I just hope he is better

I think we’d all be more hopeful about 2009 and beyond if he can get back to the bigs and have a handful of good outings before season’s end.

I have no idea if this change is going to mean BMac’s issues are behind him. But how can someone look at this picture and not see a problem. ?

Even if you don’t see it as a problem, wouldn’t you at some point get BMac back to his Chicago mechanics and see if that’s been the problem? Just seems like common sense.

I like that there’s finally some small reason to be optimistic about BMac…….

their in the easiest division and if you take away their record against their crappy division, they are 33-44.

And at the end of the day, I legitimately have to wonder if Ryan didn’t join the Rangers in his present capacity, realize that Connor was something of a detriment to not only McCarthy’s progression but to several more of the club’s young pitchers as well, and begin to personally take the bull by the horns with regard to the grooming and development of the future lifeblood of the franchise.

two possibilities.

one – the team recognized a problem and is taking steps in a positive direction by sacking the pitching coach. he had no achievements/credibility afaik, so i have no idea how he kept his job as long as he did. kudos to nolan for making a potentially positive impact on the team in an area that he is very familiar and an area that we need a tremendous amount of help. the assumes of course that the college student that wrote this article is correct in his guess.

two – this team screws up everything and mccarthy is following in a long list of failures. until someone proves me otherwise i will assume that this is correct.

fwiw – proof comes in accomplishments not speculation about a bright future that can easily come unraveled just as it always has. i agree that the minor leagues are in better shape than ever before, but until any of these guys contribute to a contender they are unrealized potential.

by this time next year we will see what nolan/hawkins/daniels have collectively done to help mccarthy and the rest of the staff.

DMN/Startlegram couldn’t devote this amount of space to a nuanced issue like this, even if it could be a critical point in the path of the team’s performance from this point forward.

if this is how Nolan Ryan interacts with the pitching coaches and pitching staff, count me in.

I tend to agree with Adam about Nolan — he was a great pitcher with a bionic arm, and I worry that he will expect other pitchers to hold up to similar performance levels. I sincerely hope that I’m proven wrong. This sort of story starts that ball rolling, in my eyes.

that BMac also showed up to spring training with extra bulk from lifting weights. i’d still like to know whose bright idea that was.

i’m not convinced the rangers screwed him up. sure, they didn’t help him out, but….

september 2005:

May 2007:

He may have completely screwed up McCarthy, but you have to give kudos to him for what he did to Feldman.

I believe there was a comment in the BTIA story about Connor tinkering when unnecessary and it appears that may be what happened with McCarthy. But when Feldman needed some tinkering, Connor got some pretty good results … considering where Feldman was last year.

I’ve had a question about something organizational for two years that this whole McCarthy saga brings to a head…

Is it common for major league clubs to impose a uniform pitching philosophy on their minor league affiliates? I realize that’s a pretty big task considering you’ll have pitchers with potential and pitchers who are career minor leaguers at every level, but it seems to me that there ought to be an organizational gameplan from the Arizona League all the way through the AL West for both hitting and pitching.

So much of what I’m reading about McCarthy and the bits of anecdotal shockers like our major league pitchers being optioned to OKC last year and learning a new pitch or getting some pointers on varying the grip on an existing pitch from Hawkins et al make it seem like there’s a huge disconnect between management and the big team’s pitching coaches and the minor leagues’ pitching coaches and the pitchers in the minors.

It seems to me that there’s two immediate things Hicks can do after the season ends that could be a bigger pair of factors in using going from flirtations to contenders to World Series favorites than signing C.C. and Ben or trading for Zach or whatever your solution du jour is: Overhaul the conditioning program from facilities to people and sit down with your President, GM, manager and pitching coach and get a friggin’ plan together that starts in rookie ball and extends all the way to The Ballpark.

I just don’t see how in the hell you can have a guy like McCarthy kicking around who has been a mechanical mess for most of his time in this organization and not have anyone but the President and former AAA pitching coach see what’s wrong with him.

While I know the answer to my question is probably tied up in the whole Connor-getting-canned saga and the contested legacy of his time as pitching coach here in Texas, it just really seems like our organization needs some kind of top-to-bottom gameplan that is loose enough to allow the stars to rise by doing what they do well while at the same time grooming them within certain boundaries (i.e. pound the strike zone).

As far as the conditioning program goes, there’s no excuse to not be able to buy a world class conditioning program when you’ve got the kind of dinero Senor Tom has in his back pocket. If our team’s conditioning doesn’t improve, it’s not going to matter if you run C.C. or Ben or Zach out there once a week if you’ve still got three guys behind them who are emergency starters straight out of the minors. And if you’re going to think seriously about bringing someone with a history of fragility like Ben Sheet here, you’d damn well better have a world class conditioning program and training staff to keep him healthy.