Former big league All-Star infielder Bret Boone was hired Monday as a hitting coach for the Texas Rangers, who are last in the American League in runs scored.
It will be the first time Boone, the 56-year-old older brother of New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone, is on a major league coaching staff. Bret Boone will join the Rangers on Tuesday for the opener of their three-game series in Boston.
Boone’s hiring came a day after Texas fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker.
Chris Young, the Rangers’ president of baseball operations, said Boone will work with hitting coach Justin Viele and assistant hitting coach Seth Conner, who both remain on manager Bruce Bochy’s staff.
“Brett is obviously someone who has a significant major league pedigree as a player, somebody who’s well connected to the game through his family,” Young said before adding he has known Bret Boone for a long time. “Embodies a lot of the characteristics that will make a successful coach and that’s what our players need right now.”
In 14 big league seasons as player, Boone was a three-time All-Star and hit .266 with 252 homers and 1,021 RBIs in 1,780 games from 1992-2005 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 dad Bob were also big league players, retired as a player while with Triple-A Columbus in the Washington Nationals system in 2008, and was a roving instructor and scout in the Athletics organization from 2014-15. He had since been involved in several business ventures, most recently a podcast focused on baseball topics.
“If there is one guy to get back on the field for the first time in a long time for me, it’s Bruce Bochy,” Boone said on his podcast Monday when announcing that he was joining the Rangers.
Texas (17-18) had a day off Monday after an 8-1 win at home in its series finale against AL West-leading Seattle on Sunday. Even with that outburst, the Rangers were last in the AL with 113 runs (3.2 per game). They lost 13-1 and 2-1 in the first two games of that series.
Before the win over the Mariners, the Rangers had scored just 30 runs during a 2-9 stretch, and half of those came when they finished with 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 Nov. 1, 2021. He helped the Rangers win their only World Series title in 2023.
The Rangers led the AL during their championship season, hitting .263 with 5.4 runs per game before slipping to .238 and scoring 4.2 runs a game last year. They are now hitting .228 and have scored no more than two runs in nine of their last 12 games.
Young said Boone’s initial contract runs through the end of this season, though that doesn’t mean he won’t stay longer.
“Given just the timing of this, we really focused on getting through the end of the year and what our goals are, where we are as an organization, getting to the end of the year and re-evaluating,” Young said. “And for Bret, too, having the flexibility for him to re-evaluate and see if he likes this as well. Both sides were comfortable with the term.”
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