Why the Texas Rangers haven't made any major moves this offseason

A month into the baseball offseason, we take a look at the AL West. Down in Houston, Jim Crane talks about having the “bare minimum” to once again exceed the Competitive Balance Tax threshold. In Orange County, the Angels spent $63 million on starter Yusei Kikuchi, making him the first major free agent signing of the winter. Up in Seattle, as you know, Jerry Dipoto is preparing for his usual flurry of trades because continuity is boring.

And the Rangers?

Well, they changed some buses.

On Tuesday, the club announced its full coaching staff for 2025, most of which was already known. The Rangers had made some new hires after Will Venable managed the White Sox and Tim Hyers decided to give hitting lessons to the Braves near his home in Atlanta.

Tuesday’s adjustments appeared to be minor. Dave Bush, who has held the title of director of pitching strategy for the past two years, will move to the dugout as Mike Maddux’s assistant pitching coach. Jordan Tiegs, who worked in player development for the organization for five seasons, will step in as bullpen coach. Brett Hayes, a former catcher, will move from bullpen coach to a quality control role.

To the casual observer – and perhaps to some not so casual observers – it may just look like some lounge chairs have been rearranged. The iceberg is still out there somewhere.

There is still a lot to do. Like, well, everything. The Rangers still need at least one starting pitcher. You need at least two reliable helpers. Maybe a third, since Josh Sborz will miss at least the first few months of the season to recover from a shoulder “cleanup,” according to President of Baseball Operations Chris Young. If you’re keeping track at home, Kirby Yates, David Robertson, José Leclerc and probably half a season of Sborz are now missing from the one area of the club that made progress in 2024. Robertson, Leclerc and Yates were 1-2-3 in the order of appearances for Rangers last season.

To clarify, Young said there has been no change to the Rangers’ concerns heading into the winter. The new signing of Nathan Eovaldi remains a “high priority”. They need bodies for the bullpen.

But, um, you know, the TV deal is still not finalized. Young didn’t say that. This is easy to understand at this point. The Rangers may realize a little more flexibility if the fledgling RSN the Rangers are trying to introduce is ever completed.

In the meantime, you have to start somewhere. And while the pitching staff wasn’t nearly as big a problem as hitting in 2024, that’s all relative. Overall, the pitching performance is still down a bit, significantly more on the home side. The Rangers got 50 fewer innings to start, saw their rotation ERA increase by nearly half a run, and their strikeout-to-walk ratio, a key metric for them, fell slightly. As a team, the Rangers slipped from 18th in ERA+ in 2023 to 26th.

The addition of Bush and Tiegs to the pitching staff is part of the Rangers’ plan to better develop their infrastructure. The Rangers will have as many pitchers as hitters in 2025. They have three hitting coaches. Might as well be represented on this side of the game.

In pitching coach Mike Maddux, the Rangers have a venerable game-planning guru who studies video and converts the information into concise offensive plans. You could call it old school like we do, but Young doesn’t. Anyway, the game is now more than that. It’s about board design and biomechanics. It’s about speaking the language of someone in their early 20s.

“They all complement each other’s skill sets,” Young said. “You described Mike as old-fashioned, but I would say he is very modern in many ways; He just doesn’t know everything. Jordan is very progressive in many ways, very traditional in many ways. There are certain principles that will always exist in pitching development that define successful major league pitchers and therefore coaching philosophies.

“So it’s really about mixing everything that goes into it, and we’re talking about the traditional coaching of game planning and the psychology of instilling confidence, conviction and belief in a pitcher, all the way through to biomechanics, workload management and recovery. “There’s just so many aspects. Not one person can be an expert in all of this. We owe it to our players to have the best possible people so they can be successful.”

Bush spent four seasons as a pitching coach with Boston and three before that as a pitching development analyst with the Red Sox. He is very familiar with modern field design. Tiegs has been the minor league pitching coordinator for the past two seasons after working his way up from the Arizona Rookie League and Class A. The Rangers believe they have more homegrown pitchers on the team than they have in a long time.

It gives the Rangers more options to reach pitchers. And more bodies that can work one on one. It appears to be a help, which is nice, although re-signing Eovaldi, signing Roki Sasaki and filling an empty bullpen could help even more.