Former Major League and All-Star player, Bret Boone, has been hired as the batting coach for the Texas Rangers, a team currently in last place in the American League in terms of runs scored.
This will be the first time Boone, older brother of New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone, will be part of the coaching staff of a Major League team. Boone is expected to join the Rangers on Tuesday for the start of their three-game series in Boston.
The hiring of Boone comes one day after the Rangers fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker.
Chris Young, Rangers’ president of baseball operations, indicated that Boone will work alongside hitting coach Justin Viele and assistant hitting coach Seth Conner, who remain on manager Bruce Bochy’s staff.
Bret is obviously someone with a significant pedigree in Major League Baseball as a player, someone who is well-connected to the game through his family. He embodies many of the characteristics that will make a coach successful and that is what our players need right now.
Chris Young
During his 14 seasons in the majors as a player, Boone was a three-time All-Star, batting .266 with 252 home runs and 1,021 RBIs in 1,780 games between 1992 and 2005 for five teams: Seattle, Cincinnati, Atlanta, San Diego, and Minnesota. His only season with the Padres was in 2000, when his manager was Bochy.
Boone, whose grandfather Ray and father Bob were also Major League players, retired as a player while in Triple-A Columbus in the Washington Nationals system in 2008. Subsequently, he served as a roving instructor and scout in the Athletics organization in 2014-15. Since then, he has been involved in various business ventures, most recently a podcast focused on baseball topics.
If there’s a guy to come back to the field for the first time in a long time for me, it’s Bruce Bochy.
Bret Boone
The Rangers (17-18) had a day off on Monday after an 8-1 home victory in the last game of their series against the Mariners, leaders of the American League West Division, on Sunday. Despite that victory, the Rangers are in last place in the American League with 113 runs (3.2 per game). They lost 13-1 and 2-1 in the first two games of that series.
Before the victory over the Mariners, the Rangers had only scored 30 runs during a 2-9 stretch, and half of those runs came when they scored a season-high 15 runs against Oakland on Tuesday.
Ecker was in his fourth season as the club’s offensive coordinator, after being hired on November 1, 2021. He helped the Rangers win their only World Series title in 2023.
The Rangers led the American League during their championship season, batting .263 with 5.4 runs per game, before falling to .238 and scoring 4.2 runs per game last year. Currently, they are batting .228 and have not scored more than two runs in nine of their last 12 games.
Young indicated that Boone’s initial contract extends through the end of this season, although that doesn’t mean he won’t stay longer.
Given the timing of this, we’re really focused on getting to the end of the year and what our goals are, where we are as an organization, getting to the end of the year and reevaluating. And for Bret as well, having the flexibility for him to reevaluate and see if he likes this as well. Both parties felt comfortable with the term.
Chris Young
