PrevSearchNext Windows of opportunity.

It’s a relatively big day today, as Texas must decide by the end of the afternoon whether to tender Yovani Gallardo a one-year qualifying offer of $15.8 million, and whether to bid blindly on the right to negotiate with Korean first baseman Byung-ho Park, who was posted by his Nexen Heroes team on Monday.

If the Rangers tender the offer to Gallardo, he’ll have until a week from today to accept it or turn it down. If he declines the offer, he can still negotiate with Texas — but if he signs somewhere else, the Rangers recoup a supplemental first-round pick as compensation. (If he accepts the deal, he evidently can’t be traded before the 2016 season without his consent.)

If the Rangers bid on Park’s negotiation rights and theirs is the highest bid submitted, they would have 30 days (starting Monday) to reach a deal with Park himself — assuming Nexen decides to accept the posting bid.

You might have read stories this week suggesting Gallardo could be the first player in the four-year history of the qualifying offer process to accept the QO, which would make the decision to tender a risky one for the Rangers, who might not want to devote nearly $16 million to that rotation spot.

But consider this.

It makes sense for a player’s agent (in Gallardo’s case, Bobby Witt) to advance the thought that his client could accept the qualifying offer, even if he wouldn’t. A player like Gallardo is better off with no qualifying offer tied to him when he hits free agency, because a player who has declined a QO costs his signing team its first-round pick the next June (or, in the case of a team drafting in the top 10 slots, its second-rounder). Gallardo isn’t a top-tier option in this winter’s pitching market, and he stands a better chance to generate a bidding war if there’s no draft pick forfeiture to make teams think twice about moving in on him.

Anyway, the speculation — at least on the front end — will be over by the end of the day.

As for Park, a durable right-handed hitter with two straight seasons of 50+ home runs, would he be a better option as a righty bat to plug in at first base than Mike Napoli, at the cost? The good thing about the timing of Nexen’s posting is that Park will have signed with a big league club or not by December 9, the day before the Winter Meetings end. If Texas is the team in a position to negotiate with the 29-year-old, it can likely do so without worrying that Napoli will have been swept off the market in the meantime.

Of course, the Rangers may prefer Napoli to Park in the first place, given what Napoli brings this team in the clubhouse and how much less it would cost to lock him up than the Korean star.

Speaking of the Winter Meetings, which will be held in Nashville from December 7-10, they will be preceded by the GM Meetings, which take place this coming Monday through Thursday in Boca Raton. And Jon Daniels and Jeff Banister now have a complete big league coaching staff going into that important week, when lots of groundwork for impact winter decisions is laid. The Rangers were better off not having the distraction of pending coaching decisions as the inner circle prepared for any number of meaningful conversations to be had in Florida next week.

I got a small handful of emails from Rangers fans yesterday questioning the additions of Doug Brocail (pitching coach), Anthony Iapoce (hitting coach), Brad Holman (bullpen coach), and Justin Mashore (assistant hitting coach) to Banister’s staff for the sole reason that they’d never heard of most of them, which is a terrible position statement. (If I’d wasted time replying to those few folks, I would have suggested they go back and find the emails they sent a year ago when the Rangers hired Banister, the Pirates lifer.)

So what’s the M.O. here? What’s the statement Daniels and Banister are making?

There is no M.O., as far as I can tell. And that’s a good thing.

Sometimes this front office brings in an established veteran coach, like Mike Maddux or Dave Magadan or Clint Hurdle, because that’s what fits.

Sometimes it promotes from within (Andy Hawkins, Scott Coolbaugh, Steve Buechele, Hector Ortiz, Jayce Tingler).

Sometimes it’s external, but not a household name (Tim Bogar, Tony Beasley).

Sometimes, like with Gary Pettis years ago, and Bengie Molina last year, and Brocail now, it’s a familiar name from a different context.

When it came to hiring a manager, a man to lead a roster and coordinate a staff and set a tone, two different times Daniels went out and hired a man who’d spent a virtual baseball lifetime in an organization that hadn’t given him the shot that the Rangers were prepared to.

Either Don Wakamatsu or Trey Hillman would have been a more popular choice than Ron Washington.

Bogar would have been the easier and safer and expected choice a year ago, over Banister.

The M.O. here is to take advantage of opportunity, and to make the best hire possible under the set of circumstances in place at the moment that opportunity arises.

There is an M.O. here, actually. The M.O. is to get the hire right. That’s it.

No matter where the best candidate falls on the experience spectrum, or the familiarity spectrum, or whether his employer is in another league or down the hall.

I knew a little bit about Brocail’s coaching history and reputation before this week, and hardly anything about Iapoce. Holman and Mashore are two coaches who have been instrumental in getting young players in the Rangers system to the big leagues, or to a level that helped make impact trades possible; they’re two coaches I’ve worried would eventually be lost to greater opportunities elsewhere. Now they get those opportunities right at home.

I took a bunch of notes during Brocail’s and Iapoce’s introduction to the local press yesterday, and among the words that kept getting repeated, and evoked, were energy . . . toughness . . . positivity . . . preparation, communication, connection.

Good.

Daniels talked about how Brocail, as a player, had to come back from major injuries, and had to reinvent himself.

That’s useful.

Iapoce (“Great players don’t need to be told they are great — they want to know how you are going to help them get better”) used the term “offensive coordinator,” which resonated with his new manager and ought to resonate with every one of us.

It’s about more than refining a swing path. We saw in the World Series what a “run-scoring culture” (Iapoce’s phrase) looks like.

Brocail played a big part in Houston’s young pitchers developing into big league contributors. Same with Iapoce and the Cubs’ young hitters. There’s a track record that we should be familiar with, and excited about, even if it was taking place outside our field of vision and awareness.

Banister said in a phenomenal Wednesday radio interview, on what he wants in a coach joining his staff: “A great communicator. How can he make me better? Look me in the eye and get me excited.”

Maddux was fantastic in Texas, just as he was in Milwaukee and just as he will be in Washington. Magadan is a decorated hitting instructor, and the Rangers offense was a good one last year, featuring several players who, for at least a big chunk of the season, made big adjustments and took big steps forward.

But I’m excited about Banister and Brocail and Iapoce coordinating this club’s attack going forward.

And I’m thrilled that Holman and Mashore aren’t going anywhere. Well, anywhere else.

Their promotions open up a hitting coach position and pitching coach position in Round Rock, and whether that leads to a reassignment for a guy like AA pitching coach Jeff Andrews or pitching coordinator Danny Clark or AA hitting coach Jason Hart, there’s now a vacancy somewhere in the pitching instruction chain and somewhere in the hitting instruction chain, and that’s two more opportunities to make a new hire, and get it right.

I have no idea what front office role the Rangers might have in mind for ousted Marlins GM and manager Dan Jennings (ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick reports club interest), but I’m intrigued.

How can you make me better?

A hitter to his hitting coach.

A manager to his staff.

A GM evaluating the risk of a qualifying offer, or a posting bid, or hiring a free agent baseball operations exec.

Today’s a big day, on a couple fronts.

Next week is a really big week, even if the manifestation of the work done in Boca Raton won’t be known for another month, or more.

The effort to bring the 2016 picture into focus is hours and days and weeks from gaining momentum, but some pretty big steps have already been taken this week, and there was nothing homogenous about them, unless you consider the uniformity of confronting each opportunity as just that, an opportunity to refine (if not redefine) things with an eye toward winning one more October series than the franchise won in 2015, and then a couple more on top of that.