The Rangers have a new general manager. The trend lately is to have a president of baseball operations, and a general manager. Used to be the GM was the guy. He was making the all the calls. If there was a club president, he was mainly a figurehead.

Now, it’s a committee of three: the president of baseball operations, the general manager, and the assistant general manager. 

Chris Young leads the front office as POBO. Yesterday, he named Ross Fenstermaker as the new Rangers general manager, elevating from his previous position as assistant general manager.

To fill that role, Young hired Cole Figueroa away from Tampa Bay.

This newly retooled front office will be tasked with figuring out how to get the Rangers back into playoff contention after falling flat on their faces in 2024.

Building a perennial contender is something the Rangers franchise has never been able to do. They will have pockets of winning but that’s always been followed by years of darkness, most recently the six long, dark years that proceeded the firing of Jon Daniels. 

In the history of this franchise, when the team was good, it was never good for long stretches. 

The first era of success was 1996 through 1999. That was followed by eight years of finishing last in the division five times and next to last three times. 

Their most successful era, from 2010 to 2016, had a last-place finish stuck in the middle, and was followed by the aforementioned six years of aimlessness.

This is a franchise that has mostly been irrelevant and has had only two brief stretches of being good.

Winning the World Series in 2023 brought with it hope of a sustained winning tradition. That didn’t happen.

Maybe now it will. Maybe now the Rangers have the front office in place that can create a culture where winning is expected and not a fluke.

Here’s to the next generation, to Young, and to Fenstermaker, and to Figueroa.