Texas Rangers hire Bryan Conger, Tarleton State head coach

Bryan Conger, the head baseball coach for Tarleton State in Stephenville, Texas, tweeted yesterday that he has “accepted a coaching position in the Texas Rangers organization”. There’s no official announcement, but my guess is that he will likely be working with on pitching development with the minor leaguers.

I had never heard of Conger before that tweet, but Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper has a piece on him today that explains why the Rangers would have been interested in him. Cooper discusses Conger speaking at the ABCA convention a few days ago, talking about how college coaches in smaller programs can adopt and utilize technology efficiently without big budgets, and what Conger has done at Tarleton State as far as utilizing technology to help guide their development of their pitchers.

The Rangers had previously been reported to have hired University of North Carolina pitching coach Robert Woodard as the team’s minor league pitching coordinator, though that deal fell through after UNC upped their offer to Woodward in order to keep him. The Rangers also went into the amateur ranks in hiring Matt Blood from USA Baseball to be their player development director. And of course, Texas is rumored to be working with Kyle Boddy and Driveline Baseball, as well.

So the addition of Conger is part of what appears to be a concerted effort this offseason to look at more non-traditional options in putting together their player development group. We shall presumably learn soon enough what specific role he will be filling.