Cody Glenn-USA TODAY Sports
A free agent like Will Smith wants to know who will take over before he makes his decision for next season.
A rookie like Mauricio Dubon, who can’t be a free agent until after the 2023 season, wants assurance he will enjoy some of the prime years of his career.
As Bruce Bochy leaves, someone — Raul Ibanez? Eric Chavez? Josh Bard? — will enter. Few players want their names attached to specific candidates; they will let Farhan Zaidi do his job.
But what kind of manager do they want?
A poll of seven Giants — Smith, Dubon, Tony Watson, Jaylin Davis, Stephen Vogt, Alex Dickerson and Pablo Sandoval — revealed a few common traits in their ideal manager:
— a former player;
— someone who will not simply echo, to their faces, what the front office tells them;
— someone who understands how clubhouses work and how to keep them happy.
“He’s an old-school baseball player. Trusts his gut,” said Smith, who referenced Craig Counsell, Ned Yost and Ron Roenicke as other managers he’s had who fit the bill. “… One of those old-school, old dirtbag type of players. I mean dirtbag in the nicest form. Those guys who are always dirty, played the game the right way, played it hard.”
The majority of the candidates expected to be given interviews — mostly from Zaidi’s past — are former players. Apart from Bochy’s bullpen management, he’s been most praised for how calm he keeps his locker rooms. In the Oracle Park visitor’s clubhouse earlier this month, a pair of Pirates came to blows.
Bochy himself played nine seasons in the majors before his 25-year run as manager. Vogt, who wants to be a manager someday, said it’s “absolutely necessary” that a manager understands how a clubhouse works and what players go through.
“Whether you played at any level of professional baseball, I think you need to have played this game to know what your players are going through on an everyday basis,” the catcher said.
Several of the older players polled referenced the grinds of the season — they do not want a barker who lets his emotions get the best of him.
Several of the younger players polled referenced trust — someone who will not hide behind the front office or mislead them. Davis said there are plenty of managers like that, who’ll give you the company line.
“Someone who shoots you straight,” Davis said about his perfect manager. “Someone who’s willing to sit down and talk to you and help you. … Someone that you know that’s going to be truthful to you, it’s going to be easy to respect them.”
So many just don’t want to be hassled.
“Someone that trusts. That’s the main thing. He trusts you. That’s a big thing for me,” Dubon said.
“A lot of the best ones are hands-off and trust that if you have major league players, they’re going to go out and do their work and do it properly,” Dickerson said. “That way you don’t feel like you have to be down their throat all the time.”
As the answers — so many of a similar vein — were piling up, it was becoming apparent that so many of the qualities match Bochy’s. Twenty-five years later, he’s learned not just how to win, but what players want along the way.
“It’s been awesome. It’s been the best experience I’ve had as a player,” Dickerson said.
“Hall of Fame manager,” Watson said. “Maybe there’s a couple things he hasn’t seen in this game, but I’d like to think he’s seen it all.”
Sandoval was asked what traits his ideal manager possesses, and he nodded his head.
“Ideal manager? I have him there in that office,” he said.
Bochy was asked a similar question: What’s the most important quality for a good manager? He took a beat.
“What the title says: managing,” Bochy said. “Managing your people. … A quality that a manager has to keep things in order, focus on the ballclub. That’s probably as important as the game itself.”