The immediate changes I’d make to the Rangers roster.

Or, at least, would have.

I promise it was not some sort of baseball malaise that delayed this story. A couple things got in the way.

As I’d hinted at a little over a week ago and then expounded on a bit on Sunday, I was ready to adjust things around here. Fewer gamers, more widening of the lens to write about a team that it seemed might be better off not continuing to run out the same group.

But I needed to wrap up the six-part Top 72 Prospects series first, and I’m in what I suspect will end up being my busiest two months of the year as, on top of my day job lawyering, the Sports Law course I’ve been building out over the last nine months for the SMU Master of Legal Studies program finally reached the classroom two and a half weeks ago. The class lasts through July 8, and while I’m still doing the other stuff I do, including writing about baseball, the number of hours in the week for me to do that has been whittled down just a little bit, especially at the front end of the class, which I’m now past.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying I’m just now getting to the first of those 20,000-foot stories I’ve been wanting to tackle: examining the Rangers’ active roster and sharing some ideas on how I might adjust it if I were ill-advisedly entrusted with the task.

Maybe it’s a good thing this one got pushed off a bit after all. Because much has changed.

Let me start with what the roster looked like the day I decided, about a week and a half ago, that I was ready to repopulate it.