Introduction to Jordan Tiegs’ Challenge
When a team makes a change at a coordinator level, the goalposts are both easily identifiable and reasonably reachable. Welcome to Jordan Tiegs’ challenge. How do you improve the best pitching staff in the league? “It’s definitely a unique situation,” the Rangers’ new pitching coach said this week, then shared a story. “My wife and I were kind of joking around the other day. The fans are seeing the team go from one of the most decorated pitching coaches in baseball to some guy they’ve probably never heard of. They are all going, what just happened?”
The Departure of Mike Maddux
Which is exactly what they are doing. Mike Maddux, who left for the Los Angeles Angels, hasn’t addressed what spurred him to spurn the Rangers’ offer to return and bolt for the West Coast. Maddux, who turns 65 next year, still lives in the area and was offered the opportunity to return. He instead took a one-year deal with what is believed to be a substantial raise to take over the Angels.
The best supposition has been that the Rangers didn’t leap to make an offer, preferring to let new manager Skip Schumaker work through exactly how he wanted his new staff to take shape, and Maddux got a wandering urge. It happens. Sometimes team and individual needs and desires don’t properly align.
This is a 2025 photo of bullpen coach Jordan Tiegs of the Texas Rangers baseball team. This image reflects the Texas Rangers’ active roster as of Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, when this image was taken in Surprise, Ariz. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Carolyn Kaster / AP
Jordan Tiegs: The New Pitching Coach
However, it happened, here’s what the Rangers ended up with: A collaborative, young pitching coach whose fingerprints are all over the success stories on the roster. Tiegs (pronounced “TEEGS,” like Cheryl, for men of a certain age) was the club’s minor league pitching coordinator from 2022-24 and worked as a pitching coach at two levels in the system for three years before that. In 2025, he joined the major league staff as bullpen coach. He is just 38.
In his first season, he guided a bullpen with no closer and no proven leverage arm to a 3.51 ERA, the best by a Rangers bullpen since they had an established closer at the back end (Joe Nathan in 2013). But the success extended past that. The Rangers had three homegrown breakout pitching performances from Jack Leiter, Jacob Latz and Cole Winn. Over the two previous seasons, you might have been able to add Cody Bradford to that mix. Tiegs worked closely with all of them in the minors.
Not to brag, but he was “Jack’s personal pitching coach” for two trying months in 2023 when Leiter was pulled out of competition and put into a development program to tighten up his strike zone command and slow down his tempo.
Success Stories
“He spent a lot of time on mechanics, mindset, delivery and arsenal development,” GM Ross Fenstermaker said. “He didn’t helicopter in and out. He was a constant and consistent presence. It was altruistic in truly trying to serve the player and the team’s best interest.”
Shortly after the development stint, Leiter summed up the process thusly: “I think that’s something that I’m going to look back on in hopefully 20 years and say that was a huge impact on the turning point for me and my confidence, and what I’m capable of and what I’m doing out there.”
All Leiter did in 2025 was make 29 starts, win 10 games and post a 3.86 ERA as a rookie. The only other Ranger rookie in this century to meet each of those thresholds: Yu Darvish. Latz and Winn, Rangers’ drafted and developed pitchers, combined for a 2.40 ERA and 1.147 WHIP over 127 innings.
The Future of the Rangers’ Staff
Latz has put pressure on the Rangers to move him to the rotation; Winn is emerging as a leverage bullpen arm who is death on right-handed hitting. And next year, the Rangers’ staff will likely include Bradford, sometime around June 1, Marc Church and eventually Jose Corniell and Emiliano Teodo. It’s the nucleus of a homegrown staff. And who better to lead them than somebody who knows them well?
“Young guys get up to the majors and they can sometimes struggle to have guys to relate to,” said Nathan Eovaldi, who often acts as an adjunct pitching coach. “When you have that immediately, it fuels them more. They definitely worked well together and they definitely trust in Tiegs. I think it’s a really good combination.”
Tiegs’ Approach to Coaching
There is one more thing: While Maddux is an elite game-planner and instills supreme confidence in his pitchers, his weakness, if there was one, might be collaboration, which is an asset for Tiegs. Coaching and support staffs are bigger than ever. The modern pitching coach
