…and bravo Mike. He clearly expressed a lot of the same things I was thinking but couldn’t put into words.

is who is going to be our major league pitching coach next year, and is he going to be able to get anything out of the kids he has to work with.

Mike crystalizes the reasons we’re skeptical of Ryan, hate Hicks, and fear getting rid of Daniels even though he’s had his disasters. Those of us who voice concern over Ryan are not just Daniels water boys. There is real concern that what progress has been made could be undone very quickly.

the Rangers farm system has become the most powerful in baseball. Leave it the hell alone.

If the Rangers fire Daniels and bring in Gerry Hunsicker or Tim Purpura, then they are going to bring in their own people. Any GM ought to have the right to put together his own scouting and development team. Getting rid of Daniels now would almost inevitably lead to the desconstruction of the best part of this organization. That can’t happen.

Firing Daniels would be throwing out all of the important behind the scenes work he’s done and continued in building the strongest farm system in baseball. He’s been building a foundation and guys like Josey Wales and Galloway are want the roof to go up first.

But I am not cowering in fear just yet. Ryan’s recent comments suggested that he’s more concerned with the transition from minors to majors at the top end of the system’s pitching. I think we’ll see some conditioning things strengthened and things like that rather than a total overhaul of the minors pitching.

but I haven’t seen anything to concern me. I don’t know what happens to these kids when they come up to the bigs, but I do think I noticed Hurley slowing down his delivery considerably. Look at Harrison, and it’s the same thing. Guess I could check out some archived mlb.tv games to compare.

would be Hunter. He has the unusual body type and back ground (judo?). I’ve heard he is the type who will never be an ace but a great innings eater. Well, he definetly wasn’t cuddled this season. Let’s see how he responds to such a “harsh” increase in work. If he can’t handle it with his background and body type, I hope the Rangers brass will learn from him.

Putting more than one space between your sentences. It’s just so dumb. People who do that need to be shot in the foot or maybe the ankle or maybe just killed with barbed wire. I feel strongly on this subject.

If guys like Adair don’t agree with Nolan,are they going to be fired? Adair seems to be one of the big reasons why this franchise has so much pitching talent throughout the system.

Yeah, they were part of a Galloway interview, but still…

“Before we can improve our pitching, we have to change the mentality. We are not grooming pitchers to be mentally and physically tough,” said Ryan. “I wanted that change to begin this season in the minors.”

And the result of what he asked for in Surprise?

“Not good,” said Ryan. “Most of them basically ignored me, and kept doing things the way they were being done.”

When it comes to pitching, how does anyone not listen to Nolan bleeping Ryan?

As of next month, however, when there will be no more benevolent Nolan, he told me this a couple of weeks ago in a radio show interview:

“Those who didn’t follow the plan, or don’t want to follow it in the future, I would suggest they look for work in other organizations.”

and we don’t even really know what the “Nolan Ryan Philosophy of Pitching Plan” is, do we? I highly doubt we are going to David Clyde our draft picks any time soon. I think this just means we may take the kids gloves off a little sooner, a trend that, it seemed to me, actually started this year with the aggressive promotions of Hunter, Feliz and Holland. I don’t think Ryan is going to grab Martin Perez by his bootstraps and tell him that if he wants to be recognized as a top pitching prospect, then he better get his lazy ass out of A ball and up to Frisco post haste. Let’s give Ryan a modicum of credit here. He will not expect every pitcher in the system to pitch like Nolan Ryan.

Also, I enjoyed this

He’s been at the controls as Edinson Volquez and John Danks were developed in this system. He was at the helm as Chris Young made his dramatic metamorphsis in this system. He was at the helm as Armando Galarraga seemed to find something special last summer.

I just really, really, really hope that JD proves, for the first time, that he knows how to handle young pitching when it gets close to the majors, how to evaluate its true value and true potential. I hope that when he is engaged in trade talks on guys like Greinke or Cain that he shows a better grasp of which pitchers in our system can get major league hitters out, and which pitchers can’t. I would love for the number of Ricardo Rodriguez’s we trade/give away to start to match the number of legitimate starters we send packing.

That’s a hard thing to teach, though. Mental toughness is more of a personality characteristic.

‘overreaction of the casual fan’

the pitching can only get better

I do think they’ll try to get the pitchers to throw more, but I don’t think it’s going cause a rash of injuries or anything. Those who do get injured probably would’ve been injured anyway.

And I’m sure that this is just a general guideline anyway.