Wednesday Newsletter time: After 102-loss season, changes were coming. Here's who won't return as Texas Rangers coaches

The offense struggled for three seasons under hitting coach Luis Ortiz, and bench coach Don Wakamatsu is also out.

Hitting coach Luis Ortiz, left, and bench coach Don Wakamatsu, right, were let go from manager Chris Woodward’s coaching staff (The Associated Press/Tony Gutierrez).

The ax was going to fall one someone. It always does after a season like that, with 102-losses, especially with a new general manager on board.

On Tuesday the Texas Rangers announced that hitting coach Luis Ortiz and bench coach Don Wakamatsu were gone from manager Chris Woodward’s coaching staff. Assistant hitting coach Callix Crabbe and run production coordinator Alex Burg could return if the new hitting coach wants them back.

The email crafted by the Rangers said the decisions were made by president of baseball operations Jon Daniels, GM Chris Young and Woodward. They will take questions Wednesday in the annual end-of-season postmortem.

Woodward said on Sunday that coaches wouldn’t be judged solely based on this season but also the work they had done the previous two seasons on his staff. That was a telling statement.

The Rangers’ offense has shown little improvement under Ortiz, who made the jump with Woodward from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ortiz came with an analytics background and was tasked with turning around, among others, Joey Gallo and Rougned Odor.

Give Ortiz credit on Gallo. The Rangers didn’t give Ortiz the 1927 Yankees, but the team has suffered through some of its worst offensive seasons nonetheless.

There’s rarely anything quantitative to determine a bench coach’s dismissal. The record, I suppose, falls on him to an extent, though the Rangers weren’t designed to win this season.

Maybe the Rangers want someone new planning spring training or someone more dialed into analytics to help convey messaging from the manager.

Whatever. It’s never any fun making changes like this, especially with two coaches who worked hard, are very intelligent and are about as nice as nice can be.

It’ll be interesting to hear what Daniels, Young and Woodward have to say.

Epilogue question

The aforementioned postmortem is an annual event that is meant to look ahead more than look back. The beat writers spent all last week asking Woodward about the 102-loss season, so the epilogue could be heavy with looking into the future.

The biggest question in my mind: How do the Rangers plan to sell themselves to free-agent targets?

It’s going to be a tough sell.

All the Rangers have to do is tell, say, shortstop Trevor Story that the Rangers probably won’t be very good in 2022 but, hey, trust them that 2023 and beyond will be filled with playoff appearances.

An old saying comes to mind: Money talks and BS walks. (The saying, of course, spells out BS. I’m good with going all the way if you guys are. Maybe I’ll start a poll.)

Globe Life Field is a selling point, especially for a player where weather is an annoyance. No state income tax is always a biggie. The farm system has become a selling point, though there are no guarantees with any prospect.

An old saying comes to mind: Money talks and BS walks. (The saying, of course, spells out BS. I’m good with going all the way if you guys are. Maybe I’ll start a poll.)

A free agent is going to need to be convinced that ownership is willing to spend money on him and in the future, and the front office is willing to trade from the farm system to bolster the roster. Daniels does have a track record of doing that, but the owners seem to come up short on the dollars too often.

Here’s to you, Mr. Robinson

Unlike so many in this baseball journalism business, I never had the good fortune of meeting Eddie Robinson, the former MLB player, scout and executive who had his playing career interrupted by service in World War II.

The same goes for Dr. Bobby Brown, who gave up baseball for medicine in the 1950s and settled in Fort Worth. Brown, who later became Rangers president in 1975 and served 10 years as American League president, passed away in March at 96.

Robinson passed away overnight Monday at age 100, two months shy of 101. He was baseball’s oldest living player.

Robinson spent six years overseeing the Rangers’ day-to-day operations (1976-1982), and also settled in Fort Worth. The Rangers recognized his 100th birthday in December, holding a conference call with him and Tom Grieve.

Grieve said that Robinson’s mind was sharp as a tack, which Robinson later proved with recall from his playing career 80 years earlier but also with strong opinions about the current game.

He watched the Rangers darn near every night and could talk about the ballclub like he was still in charge of it.

During that call, he said he wanted to live until he was 104. He did just fine with the 100 he lived.

Doggy video!

When a first baseman gets called off by the middle infielders, but stays on the scene to make the play when they lose it in the sun.

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