Texas Rangers GM Jon Daniels on his mistakes, those pain in the Astros and Nolan Ryan
Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels admits the team has been guilty of promoting players too soon, and readily said there is some criticism he has received over the years that has bothered him.
On Tuesday at Surprise Stadium, after signing an autograph and posing for pictures with fans, JD took a seat in right field and answered a load of questions about his job, and his team.
Why do you think you remain such a polarizing figure? A lot of Rangers’ fans think you’re great, and to another chunk you should’ve been fired yesterday?
Some of that is just sports. You’re a sports fan and you typically have a strong opinion, and you’ll follow that one way or the other. That is a part of it.
We have not been to the playoffs for three straight years, so that contributes to it. The stuff from 2010, ‘11 and ‘12, the stuff with [former Rangers infielder] Michael Young.
There is perception that issues with [former team president] Nolan Ryan. I think that is lot more perception than reality. That all plays into it.
If you all close out and win Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, are you evaluated differently?
One hundred percent. It changed lives. Michael Young and I talk about it from time to time. I don’t think about it regularly. It doesn’t keep me up at night any more. There was a time it did.
You signed an extension a while back, how much longer is that deal?
I’d rather not say. I prefer to be private about it.
You gave second baseman Rougned Odor a six-year extension and he’s been up and down since. As a result you have received a lot of criticism for that deal, from me and others. Is that criticism valid?
When you sign a young player to those deals you are expecting this steady climb to their prime. Michael Young did that to an extreme. With Odor, the challenging part is he’s been inconsistent. Within seasons he’s been inconsistent, and year to year.
He was a Gold Glove finalist in 2018, last year the defensive metrics didn’t like him. The challenge for us is that it’s in there. We need him to put it together over the course of a season.
Is his contract a contributing factor why he’s the starting second baseman?
It gives him more rope, yeah. It is a factor, but not the only factor. To his credit he’s been willing to acknowledge things he needs to work on. Eventually it’s about production.
Do you think this club has promoted some prospects too quickly?
Yeah. There are a couple of cases where I look back and wonder if we had been more patient. [Pitcher] Martin Perez comes out the most. More so than Odor. Nomar Mazara a little bit.
Was Joey Gallo one?
Good question. I think some of the struggles he went through helped him a little bit. When you are that much more physically advanced than your competition you need some more competition.
You went through a period when you were aggressive adding high-dollar players. Other than trading for Corey Kluber, for several years you have not done those deals and the team’s payroll has been around the middle of MLB. Is that a Jon Daniels’ decision or a Ray Davis-Bob Simpson ownership group decision?
Combination. For the most part ownership has been good about giving us resources and allowing us to make the decision on what to do with them. From a big picture plan ... is this the year we go big, or evaluate where we are? They are involved in that side of it, from where we are in the system to moving into the park.
It’s 2020, we’re moving into the new park, and we’re creating revenue. So can we add payroll here and there?
If you could line it all up perfectly you’d have it where your farm system is peaking right when you move into the new park and you can add free agents. We realized two years ago that wasn’t going to be, and we were not going to force it.
You see teams when it’s not lined up, they go out and sign free agents and it becomes more like a marketing campaign than a baseball strategy. We were determined not to do that.
There were some free agents we went after, but we were not going to go down the line to get the next best guy. We were not going to do anything for the sake of appearance.
Looking at the average timeline of teams that go from winning and rebuild it’s about four years to “flip.” You are in the fourth year, is that reasonable?
Yeah, but the goal is to avoid it. We made the conscious decision to avoid tanking. We just got this public commitment to the stadium and we didn’t think that sent the right message.
You had of run of first-round picks coming from high school which haven’t panned out. Last year you took a college player. Was there a deliberate effort to get away from selecting high school players so high?
It wasn’t a decision where it was college versus high school. We definitely re-evaluated how we put our draft board together. The result is a little more risk-averse. If we didn’t take [Texas Tech third baseman Josh Jung] the guy we were going to take was a high school player. We factored risk in more than we had in the past.
The club’s struggles to develop its own top-end pitching has been a problem of late, in part, because of injuries to your prospects. Were the Rangers doing anything fundamentally wrong that prevented you all from developing your own pitching?
We have spent a ton of time and resources on it. We did our own work in-house, and brought people from the outside to look at it. Yes, we have altered how we do it. We kept some parts of our program and added new parts.
Was the decision to trade for Corey Kluber influenced at all by the fact the team is moving into a new stadium?
The strategy was to get better. If we were in the old stadium, I would still want to make this move.
Did the Rangers know of anything the Houston Astros were doing as far as electronic sign stealing?
Specifically, no. We’d have chatter. Talk to the staff and there would be suspicion of something. Guys said they would hear whistling but nothing we ever heard for sure. We never made a formal complaint. There were discussions from people with MLB and we’d talk about it, but that’s it.
Do you like the new three-batter rule for pitchers?
I do. I don’t think it’s going to have a huge effect on the game. I like it conceptually.
Your front office has a lot of titles. Do you think the Rangers need a traditional team president that handles more of the marketing, business and promotional side?
What do you think I do that is more than club presidents?
Public appearances spring to mind. Where do you have time?
It’s a challenge. From a time standpoint we have built out the baseball side of our organization. There are some occasions because we don’t have that traditional club president role that I am asked to do because there isn’t that natural position there to do it. But it’s not often in my mind.
The only example was Hurricane Harvey [in 2017] in Houston when we were trying to switch the series with the Astros. I took daggers on it.
You were crushed for it. I killed you for it.
I naively didn’t expect it was going to go that way. That was a Major League Baseball ownership level decision.
Why didn’t you say that when it was going on?
Because I was not going to do that. People were going to do what they want, and they don’t care that much. That one actually bothered me. I’m not going to lie. It bothered me because no one came out and said what actually happened. I bit my lip and moved on.
At the end of last season Nolan Ryan came back for the closing of Globe Life Park. It appeared there was at least a thaw there. He’s available. It seems everyone has moved on. You all need a club president. Any chance he could come back in that capacity or any other with this organization?
I would not know the answer to that. I haven’t been involved.
