Don’t blame it all on Dave Magadan

Last week the Texas Rangers announced the coaching staff that will be under manager Jeff Banister.  One of those coaching decisions was the return of hitting coach Dave Magadan.

Many fans commented on the return of Magadan, many of those comments were negative.  Some fans say he was the reason the club was screwed up last season, others blame him for the poor power hitting and others just say he stinks (putting it politely).  Admittedly I even wonder about Magadan, but really the Rangers only have one season to gauge how well he did and that was during the 2013 season.

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During the 2014 season Magadan did his best to work with players like J.P. Arencibia.  Who probably has the worst plate disciple in the league.  JPA was always swinging for the fences in Toronto and continued that trend in Texas, despite all the hard work Dave Magadan put in with Arencibia.

Besides for a few players like Arencibia who were hopeless to help, Magadan basically was the hitting coach for a high AAA team last year with the Rangers.  The Rangers did have several major league players, but due to injuries they used a plethora of rookies and other minor leaguers throughout the season.

Due to injuries and lack of players like Prince Fielder in the lineup, the power numbers did take a huge dip and wasn’t really as a result of having Dave Magadan as the hitting coach.  Had the Texas Rangers been 100% healthy and the team performed the same way, then there might be people really questioning Magadan.

But, for now it’s time to focus on 2015 and that’s what Dave Magadan is trying to do.  Here’s what he said during a recent interview about the 2014 season and looking towards spring training.

"“What we have to do is embrace what happened and use it to make us better,” Magadan said Monday. “The young guys got an opportunity to show what they can do at the big league level, now go to Spring Training with the attitude of winning a job. The older guys are coming to Spring Training healthy and looking to rebound from last year.“Play with a chip on your shoulder … whatever the reason. We could have been a lot better last year, but we weren’t. Use that to motivate us. Play with a little bit of an attitude; we haven’t done that the past two years.” (T.R. Sullivan – MLB.com)"

Overall it came down to the players producing last season and because many of them were rookies, injuries, and call ups from the minors it was hard to tell what kind of impact Magadan had.  The players should all arrive at spring training camp healthy and with a clean slate to start over.  Hopefully next season the power numbers and averages will go up, but they’ll need players to keep healthy and produce numbers like they should.