Options

Baseball, like so many other things in life, is about options.  Pitchers with more quality pitches have a greater chance of fooling a batter.  If you can throw any pitch for a strike, that option is immensely valuable.  When a manager has two quality hitters at the same position, the team benefits from knowing that whoever is out there at any point can hit Major League pitching.  However, the most important reason for options in baseball is that no plan works out like it should.  Injuries, suspensions, slumps, or any other baseball-related anomaly can change things very quickly.  In military circles, it is said that the best plan is one that doesn't rely on everything going exactly right.  Baseball is like this, too.  This is a major reason why the Rangers have not really succeeded this year.  Too many things that the club was counting on to go right have not, and the only plan involving the Rangers winning had everything going right.

The part where I start getting confused is where the Rangers have made some decisions limiting their options for the future.  The area I'm talking about is roster management.  Following the All-Star break, the Rangers needed another catcher due to injuries.  As a result, we saw the debut of UT product Taylor Teagarden.  Under Major League rules, Teagarden, if not added to the 40-man roster this November, would be eligible for the Rule V draft.  A catcher as highly-regarded defensively as Teagarden would easily be picked up in such a situation.  However, the call-up was only for a quick trip in Minnesota, where he was sent down following the series.  At the moment, Teagarden is busy adding up days on his first option year.  When he reaches 20 days, you can count that option gone.  That is almost sure to happen with the Rangers having three other healthy catchers on the 40-man roster (Max Ramirez having been optioned out today).  In other words, if Teagarden has a recurrence of injuries and has to use more than a 30-day rehab assignment and an additional 20 days of optional assignment, he's down to just a single option.  In addition, some wonder whether he'll hit well enough to be a big league regular.  If he struggles badly enough and we have a spare catcher, he might be forced to use another option.  So for the Rangers, their decision to add Taylor Teagarden to the 40-man roster for a series in July, it could be costly.  They've essentially cut down a year of development time for him.  With an open spot on the 40-man roster, Kevin Richardson should have come up and been DFA after the series.  An organizational guy, Richardson will be a six-year minor league free agent following the season, so his development is not an issue at this point.  Overall, that was honestly botched by the Rangers, and they are now counting on one more thing going right in the future, when they could have had options.

A growing trend I'm seeing with the Rangers now is the trading of some development time for a couple more wins now.  Whether it's driven by a desire for ticket sales, a testing of young players, or just short-sightedness, I'm starting to get worried.  We had Max Ramirez basically on the bench for a long while, German Duran biding his time on the bench and then expected to hit Major League pitching once or twice a week, and Brandon Boggs basically suffering the same fate.  Duran and Boggs had never been above Double-A entering the year, and Ramirez had never even seen Double-A.  To mortgage their futures so they can experience the Major Leagues is not a sound decision.  With his injury, Duran's season is basically a lost one.  Brandon Boggs continues to be the guy who we never see.  Max Ramirez lost key time to Jarrod Saltalamacchia, the backhanding I'm-too-good-to-block-a-ball "catcher."  We may be raving about the talent we've brought in, but unless Jon Daniels and Ron Washington learn how to develop it, we'll consistently be a 80-85 win team, rather than one that can win the AL West.