SURPRISE, Ariz. — In understanding the philosophy of the Texas Rangers, there is one key element to grasp.
Rangers president and CEO Nolan Ryan pitched his way into the Hall of Fame.
He is baseball's all-time strikeout king, won 324 big-league games and pitched a record seven no-hitters. If anybody cares, he hit .110.
When Ryan decided to return to baseball on the management side and run the Rangers, he made it known immediately that as exciting as the Rangers offense has been over the years, the foundation for a successful franchise is pitching.
Once that foundation is put in place, Ryan knows that there is a need to keep it in place.
He also knows there are no guarantees, other than the contracts players sign. Never was that more evident for the Rangers than on Tuesday.
Derek Holland signed a five-year, $28.5 million deal that includes options for 2017 and 2018, underscoring the Rangers' intent to keep the core of their rotation in place for at least three more seasons.
Neftali Feliz, making the spring conversion from closer to starter, walked off the mound of the exhibition game against the Cubs in Mesa after three innings with right shoulder stiffness, which is the injury that forced him to miss a couple weeks last year.
The Rangers, however, are optimistic. They feel that Feliz will be fine. And they feel that Holland represents their commitment to long-term stability, even if C.J. Wilson and all the distractions that accompany him wandered down the free agent path to the AL West rival Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim during the offseason.
The Rangers, after all, have won back-to-back AL pennants, something that hadn't been done once in the first 50 years of the team's existence, which began as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961.
They want to take that next step, to claim their first World Series championship, and they are making a pitch to get that done sooner, rather than later.
The Rangers shook up the baseball world during the winter, winning the bidding for the rights to Japanese right-hander Yu Darvish at a cost of $51 million, and then signing Darvish to a six-year, $56 million contract.
And on Tuesday they solidified their long-term plan, signing left-hander Holland, even though he won't have the service time needed for salary arbitration until after this season.
That means that the Rangers have four of their projected five members of the starting rotation committed through at least 2014. Colby Lewis is a potential free agent in the fall, but they have control of Matt Harrison through 2014, Feliz and Holland through 2016, and Darvish through 2017. And then there is Alexi Ogando, under control through 2016, and highly regard prospect Martin Perez, who has yet to get his big-league service-time clock ticking.
"This is about our commitment to signing and developing the best pitching we can," general manager Jon Daniels said. "It's an organizational mindset. We were trying to turn that corner a bit and this is further evidence of that."
And the Rangers have proved they aren't picky about where they find pitching. This isn't a staff built around once high-profile prospects. Darvish is the big name of the group.
Holland was a 25th-round draft choice out of Wallace State Community College in Alabama in 2006, and wasn't even signed until the next May, after the Rangers had a chance to watch him pitch for a second year at the junior-college level.
Harrison was a third-round pick in 2003, but it was by the Atlanta Braves, who then included the left-hander and Feliz in a parcel of prospects the Rangers received from Atlanta in the Mark Teixeira deal on July 31, 2007.
Ogando was a winter draft after the 2005 season from Oakland, which had him playing the outfield, not pitching, and who then spent a year in exile in a dispute over immigration issues. Perez (Venezuela) is a product of the Rangers' Latin American program.
Most of all, these pitchers, unlike Wilson, have made it clear they want to be in Texas.
Holland, for example, not only signed away his first potential year of free agency (2016), but also gave the Rangers options for a reported $11.5 million in 2017 and $12.5 million in 2018.
"I know I gave up that stuff, the three years, but to me it's all about being in Texas and wearing that Texas uniform and going and getting some championships," Holland said.
And the Rangers are ready to make the pitch to keep a rotation together that they feel can deliver what Holland wants.
