I’m beginning to agree with Miles on this one. Rudy, Connor, and the rest of the coaches shouldn’t be treated any different from Wash. None of them have had any success in making the Rangers win in the past decade. Sure Jaramillio can point to the late ‘90s, and Connor was good in Arizona, but one can also say that getting future HOFers to hit and pitch isn’t really that hard. The battle is getting mediocre players to be good and good to be great. Certainly haven’t seen much of that here in a while (other than GMJ).

I think if they fire Wash, they should fire a lot more at the same time. Rebuilding should start with the coaching staff.

That was about as well-reasoned a paragraph on pitcher usage and injuries as I’ve seen.

Grant always has good insight…maybe it’s just me, but I feel like he does a better job at covering “insider” Rangers information than TR does. Not to bag on TR or anything, I just really like Evan Grant.

I’ll echo something other guys have said: This week confuses me. I felt like the JD had been really consistent about the youth movement, but DFAing Botts after only 46 PA’s doesn’t jive with that. Whether or not Botts had a future here is another thing entirely—he’s definitely been jerked around by this organization (I feel like he’s the hitting equivalent of Joaquin Benoit). Even if we decide he doesn’t fit here because of his lack of defense, a long look (more on the order of 100-150 PAs) in the majors would’ve at least made him attractive trade bait later on this season, or at least more attractive than Broussard (Botts: .158/.304/.395 vs Broussard: .173/.244/.293).

You know, now that I think about it, I take back my earlier statement. I was confused this offseason as well. I thought we were grooming Botts for a DH/1B spot this season, platooning in Cat when Botts needs to DH. I didn’t understand the Broussard acquisition. I don’t understand why we committed to playing him against lefties for a few weeks, then reneged that commitment for Botts, then reneged our commitment to Botts for Chris Shelton. I have nothing against Shelton (and certainly his minor league numbers make him look better than Botts at approximately the same age), but it just makes no sense.

I was really happy when we hired Nolan Ryan as President of the Texas Rangers, but I’ll channel Bill Simmons here briefly: This team needs a Vice President of Common Sense.

exactly what it was about Washington that was so impressive in his interviews w/ JD and Hicks.

Reading Grant’s intro, I think that Hicks/JD might have made up their minds before any of the interviews that Conor, Jaramillo, and possibly Wakamatsu were all going to be retained as part of the new staff. Maybe the impressive thing about Worsh was that he was the only candidate interviewed that expressed he was comfortable working with a staff largely put together prior to his arrival. In that scenario, JD and Hicks were probably impressed that Wash sold them on his ability to follow a plan that they had already put in place.

that was one incredibly well thought out and phrased question about Laird’s defense.

wow , what an ending…

in other news, Wiffy was DFA’d…

to be their DH. He hits better than anyone else on this team

Talk about making the most about rare opportunities to hit, his career batting line was .346/.366/.628 before today. He hit a pinch hit homerun to tie the game for the d-backs. His 5th home run of his very short career – only 79 at bats.

For those of you counting, Jason Botts also has 5 career home runs in 4 times the at bats (282).