The Rangers finalized their 2025 coaching staff on Tuesday, and it features four coaches who will be in their first full season under manager Bruce Bochy in Texas.
That quartet includes bench coach Luis Urueta, assistant pitching coach Dave Bush, hitting coach Justin Viele and bullpen coach Jordan Tiegs.
Urueta spent the past two seasons as the Marlins’ bench coach, serving alongside former manager Skip Schumaker, who was hired earlier this month as a senior adviser to president of baseball operations Chris Young. Urueta was also the D-backs’ bench coach from 2020-21.
With the departure of former associate manager Will Venable, who was named White Sox manager last month, the Rangers lost more than just Bochy’s right-hand man in the dugout. Over the past two years, Venable took on several important duties in running day-to-day operations within the club’s coaching staff. To replace that loss, the Rangers will look to Urueta -- along with quality control coach Brett Hayes and advance scouting coordinator Bobby Bandelow -- to take on those tasks.
“We’re thrilled for Will and the opportunity he has with Chicago to go on and manage,” Young said during a Zoom call with media Tuesday. “With that said, Will had a lot of responsibility. … A number of people are going to take on some of the responsibilities that Will had.”
Bush was hired in January to be the Rangers’ director of pitching strategy. He was the club’s interim pitching coach for a limited number of games last season while pitching coach Mike Maddux was away from the club. This will be his first season as an assistant pitching coach after spending 2020-23 as the Red Sox’s pitching coach.
Next season will be Tiegs’ first on the Major League staff, but it will be his sixth season with the organization. He joined the Rangers’ player development department in 2019 and was their pitching coordinator for the past three seasons.
In adding Bush and Tiegs, the Rangers are looking to support Maddux by building a pitching department at the Major League level that can help their pitching staff take a step forward next season. Bush will remain in the dugout alongside Maddux during games, while Tiegs will join Texas’ relievers in the bullpen.
“Modern day coaching is more than a one-person job,” Young said. “There’s so many things that go into it and one person can’t do it all by himself. While Mike does a tremendous job and we’re very excited about what Mike has done, we want to support him in some ways to help push our guys forward. Especially as we look at our bullpen this year, we’re going to need to take a step forward with a lot of our younger players.
“We’re excited about the relationships Tiegs has and the contributions Dave Bush has made. We think these three together overseeing pitching with our big league team is going to be really strong and push us forward as a group.”
The Rangers hired Viele earlier this month. He had been the Giants’ co-hitting coach from 2020-24, during which time he worked with current Rangers offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker. Bochy is also familiar with Viele as he was an advisor in San Francisco’s front office during his brief retirement from 2020-22.
There are seven returnees on Bochy's staff for 2025: Ecker, Maddux, first-base coach Corey Ragsdale, third-base coach Tony Beasley, catching coach Bobby Wilson, assistant hitting coach Seth Conner and Hayes.
The only members of last season’s staff who did not return are Venable and hitting coach Tim Hyers, who assumed the same role with the Braves in October.