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Washington Nationals Rumors: Mike Maddux as Dusty Baker's pitching coach?

MLB.com's BIll Ladson is reporting this afternoon that now-former Texas Rangers' pitching coach could become the first member of new Washington Nationals' manager Dusty Baker's coaching staff.

By Patrick Reddington
Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement of Dusty Baker's hiring as the Washington Nationals' sixth full-time manager, Bob Nightengale, national baseball reporter for USA TODAY Sports, wrote on Twitter that Baker's phone was ringing off the hook with offers from coaches who wanted to join the 20-year veteran in the nation's capital:

This afternoon, MLB.com's Bill Ladson is reporting that the first name to come up as the Nationals restaff their dugout is that of former Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers' pitching coach Mike Maddux, the 54-year-old brother of Cy Young award-winning starter Greg Maddux:

Maddux, 54, served as the Rangers' pitching coach from 2011-2015, but parted ways with Texas within the last week.

Rangers' GM Jon Daniels explained the decision to part ways with Maddux in a recent radio interview which was transcribed by The Dallas Morning News:

"We had our end-of-season meeting, I think it was the same day (Jeff Banister) had our end-of-season presser.

"Traditionally we make all of our staff decisions before that meeting; you don't want anybody that's not going to be back in that meeting for obvious reasons, you talk about next year and planning and whatnot. Mike was part of that meeting. Full expected him to be back, kind of had to work through the contract. As we got a couple days into it, Mike had wanted to look around a little bit. It had gotten to a point where we thought we may not have a pitching coach, we may need to get out there and look. So we started the interview process. I guess the best way to put it is by the time Mike had gone through his process and wanted to come back and reengage, we'd gotten into the interview process. We hadn't really formally done a review of the staff as the season ended the way it did. We were planning to bring everybody back. The interview process allowed us to do that review and we decided that we really liked some of the candidates that we were talking to and at that point informed Mike that we were going with one of them."

Before he became a coach, Maddux pitched in the majors for 15 seasons with the Phillies, Dodgers, Padres, Mets, Pirates, Red Sox, Mariners, Expos, and Astros, compiling a 39-37 record and a 4.05 ERA in 861 ⅔ innings.

More information when it's available, since, as we all learned this last week, nothing is official until it is actually announced by the team...

UPDATE: USA TODAY's Bob Nightengale (at 4:30-ish, is confirming that Maddux is coming to D.C.):

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