Thaddis Bosley Jr Brings the Funk…and Hopefully the Hits

November 23^, 2010 marked the beginning of the Thad Bosely era for the Texas Rangers. Clint Hurdle, the hitting coach for the 2010 American League Champions, moved on to take a position as the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Clint followed a great hitting coach in Rudy Jaramillo who took a position with the Cubs prior to Hurdle’s hire. So, to say that Bosley has big shoes to fill would be an understatement; the Rangers in 2010 led the league in batting average with .276 under Hurdle, and in 2009 under Rudy were second in the league for Home Runs with 224.

Bosely as a player had fourteen major league seasons, he appeared in 784 games with 1,581 at bats and a .272 batting average. He spent time with The California Angels, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers.  While Bosely wasn’t a superstar he was a productive hitter and a good pinch hitter throughout his career. Thad was a coach with the Oakland A’s from 1999-2003 where he was the hitting coach for the majority, Bosely worked the duration of his tenure with third base coach Ron Washington. He coached for a year with Southwestern College in Phoenix before accepting the job with the Texas Rangers. In his personal life Bosely was also a member of the funk group The Ballplayers with another former player Lenny Randle; you can listen to their song American Worker here.

Ron Washington was on “The Ben and Skin Show” on 103.3 ESPN Radio Dallas earlier this week speaking about Bosely. On how the players are interacting with the new coach Ron had this to say, “They fit, there may be some difference in how they explain what they like to have done but it all results in the same thing. Get to the baseball, stay behind the baseball, swinging at strikes, playing to the situation in the game.” Wash also credits the spring success of Chris Davis to his relationship with Thad, as we have highlighted here on Nolan Writin’, Davis has had a monster spring so far.

The new hitting coach certainly has won over the Rangers management and hopefully will win over the fans this season as well. TR Sullivan has a quote from Thad earlier in the year that excites me as a fan of this team, “We believe that none of our hitters up to this point have had a career year. We see tremendous upside.” The idea that Nelson Cruz or Josh Hamilton haven’t had their career years yet is mind-blowing, we all hope Thad is right.

Jonathan