Last week when the Texas Rangers informed pitching coach Mike Maddux they'd be going in another direction for the position after he said he wanted to weigh his offer from the Rangers with other possible offers from other MLB teams, it sent a shockwave through Rangers fans.
But there's more to it than that, at least if you believe Jon Daniels.
The Rangers GM gave his side of the Maddux-Rangers split in an interview with 105.3 The Fan this week and said it was a bit of an issue with the two sides getting their wires crossed.
"First of all, a lot of respect for Mike and the work he put in here both personally and professionally. We had our end-of-season staff meetings, I think it was the same day (Jeff Banister) had our end-of-season presser. Traditionally we make all of our staff decisions before that meeting; you don't want anybody that's not going to be back in that meeting for obvious reasons, you talk about next year and planning and whatnot. Mike was part of that meeting. Full expected him to be back, kind of had to work through the contract. As we got a couple days into it, Mike had wanted to look around a little bit. It had gotten to a point where we thought we may not have a pitching coach, we may need to get out there and look. So we started the interview process. I guess the best way to put it is by the time Mike had gone through his process and wanted to come back and reengage, we'd gotten into the interview process. We hadn't really formally done a review of the staff as the season ended the way it did. We were planning to bring everybody back. The interview process allowed us to do that review and we decided that we really liked some of the candidates that we were talking to and at that point informed Mike that we were going with one of them."
So there you go. Essentially, if you're to believe Daniels, they were fully under the impression Maddux was coming back before he'd told them he was wavering, at which point they began the process to search for his replacement. Either way, it's unfortunate because Maddux is one of the best in the business and has made Texas a destination again for frontline pitchers.
