Younger, deeper Texas Rangers open spring training on path drawn by Jon Daniels

Spring training is under way for the Texas Rangers, who ran their pitchers and catchers through their first workout Wednesday.

The 2021 season will mark the first full season of the latest round of rebuilding, a phase the Rangers entered after an eight-game losing streak toward the middle of last season.

Things didn’t get much better the rest of the way, and things probably won’t be much better on the field in 2021.

The Rangers, though, are better.

Credit to that goes to Jon Daniels.

(Let the bellyaching from the anti-JD portion of the fan base begin).

The Rangers didn’t sign any big-name players to massive contracts. Daniels made the team worse in the short-term via trades. He has said repeatedly that the Rangers will not contend this season.

But some eight months after it looked like the Rangers didn’t have a plan, Daniels orchestrated one of his best offseasons. He always likes to point out that he had help, but he’s still at the top of the baseball-ops hierarchy and still has face all questions from ownership.

His answers throughout the offseason struck the right chord.

“We had a plan early on,” said Daniels, the president of baseball operations. “We adjusted a few times as we went through it. Our goals in part were to add young players to this group we have now at the big-league level and also to add young talent throughout the organization. Everybody that we added we feel like has the ability to have value for us beyond just this year.”

That includes a new face in the front office, general manager Chris Young. He was hired in December, only a few days before the Rangers traded staff ace Lance Lynn to the Chicago White Sox for pitching prospects Dane Dunning and Avery Weems in a deal that had been in the works.

Dunning will log starts this season, possibly to open the 162-game campaign, and the Rangers shaved $8 million from their payroll.

The six-player swap with Tampa Bay that brought first baseman Nate Lowe into the fold was also largely in place but consummated after Young’s hire.

The most newsworthy trade came earlier this month, when longtime shortstop Elvis Andrus was shipped to the Oakland A’s in a five-player deal that brought DH Khris Davis, catching prospect Jonah Heim and pitching prospect Dane Acker to the Rangers.

Additionally, the Rangers nabbed free-agent outfielder David Dahl, free-agent starting pitchers Kohei Arihara and Mike Foltynewicz, and traded reliever Rafael Montero for two more prospects.

“We really wanted to put an emphasis on makeup, on defense and on approach at the plate,” Daniels said. “We were able to spend a good deal of time getting ourselves prepared from a player-development standpoint.”

It will take a few seasons to find out if the rebuild will work. Some around baseball have in the recent seasons, including the Houston Astros, but other clubs have tried and failed.

But the Rangers’ farm system is deeper, thanks not only to the offseason but a talent stockpile that started last season at the trade deadline, and healthier.

The MLB roster is younger, which is a good thing even though the Rangers’ 2021 record might not show much of the good.

The hope is that players like Leody Taveras continue to develop in the majors, and that prospects like Josh Jung and Sam Huff will make take steps in the minors before joining the Rangers later in the season.

There is also hope that the Rangers will begin moving toward contention and will be adding immediate help in the near future.

“I look forward to offseasons where our goals are to add pieces to help us contend in the coming year,” Daniels said. “I hope this group defies the odds and does that. I look forward to seeing them overachieve and fight through that, but we’re also very aware of where we are and we approached this winter with that in mind with ‘22 and beyond as the true target.”

The Rangers have direction, and the Daniels pointed them that way.

“This is something that JD and the current regime had put in place, the vision of the franchise and where we’re going and what we need to do to get there,” Young said. “We had a lot of conversations in the hiring process that discussed it. JD and I were 100 percent on board with the direction we are going. I think these moves all reflect that.

“I think it’s clear where we’re headed.”