I've been giving this some thought, and I've decided that the Rangers need to trade John Danks.
The reason for this is that Danks is represented by Scott Boras. And with Boras as his agent, one of two things will happen with Danks.
One, Danks will fail to develop into the type of pitcher we hope he will become. If that's the case, then we'll be kicking ourselves for not trading him when he was a prospect, like we lament not having traded Ruben Mateo (and to save Dan Cahill the trouble, I'll add, "and Hank Blalock") when they were highly touted prospects.
Or, two, Danks will develop into the type of pitcher we hope he will become. But in that case, we are just setting ourselves up for heartache. With Boras as his agent, the Rangers won't be able to sign Danks long-term, and will probably have to start shopping him after his third or fourth year in the league.
But at that point, the Rangers will be limited to just teams like New York and Boston, and besides, they probably still wouldn't be able to get what he's worth.
So the Rangers just need to bite the bullet and trade Danks now, see if they can get someone younger, who can be counted on long-term. I hear there are some nice 17 year olds pitching in the AZL this past summer...we should probably see if we could flip Danks for a couple of those guys...