The Rangers announced that offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker has been fired after three-plus seasons in his role. No replacement was named, as the press release announcing the move stated that “the structure of the club’s hitting staff is expected to be addressed in the coming days.”
“After lengthy discussions and deliberations, we feel now is the appropriate time to provide our hitters with a new voice as we pursue goals of winning the division and reaching the postseason,” Texas president of baseball operations Chris Young said in the press release. “We are extremely grateful to Donnie for all that he has accomplished here with the Rangers, including his role in the club’s 2023 World Series championship. We wish him the best.”
The news comes in the aftermath of the Rangers’ 8-1 win over the Mariners today, which marked just the third time this season that Texas had scored eight or more runs in a game. The Rangers entered today’s action ranked near the bottom of the league in most offensive categories, and carried a team-wide .224/.280/.357 slash line and 82 wRC+ prior to today’s breakout against Seattle.
Marcus Semien and Adolis Garcia are two of the most prominent under-performing regulars, while offseason signing Joc Pederson has a hard-to-fathom 2 wRC+ through his first 91 plate appearances in a Rangers uniform. Infielder Jake Burger was another offseason pickup who has struggled badly, and Texas already optioned him to Triple-A earlier this week. Leody Taveras has usually been a glove-first player anyway, but the Rangers chose to put the outfielder on outright waivers today.
These are a few of the major weak links that undermined a few hot starts within the lineup (i.e. Wyatt Langford, Corey Seager, Josh Smith, Jonah Heim), and more pressingly, a fantastic early showing from the Texas rotation. Even with so little from the offense, the Rangers have still managed an even 18-18 record thanks in large part to the outstanding starting pitching.
As always, it is unfair to point the finger at one particular coach (or coordinator, in this case) for a team’s performance. As Young noted in his own statement, criticism of Ecker’s work should also acknowledge the fact that the Rangers were an offensive powerhouse less than two years ago when Texas won the first World Series title in franchise history. That said, the 2024 Rangers followed up that championship season with a 78-84 record. Inconsistent pitching was the biggest issue last year, yet the offense also slumped to a 95 wRC+, ranking 22nd of 30 teams.
Ecker is only 39 years old, yet he already has a lengthy resume with multiple teams. He was a minor league hitting coach with various Cardinals and Angels affiliates from 2015-18, and he then moved to the big leagues as the Reds’ assistant hitting coach for the 2019 season. Ecker was one of two hitting coaches employed by the Giants in 2020-21 before he came to Texas as both a bench coach and the “offensive coordinator” role that focused on shaping the team’s overall offensive philosophy.
The bench coach duties changed this past offseason, as Ecker became just the offensive coordinator when Luis Urueta was hired as the Rangers’ new bench coach. Will Venable had previously been the Rangers’ associate manager before he was hired to manage the White Sox, so Urueta has apparently taken over the chief lieutenant role behind manager Bruce Bochy. Texas also made a change at hitting coach, as Justin Viele was hired while assistant hitting coach Seth Conner was retained.
As noted by Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News, this marks the first time in Bochy’s long managerial career that one of his coaches has ever been replaced during a season. In general, in-season coaching changes have become relatively rarer throughout baseball, since one particular coach is just one of several voices contributing to what has become an increasingly organization-wide approach to game-planning and preparation.
In the most basic sense that a coaching change can shake a team up, results have been mixed over the years. For every instance where a team is sparked by a change (i.e. the Mariners heating up after Dan Wilson was hired as manager and Edgar Martinez was hired as hitting coach last August), you can cite another where a staffing change didn’t get a club back on track.
Since it is also just May 4, it can be argued that we’re also still in “slow start” territory, with still a relatively small sample size of evidence that something is drastically wrong with the Texas offense. Of course, Ecker’s dismissal obviously means the Rangers didn’t feel the same way, given the abrupt and somewhat surprising nature of the firing. It will be intriguing to see how the team responds to the change, and whether or not the Rangers fill Ecker’s role from within the organization or with a new hire.