The Texas Rangers should never have let Mike Maddux leave. He’s back for a reason.
“Personal. I had my reasons. Probably just a good time to try something else.”
There was no other reason why Mike Maddux left the Texas Rangers.
It was personal.
Of all the regrettable decisions made by former Rangers GM Jon Daniels, letting Maddux go ranks among his greatest hits. It may be the “best” because there was no reason to do it other than ego.
Because of all of the productive and influential position coaches this franchise has employed since it arrived from Washington D.C. in 1972, Maddux ranks either as No. 1 or No. 1a, next to hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo.
Baseball is loaded with faceless position coaches, and in the history of the game there have been a few who made a noticeable difference from the others.
Pitching coach Dave Duncan comes to mind. Batting coach Walt Hriniak. Former big league manager Lou Piniella was able to reach a batter or two in his long career and make a difference.
There aren’t many. Mike Maddux is one, and after 2015 season the Rangers didn’t want him back.
Money was involved, of course. So was ego.
Spring training begins within a week in Arizona, and for the first time in more than a minute there are a few reasons to be excited about baseball around here. A position coach is seldom a reason to be excited, but Maddux is the rare exception.
Maddux came to the Rangers in 2009, when former team president Nolan Ryan hired him. What ensued was the most successful run in team history, and the best overall pitching ever by the club.
Of the many reasons why JD was fired last fall, the team’s maddening inability to develop pitching is the biggest reason his tenure ended.
Nolan was pushed out in October of 2013. After the 2014 season, when manager Ron Washington resigned, Daniels hired Jeff Bannister but retained Maddux.
The Rangers won the AL West in 2015, and lost in a memorable, but painful, five games in the ALDS against Toronto.
Then Maddux was let go.
Even though cash was a factor, it’s hard to envision money as the primary reason. The ownership group of the Rangers has slashed in other areas, but it has spent money on players and coaches; especially the ones JD wanted.
The prevailing thought was JD wanted his own people in place, and Maddux’s roots were more aligned with Nolan.
Maddux worked with the Nationals in 2016 and 2017, and in St. Louis from 2018 to 2022. The Nationals reached the National League Division series in Maddux’s two years. The Cardinals made the playoffs from ‘19 to ‘22.
That success is hardly the work of a pitching coach. It is also not a coincidence.
After the Cardinals were eliminated from the playoffs last season, Maddux, 61, was ready to retire. He went to Scotland for a vacation, and he was retired.
Then Bruce Bochy came out of retirement to manage the Rangers, and suddenly Maddux was not so eager to play golf all day.
He’s maintained a residence in DFW, and the chance for a shorter drive to sit next to Bochy on the bench, and to work with what appears to be a decent stable of young arms was too much. Retirement can wait.
He said the Rangers today are not the same Rangers he left.
“A lot different,” he said. “(GM Chris Young) is a big factor. He understands that pitching, you gotta have it and you can’t have too much of it.”
Nothing has consistently bedeviled the Rangers like pitching.
Maddux isn’t the same guy who left, either.
He’s more of a traditionalist. He likes a five-man rotation. He prefers to use fewer pitchers in a game rather than rely on a steady stream of arms over nine innings.
“The fewer guys that pitch in a game the better pitched game you have. I’ve never gotten off that,” he said.
He’s smart enough to know he has to be adaptable, too. Baseball’s attitude towards pitching is not the same as it was 10 years ago. Even five years ago.
Maddux didn’t come to the Rangers only because of Bochy, and the fact the Globe Life Mall is close to his house.
A man of Maddux’s age, and experience, isn’t coming out of a two-week retirement to lose.
“The room for improvement is there, and the room for immediate improvement is here,” he said.
There are many encouraging signs for the Texas Rangers in 2023, and the return of a pitching coach who should never have been allowed to leave is tops among them.
This story was originally published February 10, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
