Under The Knife 7/8/24
Titles after Title
Last year, the Texas Rangers won the World Series.
That’s a simple statement, but in baseball, that’s the statement. Anything they did suddenly gets amplified. How they won the World Series - getting hot at the right time, having a good mix of young players, Jordan Montgomery stepping up to be the ace they though Jacob deGrom or Max Scherzer would be - don’t matter when the ring comes and the banner flies.
One of the things they did was get a little NFL with their coaching staff. Look at the titles - and titles in baseball are always wonky - and you’ll get that they simply organized things differently. Coordinators. Even with “assistant” hitting and pitching coaches, the roles were delineated differently than many other teams that have done this (which is itself a copy of NBA expansion of assistant coaches, which don’t count against the salary cap!)
Chris Young kept a lot of people around, but made some clear changes in the organization and this new system is one of the more noticeable, if not visible. There’s still a hitting coach, and a pitching coach, but even that isn’t what you’d traditionally think of for the Johnny Sain/Leo Mazzone type.
In a copycat league, there were inklings that others were going to make this kind of shift, redefining roles and changing titles to, if nothing else, show they were keeping up with the Jones’, or in the Rangers case, the Youngs.
The Rangers haven’t just kept it on field. I don’t mean to pick on Ben Baroody here, but he was recently introduced at a recent conference and his title popped up on the intro screen: “Director of Leadership & Staff Development, Player Enrichment Programs, & Mind Health.” (You can see it, below.) Baroody was excellent, and I immediately asked a couple people in the know whether he was a rising star and the answer was an emphatic yes. It doesn’t make his title any less ridiculous.
But with 2024 being acknowledged to be a little fluky and 2025 being a down year filled with injuries - let alone who knows what the second half could bring - is this the organization that someone would want to copy? It’s hard enough to copy the Rays, which several have tried to do, or Oakland, or even the Dodgers, though more are trying that model, and everyone wants to be Atlanta, at least in terms of land if not front office structure.
Asking around the league, many are, though most said this has been moving that way for a decade. One ex-GM told me “it’s assistant hitting and pitching coaches. It’s the bench coach being a real coach and not just a sounding board or drinking buddy. It’s quality control and video coaches,” he explained. “And now, most teams are just rationalizing it and putting it in a better structure. It’s honestly very corporate, very territorial. Some orgs give people their little patch, their little silo and let them run it. Others are much more top down, no matter what titles you give.”
Titles have always been irrational in baseball. Matching them to modern functions makes good sense for many reasons, but actual reorganization is tougher than just new business cards. I hope they add medical staffs into this, especially if it means adding full time men and women and their hands and hours to the mix. For now, let’s get to the injuries:
JEFFREY SPRINGS, SP TBR (sprained elbow/rehab)
SHANE BAZ, SP TBR (post-sprained elbow)
The Rays traded Aaron Civale away to the pitching-light Brewers. This is after acquiring Civale from the Guardians in a trade where everyone saw the story. Not only did the Rays have a big need, Civale was relatively cheap and fit the profile of the kind they often excel with. They did, but the second they had an option, out he went. I’ll leave it to the prospect guys to tell me if what they got back (Gregory Barrios) is equal to what they gave up (Kyle Manzardo), but almost a year of Civale gave them a solid starting pitcher. Exactly what he was supposed to do.
The reason Civale was surplus to needs is that Shane Baz has been looking like Shane Baz again, first at Durham and then in his first big league action. With Jeffrey Springs not far behind, the Rays rotation is beginning to look more like what they were planning a couple years ago. The injuries sidetracked that plan, but the Rays kept coming and seem to have solved or at least gotten past the epidemic of pitching arm injuries. It’s one thing to have a bunch and another to have a rotation of pitchers from mound to rehab and back.
Springs’ last rehab start went 62 pitches and with the rehab clock very tight - he re-started on June 7, so I’m not sure how he would go further without an option. The awesome Scott Lucas taught me that there are some possible extensions with consent, something I did not know!
Spring has pitched well since the wobble in his rehab and shouldn’t have any sort of workload issues, even if the Rays can find their way into a wild card slot. More, the Rays should add Shane McClanahan and have the top three in ‘25 they thought they had for the ‘23 run. Better late than never.
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