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On Saturday afternoon, a report said the Padres were planning to fire manager Jayce Tingler in the coming days. Having had 18 games over 0.500 in mid-August and firmly in the playoff image, the Padres 78-82 (entering Saturday) will miss the playoffs and end up with a losing record.
As the Padres likely prepare to seek out a new manager, one recognizable name will be popular in speculation: Bruce Bochy. And makes sense.
Bochy is 66 and the word around the game is that he would love to serve as manager again. He certainly has a lot of experience, with 25 years as a skipper to his credit. Many will remember his time with the Giants, his last 13 years. He won two division titles, three pennants and three World Series titles there before retiring after the 2019 season. Prior to that, however, Bochy spent his first 12 years as a manager with the Padres.
During his time in San Diego, Bochy won the division four times – the Padres haven’t won a division title since leaving – and took the team to the 1998 World Series, the last such trip for the club.
Hiring Bochy would be a huge pivot for the Padres after the much younger and inexperienced – at the time of hire – Tingler. Tingler’s predecessor Andy Green was also under 40 and a first manager when he was hired, so maybe now is the time for Padres decision maker AJ Preller to go in a different direction.
Earlier this week, longtime baseball reporter Peter Gammons dropped this information:
The three names of potential new managers are much older and have a lot more experience than Tingler and Green, so it seems possible that this is the direction things are heading.
Then again, a report in The Athletic on Friday said the following regarding a possible hire of Bochy:
Several people have expressed doubts that Bochy, who led the Padres from 1995 to 2006 and led them to their last World Series appearance in 1998, would come out of retirement to work for such an active GM as Preller. .
“There’s no way Bochy will come in and deal with all of this,” said a former Big League coach. “There is no way.”
There’s still a chance that word might be used in these circles as a bargaining chip (“he really doesn’t want this job, so you’ll have to pay him a ton to take it”), but it does exist.
Where does that leave us? I think the takeaways are:
- Tingler is almost certainly gone.
- Bochy makes a lot of sense to be hired and might even be their first choice.
- We can’t be sure he’s interested in the job, however.
We’ll see how things play out as the Padres look to return to the playoffs with Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado in 2022.
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