Rangers hire Travis Jankowski as first base coach

The Texas Rangers announced a few coaching staff hirings Wednesday afternoon. Most notably, they’ve named Travis Jankowski their first base coach. That suggests the 34-year-old is retiring after a playing career that spanned parts of 11 big league campaigns.

Jankowski carved out a solid career as a speed and defense depth outfielder. He played in more than 700 MLB contests and tallied nearly 1800 trips to the plate. The lefty batter hit .236/.318/.305 with 366 knocks and 104 stolen bases. Jankowski had very little power and only connected on 11 home runs, but he collected 54 doubles and 10 triples. He drove in 98 runs and scored 220 times.

A former supplemental first-round pick of the San Diego Padres, Jankowski spent the first five seasons of his career in San Diego. He’d go on to play for eight teams overall, including the 2023-24 campaigns in Arlington. Jankowski’s best season came in 2023. He had a personal-best .263 average while reaching base at a strong .357 clip for the World Series team. Jankowski picked up another three hits and a pair of RBI in nine postseason at-bats. His numbers tailed off the following season, and he apparently concluded his playing career with 25 games split between the Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay Rays and New York Mets this year.

Jankowski is a known commodity to the Texas front office. While his time as a player in Texas came under Bruce Bochy, he also has ties to new manager Skip Schumaker. The Rangers skipper was the first base coach in San Diego for Jankowski’s final two seasons as a Padre in 2018-19. Jankowski now takes on that role in Arlington, where he’ll presumably also be involved in outfield and base stealing instruction.

Texas also confirmed the previously reported hiring of Alex Cintrón as assistant hitting coach. They’ve added Rod Barajas as a quality control coach, a move that was first announced last week by Rocket City Trash Pandas broadcaster Chris Harris. Barajas coached for that affiliate, the Los Angeles Angels’ Double-A team, in 2025. He has previously spent time on the Padres and Miami Marlins big league staffs with Schumaker.

The Rangers also hired Colby Suggs as bullpen coach. (Dan Hayes of The Athletic had reported last week that the 34-year-old Suggs was likely to take a job in Texas.) He’d held the same role with the Minnesota Twins since the middle of the 2022 season.

Suggs takes over the bullpen coach role from Jordan Tiegs, who gets a promotion to pitching coach. The 38-year-old was a longtime minor league pitching instructor in the Texas system before getting his first MLB coaching opportunity this past season. The Rangers lost veteran pitching coach Mike Maddux to the Angels, and they’re staying internal with the much younger Tiegs to fill that position.

There are a more few role changes among the holdovers from Bochy’s final coaching staff. Justin Viele is now the lead hitting coach after splitting that job with Bret Boone this year. Texas had already announced that Corey Ragsdale would move from first base to third base coach. Brett Hayes moves from quality control coach to catching coach. Bench coach Luis Urueta and assistant pitching coach Dave Bush are back in the same roles. Texas will make one additional hire in a yet to be determined role to round out the staff.