The moment he walked into his mother’s hospital room, he knew.



From the day he became Texas Rangers manager on Oct. 16, 2014, Jeff Banister had poured himself into the job. The experience, he said, was like driving, “a racecar going a million miles an hour.” Now, late last September, here was his mother, Verda Rowland, dealing with complications from a surgery.



Banister’s team, despite a series of challenges — a horrid bullpen, the limited availability of third baseman Adrián Beltré, the trade of ace right-hander Yu Darvish, among others — was still on the fringes of the wild card race. But family first. Banister, wanting to be with his mother, who lives in Clear Lake, Texas, near Houston, left the team for two days. And finally, at the hospital, it hit him.



In his third season as manager — his first losing season, it would turn out, and first without a division title — he had lost his way. He was...