Thinking about the firing of Mark Connor and Dom Chiti.

As the adage goes: "Coaches are hired to be fired."

More often than not, there's no single incident that's responsible, no specific misstep that easily explains the decision to let a coach go.  We all know why Sidney Ponson was kicked off the team.  Cowboys fans can tell you today exactly why Curvin Richards was released in 1992, why John Roper was in 1993, why Mike Vanderjagt and Marcus Coleman were in 2006.  But 99 percent of the time, particularly with coaches, it's the result of inadequate win totals, of underachieving, of a porous pass defense or a stagnant offense or an unacceptably high team ERA.

A lot of you emailed me Friday night wanting an explanation for the dismissal of Mark Connor and Dom Chiti.  All I know is what you know, largely based not on what the writers have written or the talk show hosts have theorized, but on what the central players in the story have said.  You can speculate all you want, but the key to trying to understand what happened is in the reliability of the quotes.

Jon Daniels: "We need to try a different direction with the pitching staff.  A different voice.  A different message.  It's not that anything Mark and Dom said was doing anything wrong with these guys.  In fact, in another situation, another group, another time, I would love to work with these guys again.  Sometimes people and players respond to different voices, different messages."

There's no question that that's true in some cases.  The question here will be if the pitchers respond differently, better, as a result of this change.

It makes sense that the players were evidently (according to reports) not thrilled about the change, given that Connor and Chiti are not only good guys but also two men who have battled through things with them to go from a club on the brink of a more drastic overhaul three weeks into the season to one that sits in second place in the division now, owning the fourth-best record in baseball in the three-plus months since a 7-16 low point going into play on April 25.

The players, some of whom have been here for years, have probably never felt better about where the Rangers are headed.  From that standpoint, it probably surprised them to see the coaching staff reconfigured now. 

But the pitching has been bad.  In the club's miserable April, the staff compiled a 5.68 ERA and allowed the opposition to hit .302.  The numbers were much better in May (3.90, .259) and moderately better in June (5.08, .279) but, despite a winning record in July, the pitching that month (6.63, .311) was the worst of the year.  The staff's 5.27 ERA for the season going into Saturday night was baseball's worst.

And of course, it's not as if the pitching had been otherwise effective through Connor's tenure.  He's certainly not to blame for the arms with which he was entrusted in his time here, but the bottom line - fair or not - is that the results have been inadequate. 

As for the present, there's no way to imagine this team continuing to compete for the Wild Card unless the pitching were to improve significantly.  There apparently wasn't a reasonable trade opportunity last week, and improving one spot on the staff wasn't going to be enough anyway.  The following comment sort of sums that up:

Nolan Ryan: "We felt we weren't seeing the progress we wanted to see.  We're serious about the Wild Card race, and in fairness to our offense, we needed to try to do something to improve our pitching.  We owe them that."

And there's another factor to consider.

This was the pitching staff on April 25, the low point of the season, when no changes were made to the coaching staff, as close as the organization might have been to doing so:

Joaquin Benoit, Scott Feldman, Frankie Francisco, Kazuo Fukumori, Franklyn German, Eddie Guardado, Jason Jennings, Kevin Millwood, Vicente Padilla, Josh Rupe, C.J. Wilson, Jamey Wright

This is the pitching staff today:

Scott Feldman, Frankie Francisco, Eddie Guardado, Matt Harrison, Tommy Hunter, Warner Madrigal, Luis Mendoza, Dustin Nippert, Vicente Padilla, Josh Rupe, C.J. Wilson, Jamey Wright

So Harrison, Hunter, Madrigal, Mendoza, and Nippert are here, in place of Benoit, Fukumori, German, Jennings, and Millwood.  Nearly half the staff is different, and all five of the replacements have spent significant time in Oklahoma this season, under the tutelage of new Rangers pitching coach Andy Hawkins.  In fact, the three of those five who have made their major league debuts this season - all three of whom are key prospects, not coffee-cuppers - have logged more RedHawks innings than Rangers innings in 2008.

Harrison, Hunter, Madrigal, Mendoza, and Nippert have a collective 3.90 ERA in Oklahoma (2.2 walks per nine innings, 6.0 strikeouts per nine innings), compared with a 7.75 ERA in Texas (4.6 walks per nine innings, 4.9 strikeouts per nine innings).  And that doesn't count the currently disabled Eric Hurley, whose splits - 3.98 ERA, 2.3 BB/9, 6.1 K/9 in AAA, and 7.96 ERA, 5.4 BB/9, 6.9 K/9 in Texas - are right in line with those composites.

Yes, a pitcher should fare better in AAA than in the big leagues, but that's a meaningful disparity, and maybe the Rangers think Hawkins - who has experience with these young pitchers at the top of their games - can help unlock some things in them that, for whatever reason, haven't emerged under Connor's tutelage.

There's no question that Feldman, Francisco, and Rupe have had terrific resurgences this season, and that Padilla and Wright have straightened things out for the most part, and Connor and Chiti have to be credited for that.  But going forward, the ability of the Rangers' young pitchers to contribute here the way that some who have departed recently (Edinson Volquez, John Danks, Armando Galarraga) have contributed elsewhere is going to be massively important. 

Ron Washington: "People respond to different people differently.  We hope that this will be that situation.  Being aggressive, having a presence out there and attacking the zone and keeping the ball in play.  That's part of the message that we'll continue to send and we'll see how it goes."

More on the message - from a manager who called the decision the toughest thing he's had to go through in his life in baseball - plus an emphasis on mound presence, attacking the strike zone, aggressiveness.  Something else Washington said on the radio pregame show Saturday night, paraphrasing: "I love [Connor] and Chiti but our pitchers weren't responding.  Maybe Hawk and Colborn can come in and preach the same things but in a different way."

Dick Motta, John MacLeod, Avery Johnson.  Barry Switzer.

Buck Showalter.

Should tolerance be given to athletes making millions of dollars to respond differently to the same message, simply preached in a different way?

Happens all the time.

Connor: "I know how it works.  Our pitching hasn't been very good.  I'm the guy responsible for it.  I accept the responsibility.  Hopefully they can get some things straightened out."

Call it class.  Call it pragmatism.  Call it whatever you want.  Connor, who had no preexisting ties with Daniels or Ryan or Washington, understands the game's realities and offered no excuses or scorched-earth bitterness.  Daniels said Friday night that he'd like to have Connor back in the system in some capacity once he spends some time in Tennessee recharging.  This was no personality clash.

Hawkins: "I'm replacing a fine man.  I have a lot of respect for him.  But we've got to go on.  This is not the last time a lot of these guys will see changes made in the middle of the season.  But whether you agree or disagree, we've got a ballgame tonight, and we've got to finish the season.  We're 4 1/2 games out of the Wild Card and in the middle of a pennant race.  It's exciting."

Connor was Hawkins's pitching coach with the Yankees in 1990 and 1991.  There's a mutual respect there.  Connor will be the first to tell you that he hopes Hawkins can get more out of this staff.  And Hawkins will be the first to recognize, no matter what he accomplishes here, that Connor helped turn a lot of these guys from prospects or journeymen into big league pitchers.

Newberg Report, Dec. 1, 2004: "Wire reports indicate that Andy Hawkins has been named pitching coach of the High A High Desert Mavericks, a Kansas City affiliate (owned by the Brett Sports Group, which also owns the Rangers' short-season A club in Spokane).  Over the years that I've been writing this newsletter, there have been no more than two or three minor league coaches that I've encountered to be as consistently praised by Ranger prospects as Hawkins, who served as pitching coach for Low A Savannah in 2001 and 2002, Low A Clinton in 2003, and High A Stockton in 2004."

There are some pitching instructor stars in this system, starting with Hawkins and minor league pitching coordinator Rick Adair.  Was it right to let Connor go?  I don't know the answer to that question.  But he has been, and I'm excited that Hawkins is the man pegged to replace him.  He isn't the type who will come in here and try to overhaul things mechanically or try to implement some convoluted new mental or metaphysical approach.  Hawkins preaches mound presence, pounding the zone, pitching with tempo.  He wants his guys to compete.

None of those things are revolutionary.  It's the same, simple message, but maybe it will be preached differently, and maybe the response will be more inspired, more productive.  That's the idea, at least.  Part of the equation will be Hawkins earning the trust of his pitchers, and if the handful of conversations I've had over the years with various pitchers in the Rangers system about Hawkins are any indication, that's not going to be a problem.

As for Colborn (who like Hawkins has a big league no-hitter to his credit, his coming against the Rangers in 1977 - the second ever in Royals Stadium, following Ryan's first career no-hitter in 1973), he moves in the bullpen coach position from a scouting role, having served since November as the Rangers' Director of Pacific Rim Operations.  He's been a pitching coach for the Dodgers (five seasons) and Pirates (two seasons) - all for manager Jim Tracy - as well as the Orix Blue Wave of the Japanese Pacific League (four years). 

Hawkins (age 48) and Colborn (age 62) will have the rest of the season to prove whether they should return in 2009, but that's not much different from most big league coaches.  Daniels has said they should not be considered "interim" coaches.

Keith Comstock, who served as the Rangers' Arizona League pitching coach in 2007 and as the organization's rehab pitching coordinator in Surprise this season, replaces Hawkins as the Oklahoma pitching coach.

For what it's worth, while Colborn was a Daniels hire and so was Hawkins in his return to the Rangers organization in 2006, Doug Melvin was responsible for originally bringing Hawkins to the system before the 2001 season.  Connor was brought here by Buck Showalter (with whom he's had a long history), and Chiti was hired by John Hart (with whom he goes way back) and entrusted with various high-level scouting and player development positions from 2002 through 2005 before joining the coaching staff.

Setting aside the work Hawkins (a Waco native who now lives in Bruceville) has done with various Rangers pitchers in spring training and fall instructional league, he coached C.J. Wilson at Low A Savannah in 2001, A.J. Murray at Savannah in 2002, Josh Rupe and Kameron Loe at Clinton in 2003, Rupe and Wes Littleton with High A Stockton in 2004, and any number of Rangers pitcher at Oklahoma the last three seasons.

Whatever the reaction was from the players, one of the team's leaders made it clear that they'll be pulling the oar in the same direction as Hawkins and Colborn.

Kevin Millwood: "These two guys are going to get the same level of respect Dom and [Mark] got from everybody here.  We're definitely going to listen to them and try to learn from them.  I know Hawk from spring training and being around here and having talked to him.  He was a major league pitcher, so it's good from that perspective.  I know he's a good guy."

Good to hear, especially from a veteran whose decision to sign here long-term came one month after Connor was elevated to pitching coach. 

Another comment from Connor: "It's a tough league to pitch in and these young kids have growing pains.  The experience will pay off, it's just going to take some time.  I had a good time there.  It's a good place, good people, great area."

Washington, on tonight's radio pregame show, made his own reference to the subject of growing pains, telling Eric Nadel that he expected some degree of growing pains with the transition of Connor and Chiti to Hawkins and Colborn. 

That's fine.  Growing pains are acceptable, as long as there's growing.

You can read more from Jamey Newberg at www.NewbergReport.com.