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<\/p>\nWhen a team makes a change at a coordinator level, the goalposts are both easily identifiable and reasonably reachable. Welcome to Jordan Tiegs\u2019 challenge. How do you improve the best pitching staff in the league? \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a unique situation,\u201d the Rangers\u2019 new pitching coach said this week, then shared a story. \u201cMy 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\u2019ve probably never heard of. They are all going, what just happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is exactly what they are doing. Mike Maddux, who left for the Los Angeles Angels, hasn\u2019t addressed what spurred him to spurn the Rangers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
The best supposition has been that the Rangers didn\u2019t 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\u2019t properly align.<\/p>\n
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)<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster \/ AP<\/p>\n
However, it happened, here\u2019s what the Rangers ended up with: A collaborative, young pitching coach whose fingerprints are all over the success stories on the roster. Tiegs (pronounced \u201cTEEGS,\u201d like Cheryl, for men of a certain age) was the club\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Not to brag, but he was \u201cJack\u2019s personal pitching coach\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe spent a lot of time on mechanics, mindset, delivery and arsenal development,\u201d GM Ross Fenstermaker said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t helicopter in and out. He was a constant and consistent presence. It was altruistic in truly trying to serve the player and the team\u2019s best interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shortly after the development stint, Leiter summed up the process thusly: \u201cI think that\u2019s something that I\u2019m 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\u2019m capable of and what I\u2019m doing out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019 drafted and developed pitchers, combined for a 2.40 ERA and 1.147 WHIP over 127 innings.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 staff will likely include Bradford, sometime around June 1, Marc Church and eventually Jose Corniell and Emiliano Teodo. It\u2019s the nucleus of a homegrown staff. And who better to lead them than somebody who knows them well?<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung guys get up to the majors and they can sometimes struggle to have guys to relate to,\u201d said Nathan Eovaldi, who often acts as an adjunct pitching coach. \u201cWhen you have that immediately, it fuels them more. They definitely worked well together and they definitely trust in Tiegs. I think it\u2019s a really good combination.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019 challenge. How do you improve the best pitching staff in the league? \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a unique situation,\u201d the Rangers\u2019 new pitching coach said this week, then shared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":17175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com\/resizer\/v2\/AUSKOH5AARB2RPIEEGDHSMHQ5I.jpg?auth=e4639aabfd6242a2a1f77e99d2a4309c7048950f6d8af230c3d57b55eeee5ea3&quality=80&width=1200&height=630&focal=438,305","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17176,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17173\/revisions\/17176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}