built for extended bullpen shenanigans. That plan worked to perfection in the Wild Card series; Jordan Montgomery and Nathan Eovaldi combined for 13.2 innings, Chapman and Sborz made one appearance each, and Leclerc closed both games out with a comfortable lead.

Things didn’t go quite that smoothly against the Orioles, because Montgomery and Eovaldi couldn’t start every game. The fallback plan was to piggyback Andrew Heaney and Dane Dunning to create one starter out of two options. Even then, though, Bochy managed with the aim of shortening the game. He got two innings out of Dunning in piggyback relief by pulling Heaney right after he faced Gunnar Henderson, the most dangerous lefty on the Orioles, for a second time. That let Dunning get the next eight batters; when Henderson came up again, it was time for a one-out lefty in Will Smith. That’s about as much as I’d want to use Dunning for, and it ended up being just enough; each of the three top bullpen arms threw one inning to close the game out after Smith retired Henderson.

That game showed Bochy’s preferred plan in close games, but the Orioles made things easy on him. In Game 2, the Rangers offense roared out to a 9-2 lead. Montgomery labored through four innings – 88 pitches, five runs – but the Rangers were ahead by so much that Bochy reached for bulk innings anyway. Cody Bradford threw 3.2 strong innings of relief. Sborz faced a single batter in the eighth, the first high-leverage spot he could be used in: two runners on, two outs, five run lead. It’s not super high-leverage, but the next day was an off day, and you do want to win games, particularly if you don’t have to burn out an arm to do it. Then it was back to the low-leverage side of things. Brock Burke made things interesting again by putting two runners on the next inning with a six-run lead. Bochy went to Leclerc in a spot I might not have, and Leclerc immediately gave up a three-run homer, though he got the next two outs with no fuss.

Game 3 was back to the preferred plan: Eovaldi went seven innings, then Chapman and Leclerc closed things out. Chapman started to lose his status in the bullpen in this game; he was really wild, and Bochy brought Leclerc in for a four-out save after Chapman walked the bases loaded. That was even more reason to lean on the starters, particularly if the team had a little bit of score margin.

When the postseason switched to a seven-game format, Bochy’s long hooks on starters became an even more important strategy; the bullpen just could not provide bulk innings across seven games against the Houston offense. That meant letting his good starters go – Montgomery threw 6.1 innings in Game 1 before the top bullpen trio closed things out, and Eovaldi went six the next day before those same relievers got things done. Chapman continued to scuffle, and Bochy started to split his role between setup man and lefty specialist; he faced 15 batters in the series, and seven of those were either Yordan Alvarez or Kyle Tucker.

That put a lot of pressure on Leclerc and Sborz, who each carried a huge workload. Leclerc’s form started to suffer from overuse; he walked two over the course of six batters in closing out Game 2, the team’s seventh postseason game and also the seventh game he’d appeared in. There were enough travel days in there that it wasn’t a disastrous workload, but I think it was too much anyway; there were three separate back-to-back appearances in that group. Some of these games didn’t really need a closer, but Bochy hued closely to his “use the three guys” plan.

“Luckily” for the Rangers, the Astros offense came to life in Game 3, which gave the top bullpen arms the day off. Houston jumped out to 5-0 and 7-2 leads, and Bochy accordingly geared down. He used Bradford, Smith, Chris Stratton, Jon Gray, and Martín Pérez to soak up low-impact innings after Max Scherzer got shelled in his return from injury, and the Texas offense never got closer than three runs. Bochy no doubt took the next day’s game into consideration; it was scheduled to be another Heaney/Dunning double feature, so in theory the good bullpen arms would be needed.

This time, though, Bochy’s long leash on his starters and starter-adjacent arms came back to bite him. Dunning had to enter in the first inning after Heaney got shelled; five of the first seven Astros reached, he missed middle-middle with a ton of pitches, and he only racked up a single swinging strike on nine Houston swings. Dunning managed to get through the third, but he walked Martín Maldonado to start the fourth inning and had the top of the Houston order to deal with. It was a tie game, so plenty of managers would start the bullpen carousel instead of letting Dunning face a bunch of great hitters for a second time. Bochy opted to keep him in, and he promptly loaded the bases with no one out.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. Bochy went to handedness matchups after that, with Dunning getting Bregman before Bradford came in to face Alvarez, José Abreu, and Tucker. Alvarez smoked a sacrifice fly to the deepest part of the park before Abreu clobbered a huge three-run homer. Bochy’s strategy didn’t work – but I think his commitment to letting starters go deep and minimizing bullpen stress was nevertheless the right call. It’s bound to fail sometimes even if it’s the right strategy in the aggregate, and the Rangers were in quite a bind if Dunning couldn’t finish the fourth inning. They just didn’t have enough good relief pitching to make it through another five innings. I liked taking this shot, even if it didn’t pan out.

Game 5 could have been the swan song for the Rangers. Bochy tried to stretch his bullpen after Montgomery ran into trouble in the fifth – bases loaded, one out, a pocket of righties due up. Sborz got five outs to maintain a narrow lead, Chapman faced that Alvarez/Abreu/Tucker troika again, and then Leclerc tried for yet another four-out save. This time, he simply didn’t have it; he gave up a game-losing three-run homer to Jose Altuve, and his stuff looked noticeably diminished. Trusting only three relievers was starting to look like a shaky plan; Chapman’s role had been meaningfully reduced and Leclerc wasn’t picking up the slack.

Luckily for the Rangers, they still had Eovaldi in reserve. He gutted his way through 6.1 innings, reducing the stress on the bullpen yet again. Sborz came in against lefty Michael Brantley and escaped a jam – in addition to putting Chapman on specialist duty, Bochy also tried not to use him on back-to-back days. Sborz got into a jam of his own the next inning, but Leclerc narrowly wiggled out of it. Bochy appeared to be setting Leclerc up for a five-out save, but the Houston bullpen finally gave out, and the Rangers scored five in the top of the ninth to put the game out of reach. That let Heaney, now in the bullpen with Scherzer back, close the game out.

Game 7 showed how heavily Bochy relied on just a few pitchers. Scherzer looked wobbly again, surrendering six baserunners out of the 13 batters he faced. Bochy knew he couldn’t cover this many innings with his bullpen, so he cheated: he called on Montgomery, on two days rest, for 32 clutch pitches. Montgomery kept a clean sheet, and the Rangers offense kicked into high gear, staking him to an 8-2 lead. At that point, Bochy didn’t mess around; he used his top three relievers to close the game out despite a huge lead. It was Game 7, after all, and there were three off days before the World Series. I generally dislike using the same relievers so heavily, but I think it was a reasonable decision here given the circumstances.

The World Series showed that Bochy might have been a bit too hesitant to use his mid-tier relievers. Eovaldi had his worst playoff start in quite a while in Game 1, surrendering five runs without escaping the fifth inning. The Rangers were only down two runs, but Bochy simply couldn’t afford to use his best relievers in the first game of a long series given the deficit. He turned the ball over to Dunning, Gray, Bradford, and Smith – and they were masterful. They allowed only two hits across 4.1 scoreless innings. Corey Seager tied the game with a ninth-inning homer, and then Bochy was back to his normal plans: he used Leclerc for two straight innings before Adolis García walked it off.

Game 2 was another reminder that you don’t always win when you ask your starters to give you huge innings totals, even if it’s a good plan overall. Montgomery pitched a wonderful six innings, and the Rangers were facing a one-run deficit. He came back out for the seventh and just got beaten; Alek Thomas doubled, Evan Longoria singled, and Montgomery hit the showers. Remember, he had just thrown 30 pitches in relief on short rest, so he didn’t have his normal stamina. Bochy then essentially shut it down; Heaney, Dunning, Stratton, and Pérez got the rest of the game.

In Game 3, we saw an old favorite: piggyback starters. Scherzer still didn’t look quite like his normal self, and even worse, he departed with injury after a comebacker hit him. Dunning and Heaney, the normal piggyback options, had both pitched the previous day, so Bochy called on Gray, who was scheduled to start Game 4, for three huge innings. I loved this flexibility; it seems clear to me that Bochy valued Dunning and Gray similarly, so ignoring the “Game 4 Starter” label to give his team the best chance to win the game in front of him was an inspired idea. From there, the relief trio closed things out, though Chapman continued to struggle.

The Texas offense made that Game 4 starter awkwardness immaterial by hanging 10 runs on Arizona’s bullpen game plan in the first three innings. That made for a complete laugher; Heaney went five shockingly strong innings, Dunning got the sixth, and the low-leverage guys came in. But those low-leverage guys are bad; Burke got hit pretty hard, and Arizona closed to 11-5 after eight innings. Smith then put two baserunners aboard in the ninth, which led Bochy to make the decision I disliked most all playoffs. He brought Leclerc into the game with things all but sewn up. There were two outs in the ninth inning, and while there were two runners aboard, the Rangers led by six runs. Someone less important than Leclerc could absolutely handle this spot. When you know you have to try to save your bullpen, this is just a weird place to use your overworked closer. There was another game the next day, one that you’d have to expect would have a narrower margin in the ninth inning, and Leclerc had carried a monstrous workload all postseason, pitching more innings than any other reliever (Sborz was second). Give the guy a break!

It didn’t end up mattering. Eovaldi turned into Harry Houdini for Game 5, escaping jam after jam across six scoreless innings. The Rangers offense broke through for one run in the seventh, and so Bochy went back to his favored plan: Chapman came in against the good Arizona lefties and switch hitters, then Sborz replaced him against the righties. I think Leclerc would have gotten some ninth inning work – but the offense tacked on four runs against Paul Sewald. Bochy just left Sborz on the mound to close things out, and he did so comfortably.

I didn’t like every one of Bochy’s pitching decisions. I thought he was too willing to use Leclerc in low-leverage situations given how little he trusted the vast majority of his bullpen. If you only have a few relief aces, you should save them for key spots as much as possible. But even though I have a few disagreements, I thought his overall planning and execution were excellent. The Rangers came into the playoffs knowing that they couldn’t afford to get into bullpen fights. Bochy accordingly didn’t let them. He trusted his starters a lot, as he had to. He extended them in spots where they faced real danger while tiring. They didn’t always win. But they didn’t have to win every single time. It’s not a string of elimination games. He understood that, and understood that the only path to success involved big innings from Eovaldi, Montgomery, and even the piggyback options.

I’m not at all confident that a younger manager would have figured this out. It’s nerve-wracking to leave a tiring starter out there against scary hitters, particularly a tiring starter of the Dunning/Heaney/rusty Scherzer tier. It’s easy to point the finger at the manager when things go wrong; some of the Rangers’ losses were pretty clearly due to this strategy. But it was the only way to win, so Bochy did it. That’s why you hire Bruce Bochy. He was every bit the good playoff manager that he was in San Francisco. Hats off to him, and to the Rangers.

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