Chris Woodward doesn’t have any hard feelings toward the Texas Rangers.
Just some awkward ones about being back this week.
“I don’t know if I’m looking forward to it,” the Dodgers first base coach said with an uncertain chuckle on Wednesday, ahead of his first return trip to Arlington since his time as Rangers manager ended with a midseason firing in 2022.
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“I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of people … just the whole staff, the assistant trainers, just people I haven’t seen,” he added. “But I don’t know if it’s something that’s on my bucket list to go back and do.”
Such conflicting emotions mirror the way Woodward reflects on his Rangers tenure at large — a four-season stint with what was then a rebuilding ball club that taught Woodward much, but ended on a sour note.
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“I don’t have any regrets or any bad feelings toward anything,” he said. “Obviously, there were some disagreements that led to me not being there anymore. But I have nothing but respect for everybody. I don’t hold a grudge. Life’s too short, man. Honestly, I take that experience as a really positive thing.”
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Originally hired by the Rangers in November 2018, after serving as the third-base coach on back-to-back pennant-winning Dodgers teams, Woodward’s first season in charge in Texas began with promise.
Joey Gallo and Hunter Pence led the offense as All-Star selections. Mike Minor and Lance Lynn anchored a veteran core of pitchers. In late June, the Rangers were 10 games over .500, far outpacing modest preseason expectations.
But then, the vagaries of baseball set in.
Gallo and Pence suffered season-ending injuries. The pitching staff began to crumble beneath a lack of reliable depth. What had started as a “decent” year, Woodward said, ended with the Rangers limping to 78 wins.
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And after fading following a 10-9 start in 2020, the Rangers never had a winning record under Woodward again.
Instead, Texas entered a rebuild, giving Woodward’s job a much more developmentally focused bent.
Behind the scenes, the organization created entirely new personnel departments, reimagined player development processes and administered ever-changing responsibilities to members of the coaching staff. Woodward had a hand in every bucket, trying to establish everything from hitting style to base-running technique to a roster-wide focus on all-around fundamentals.
Compared to a fully-fledged contender like the Dodgers, it almost felt like building from the ground up.
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“Here [with the Dodgers], it’s such a well-oiled machine. Yeah, we make little adjustments to things here and there, but no major changes,” Woodward said.
In Texas, on the other hand, “we added a lot of resources and a lot of things while I was there, which was necessary. Because we had to get caught up to ‘championship standards,’ is what I called it.”
Chris Woodward managed the Texas Rangers from 2019 until he was fired in Aug. 2022 with one year remaining on his contract. (LM Otero / Associated Press)
“When everything’s a blank canvas,” he added, “it’s not as easy as people think.”
The losses along the way were difficult (the Rangers were 133-203 over Woodward’s final three seasons, finishing in last place twice).
The fire-sale trades of team stalwarts such as Gallo and Lynn were “probably one of the harder things to deal with,” Woodward recalled.
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And when the Rangers failed to take a step forward in 2022, despite their marquee free-agent signings of Marcus Semien and Corey Seager (the ex-Dodgers shortstop whom Woodward helped woo to Texas) the previous offseason, discontent among the club reached a boiling point.
In an unexpected move, Woodward was fired on Aug. 15, 2022, with a year remaining on his contract.
“I tell a lot of the staff here that’s never managed, ‘Each year, you feel like you’ve aged five,’” said Woodward, who returned to the Dodgers in a special advisor role the following winter, before rejoining the on-field staff this year as first-base coach following Clayton McCullough’s hiring by the Miami Marlins.
“It’s kind of like being president, in a way,” the 48-year-old Woodward added. “You see guys age right before your eyes.”
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But through those trials — which also included the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Rangers’ move into a new stadium during an era of social distancing — Woodward also came to find perspective and growth.
“I know I aged a lot in those four years, but in a good way,” he said. “I think I grew wiser, and understood how to lead and just get better every year.”
It’s part of the reason why, when the Rangers won the World Series in 2023 — in Bruce Bochy’s first season as Woodward’s successor — Woodward felt pride rather than resentment; confident he had left his old club in a better place than he found it.
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“Those four years, I was really proud of, when I left,” he said. “[The club] was in a much better spot internally, all the way from the staff to the front office to the sports science to all the different things that we did … Everything was in line. And they won. Proud of that.”
It doesn’t mean Woodward will be in for a big ovation when he returns this weekend, during the Dodgers’ three-game series at Globe Life Field. He said his old friends in Dallas joked they should all come to form a cheering section, “because you just don’t know the reaction you’re going to get” from the rest of the crowd.
But when asked to reflect on his time with the Rangers this week, the potential awkwardness of the return didn’t overshadow the silver linings Woodward took from his tenure.
“Tremendous experience. Grateful for the opportunity,” he said. “I just think it’s important that you learn and grow.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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