Tuesday Newsletter time: Answers for what happened with Josh Bonifay in 2017 with Rangers, 2021 with Phillies
The new farm director spent only one season on Jeff Banister's staff but didn't burn any bridges on his way out.
Josh Bonifay is back with the Texas Rangers as their farm director, though some probably don’t remember his first stint with them for the 2017 season.
He was the major-league field coordinator on manager Jeff Banister’s staff. Bonifay was friendly enough, but he wasn’t exactly a regular in media scrums. To be honest, I’m not sure many in the media knew exactly what it was he did.
It turns out the Rangers weren’t sure what he should have been doing.
He was gone once the season ended, back to the Houston Astros’ minor-league side where he had built up a nice resume. But he didn’t do anything that disqualified him from future employment with the Rangers.
It was the Rangers who let Bonifay down.
“I think looking back at that situation it was more a function that we really didn't set the role up for success,” president of baseball operations Jon Daniels said. “I don't think we supported Josh in that role, the way that it needed to be, but it was clear from our time together that he was somebody with excellent interpersonal skills.”
Bonifay joins the Rangers after serving as the Philadelphia Phillies’ farm director the past three seasons. He had been removed from that role and assigned to the pro scouting department amid a shakeup in Phillies player development. A story by The Athletic described the culture there as “toxic,” and with two opposing sides as to how to operate.
The Rangers did their background work on Bonifay’s part in that, and their sources insisted he wasn’t part of the problem. He did take responsibility for some of what went wrong, general manager Chris Young said, and the Rangers expect him to grow from the experience.
"I think that it was a difficult situation that he came into in Philly, and certainly, as it's been explained to me by people in the industry, that would have been tough for anybody to succeed with some of the relationships that were that previously existed there,” Young said.
“We're very, very confident that that was not a reflection of Josh.”
Bonifay will work under assistant GM Ross Fenstermaker, who said the Rangers selected Bonifay from a list of 20 candidates. The Rangers have shaken up their player development staff despite significant gains made the past few seasons under former assistant GM Mike Daly, who left for San Diego, and Paul Kruger, who is now the director of baseball operations on the big-league side.
It appears Bonifay will do much of his work on the ground, possibly even on the field, as opposed to from an office at Globe Life Field. That said, Daly and Kruger were frequently on the road during the season visiting affiliates or players at the Arizona complex.
“I think one of the things that stood out in the process was his ability to connect with both players and staff, his humility, his open-mindedness, his ability to embrace new ideas, but still have enough of kind of old-school principles and fundamentals that are important for player development,” Young said.
“So I think he strikes the perfect balance.”
Don’t say rebuild
Daniels and Young finally started finally using the R-word — rebuild — at some point before the 2021 season and started laying on it pretty heavily around the July 31 trade deadline and again in the season-reviewing press conference.
New bench coach/offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker, though, considers rebuild a bad word.
“My radar goes off when I hear that word rebuild,” Ecker said. “It's not a word that I'm ever wanting to use. I don't believe in it. We’ve just got to get better right away. It's just an accumulation of developing every single day. So, I don't believe this is a rebuild. I think that'll be very clear, right away.“
The tear-down phase of the rebuild is said to be over, so maybe that’s where Ecker is. Internal expectations for the 2022 season, though, remain low as the Rangers start to integrate prospects and hopefully make outside additions to put around them.
Maybe this is phase is the build-up. I’m going to have to run that one past Ecker.
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