During a spring training game in Arizona last month, Manager Tim Bogar noticed a group of players who would end up being his Arkansas Travelers lineup in the outfield playing out of position.
Hitters had been pulling pitches to left field consistently, and his outfielders - who range in age from the early to mid-20s - were having trouble recognizing it.
So Bogar pulled them aside in the dugout between innings and insisted on an adjustment.
“We ended up making some plays we probably[wouldn’t] have,” Bogar said Tuesday from the corner of his new office at Dickey-Stephens Park as he prepared for tonight’s season opener against the Frisco RoughRiders in North Little Rock.
The spring training instruction is just one example of the difference between Bogar’s duties as Travs manager this season and his duties a year ago as the bench coach for the Boston Red Sox.
Last season he was just trying to hold together a splintered clubhouse during one of Boston’s worst seasons. Now, at Class AA, his top priority is to help some of the Los Angeles Angels’ top prospects develop into major-league players.
Bogar, 46, insists he’s fine with the transition despite his exit from the big leagues.
“It’s like a new beginning for me,” said Bogar, who managed the Cleveland Indians’ Class AA Akron Aeros in 2006 and 2007. “I love the level that we’re at. Just watching guys click and get it, they understand it. It’s a lot of fun.”
That’s more than Bogar can say about the last of his four seasons inside the Red Sox pressure cooker.
In 2009, while serving as first base coach under Manager Terry Francona, the Red Sox won 95 games before losing in the American League Division Series. He was the team’s third base coach in 2010 and 2011 as Boston missed out on the playoffs, but he was kept on last year as bench coach when Bobby Valentine was hired as manager.
Serving as bench coach is considered to be the last rung on the ladder that leads to a managerial job in the majors, but few things went right last year in Boston.
The Red Sox lost 93 games and finished at the bottom of the AL East, their worst finish in almost five decades. There were reports of a contentious meeting between players, coaches and ownership in July, and some of the team’s biggest stars - Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford - were traded in August before Valentine was fired a day after the season ended.
The firing was preceded a few days by comments Valentine made on a Boston radio station that his coaching staff had been disloyal and had undermined him. Those comments led Bogar to defend himself and other coaches a few weeks later when he told ESPNBoston.com that “not once did [Valentine] portray what he wanted us to do to help him and eventually shut some of us out completely.”
Bogar added that “I don’t think my reputation and what I’ve done in this game is being fairly justified by what has gone on here the last year.”
Bogar said in that story, and reiterated Tuesday, that last year’s failures in Boston were not the fault of any one player, coach or front office employee. They were “top to bottom”, he said, and rooted in miscommunication from the start of the season.
Bogar said he didn’t make his comments to ESPNBoston.com to try to repair his reputation in a game where he’s spent almost three decades - he turned down an offer to be the Houston Astros bench coach this off season - but more to stick up for a staff that he felt had been attacked.
Reflecting Tuesday on his final year in Boston, Bogar called it a “great learning experience.”
“I learned quite a bit about communication,” he said. “I learned quite a bit about delegation, and I learned about what relationships in this game are about. … I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It wasn’t a fun year.
“It was difficult to go through - not only for myself, but for a lot of individuals involved - but I will tell you, it kind of shapes where you’re going.”
Bogar was hired by the Angels in December, and he’s already made an impression on players.
“Anything [Bogar says], we soak it in,” first baseman C.J. Cron said. “We listen to it, we work off it and they listen back. It’s not all one way. If they don’t like something, we talk about it and they tell us we should do it and we tell them what maybe feels uncomfortable. We kind of work together, and that’s the best part about them.”
Hitting coach Ernie Young said he hasn’t sensed any lingering disappointments about last season from Bogar.
“In this game, everyone has a story, why they’re not here or why they’re not there,” Young said. “You live in the now and take care of what’s going on today and worry about tomorrow another day.”
That’s what Bogar is doing in his return to the minor leagues. He said he doesn’t have any immediate desire to get back to the big leagues.
“If I’m here for the next five years, it won’t be terrible,” he said.
Bogar said several times that he enjoys working with players at a level that often serves as the separation between a big league career and one spent in the minors. The difference, he said, is a mental approach that allows players to make adjustments without direct instruction - such as adjusting their alignment in the middle of an inning.
“I want these guys to know how to play the game without being told how to play the game,” Bogar said. “It’s now that their instincts need to kick in and go on top of their talent to push them over the top.”
Travelers schedule All times Central
APRIL
4 Frisco, 7:10 p.m.
5 Frisco, 7:10 p.m.
6 Frisco, 6:10 p.m.
7 Midland, 4:10 p.m.
8 Midland, 7:10 p.m.
9 Midland, 7:10 p.m.
11 at Frisco, 7 p.m.
12 at Frisco, 7 p.m.
13 at Frisco, 7 p.m.
14 at Midland, 4 p.m.
15 at Midland, 6:30 p.m.
16 at Midland, 6:30 p.m.
18 Springfield, 7:10 p.m.
19 Springfield, 7:10 p.m.
20 Springfield, 6:10 p.m.
21 Springfield, 2:10 p.m.
22 at Tulsa, 7:05 p.m.
23 at Tulsa, 7:05 p.m.
24 at Tulsa, 7:05 p.m.
Today’s game
Travelers vs. RoughRiders WHEN 7:10 p.m.
WHERE Dickey-Stephens Park, North Little Rock RADIO KARN-AM, 920, in central Arkansas INTERNET travs.com
Sports, Pages 17 on 04/04/2013