The trade deadline is in six weeks.

The work starts now. I've got ideas.

We still have six weeks to go until the trade deadline, and so there is a whole lot of time — and dozens of baseball games — before the front office must answer the very big question that faces all 30 clubs around the league:

Are we making moves to get better now?

Or are we making moves to get better in the future?

Inertia is the least desirable option. You don’t want to be caught in the middle while the competition is revving up on one of those paths or the other.

The answer is certainly not due in the next few days. But it’s late June, and the groundwork must be in motion. Maybe no phone calls yet, but internally, agendas — and certainly where the Rangers sit now, dual agendas — are being set.

We all love calling pitches and third-and-shorts and when-to-pull-the-goalie from our couches, and I trust the teams that motivate us to armchair-QB and armchair-manage and armchair-GM don’t care what we think — but, at least those in the front office, care that we do think. Fan interest, however misguided it might be, beats irrelevance.

So, misguided or not, this is what — if it were me — Chris Young and Ross Fenstermaker are in the process of discussing with AGM’s Josh Boyd and Cole Figueroa and the rest of the inner circle. This is the course I would set for Senior Directors Mike Parnell (Pro Scouting), Ryan Murray (Senior Director, Baseball Research & Development), and Daren Willman (Research & Development and Applications) in particular, along with their staffs.

Right now.