Former major leaguer Bret Boone is the new hitting coach for the Rangers
The Texas Rangers have announced that former major league infielder Bret Boone has been named the team’s new hitting coach. Boone is replacing Donnie Ecker, who the team announced was fired yesterday.
We expected someone to be named quickly, but Boone is someone who is off the radar. He has never coached in MLB before, and it appears, based on my quick Google search, that he offers private coaching lessons. He played one season under Bruce Bochy while he was with the San Diego Padres, in 2000.
I will note that this hiring is personally a bit vexing because, during Boone’s time with the Seattle Mariners, I really hated that team and really did not like Boone. Boone had one of the strangest out of nowhere peaks in MLB history from 2001-03 with the Mariners. Prior to his age 32 season with Seattle in 2001, he had a career 5.5 bWAR in 1072 games, and a career .255/.312/.413 slash line, good for an 88 OPS+. From 2001-03 he slashed .301/.359/.526, for a 135 OPS+, and put up 19.0 bWAR.
Strangely, in 2004 he regressed offensively to his pre-2001 levels of performance, and after a 639 OPS in 2005 (and -2.1 bWAR), he was out of the majors.