Texas Rangers 2008 Off-Season Report; Pitching Coach and Catchers

The baseball off-season has official started with the World Series ending, congrats to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Once again our Texas Rangers have a good handful of things that must be done this off-season and the first was filling in coaching staff positions.

The most important of these was the pitching coach, a position that seems to be as secure as the head coaching position for the Oakland Raiders.

The Texas Rangers have hired Mike Maddux, young brother of future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.  Maddux comes to the Rangers after working for the Milwaukee Brewers the past few years.

Another big piece of the Rangers off-season to-do list is what to do with the four catchers.  Texas has the good problem of having four Major League ready catchers in Gerald Laird, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Taylor Teagarden, and Max Ramirez.

All four catchers are getting attention around the league, and the Rangers are dead set of trading for only young starting pitchers.

The Florida Marlins have already offered left-hander Scott Olsen for Max Ramirex, but the Rangers are asking for a trade package that must include either Ricky Nolasco or Anibal Sanchez.  That's 2007 no-hitter as a rookie Anibal Sanchez.

The Detroit Tigers have already sat down with GM Jon Daniels to talk about their interest in Gerald Laird, but the Tigers lack the starting pitching to make a trade right now.

The Red Sox have shown lots of interest since the July trade deadline in both Salty and Teagarden.  Their has even been a report that the Red Sox are willing to give up either Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, or Michael Bowden for Salty.  All three of them are Major League ready pitchers.

Its still very early in the off-season, but the fact that the Rangers are already receiving this much attention in regards to their catchers could very well see the departure two of these four catchers by Spring Training.

I have said since the July trade deadline and say again that the Rangers should trade away both Laird and Salty.  Work the two youngsters Teagarden and Ramirez splitting time initially and seeing which earns the starting role.

And now with the deal the Red Sox are offering pitchers like Buchholz and Masterson, my opinion is to pounce of that now and trade Salty to Boston, because his trade value will never be higher.

With the off-season just starting, I will continue to write these articles as soon as I know information about the Texas Rangers wheeling-and-dealings.

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