Texas Rangers Waste No Time, Fill Out Front Office, Announce New Hitting Coach

Ross Fenstermaker was promoted to Texas Rangers general manager and Cole Figueroa was named assistant GM on Monday.

Ross Fenstermaker, left, was named the Texas Rangers general manager, and Cole Figueroa was named assistant GM on Monday. Previous GM Chris Young was promoted to club president this summer. / Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers did not waste any time.

The club announced Monday morning that Ross Fenstermaker has been promoted to general manager after serving the past three seasons as the assistant GM for player development and international operations. Fenstermaker, 38, is the 10th GM in Rangers history.

Former Major League infielder Cole Figueroa, 37, was named assistant general manager.

The moves were warranted after Chris Young was promoted to club president in September.

The club also announced Justin Viele as the Rangers hitting coach, replacing Tim Hyers who took the same job with the Atlanta Braves.

Fenstermaker has been with Rangers since 2010, when he was a 24-year-old baseball operations intern. From 2011 to 2016, he worked as a professional scout for the club and spent 2017 as an international crosschecker. He was the club's director of pro scouting from 2018-19 and the senior director of pro and international scouting from 2020-21. During the past three seasons under Young, Fenstermaker oversaw player development and the minor league operations departments while also being responsible for the club's international amateur scouting.

Figueroa spent the past eight seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays, including the past three years as the Rays’ director of baseball operations. Previously, he spent time as assistant of baseball development and assistant director of hitting development with the Rays. Figueroa played three seasons in the Majors, including the Rays in 2014, the New York Yankees in 2015 and the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016.

The Tallahassee, Fla., native he was selected by the Padres in the sixth round of the 2008 MLB Draft out of the University of Florida.

Viele spent the past five seasons as the San Francisco Giants hitting coach. Viele worked with current Rangers offensive coordinator and bench coach Donnie Ecker in 2021, when they were both Giants assistants. Viele helped lead the Giants offense to a franchise-record 241 home runs in 2021.

Viele spent three years as a hitting coach in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, including at the Rookie level in 2017, High-A in 2018, and Low-A in 2019. He worked as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Santa Clara University, from 2015-2016.

We've promoted Ross Fenstermaker to General Manager and hired Cole Figueroa as Assistant General Manager. pic.twitter.com/8GNJRkxCuV

— Texas Rangers (@Rangers) November 4, 2024

You can follow Stefan Stevenson on X @StefanVersusTex.

Catch up with Inside the Rangers on Facebook and X.