The real struggle here is philosophical. Saber metrics vs eyeball. They said today that they would work more together this off season to see things in the same light. So, what does that mean? Will Wash embrace saber metrics? Will JD dump higher math and go with the manager's gut feeling, basing organization profits and winning on the manager's experience and guess? Ah no!

So, here is the poll question. Will Wash embrace saber metrics next season or continue with his "eyeball" test?

Wash gets on board with saber metrics? Yea or Nay?

I'm probably more knowledgeable regarding statics and probability than most people (seeing as how it's my entire college degree and all) and I still prefer the eyeball test in the vast majority of situations. I use sabermetrics to confirm or deny observations I make and rarely the other way around.

The Rangers failed the eyeball test through all of July, June and September. The players performing poorly failed the eyeball test throughout the year so I disagree with your notion that Wash was doing justice to that method. What should have happened is Wash should have asked "why are my players tired" and "why is Michael Young sucking"? And then some statistician would look at the numbers and conclude that they were tired and Michael Young was cheating on fastballs (and not particularly well).

I don't think Wash believing in WAR will change.....anything

I want a new manager because Washington misplays players based on hunches. This costs the team more WAR than can be made up. Wash misplayed the following:

Hamilton in centerfield. He is better in a corner. loss of 2 WAR.
Young at DH or anywhere except against LHP. loss of 3 WAR
Cruz in the outfield where his defense is bad. should be DH. loss of 2 WAR
Gentry by using him only one third of the time. loss of 3 WAR
Ogando by starting Feldman/Oswalt instead of Ogando in the stretch run. loss of 1 WAR

He cost the Rangers the playoffs more than any other factor, loss of $25 to $50 million.
He reduced the development of next years rookies.

He acts as though he is smarter than the Sabremetricians.

What is he good at? The players reportedly like him and Mike Maddux stays here. He coddles Michael Young. He defies statistics and uses "Gut".

Washington is a liability. Wouldnt the team have performed better with Clint Hurdle or Francona? Would it have been worse? At a cost of 10 WAR and loss of playoff revenues, Washington is very expensive to keep. 10 WAR is more than Hamilton, Darvish and Cruz combined.

And Wash wasted one year of the best team the Rangers have ever had. Now what?

Goodasgold...I think you could easily add to the list of lost WAR...with his late game decision-making, his over-use of the bunt and his failure to play the rookies while resting the veterans.

This must not stand. Wash needs to have his marching orders explicitly clear. And if he fails once again to carry out his duties...he needs to go. He needs to manage in the modern way...or get out of the way.

How many lost seasons will we endure with him?

Wouldnt the team have performed better with Clint Hurdle or Francona? Would it have been worse?

There's no way of knowing this. Despite all his shortcomings, Ron Washington is loved by his players, the same as Terry Francona was loved by his old Red Sox guys. I fear if the Texas FO made the same reactionary mistake as the Sox did, that they'd succumb to the same type of mutiny that occurred in Boston this last year.

This must not stand. Wash needs to have his marching orders explicitly clear. And if he fails once again to carry out his duties...he needs to go. He needs to manage in the modern way...or get out of the way.

Profar, on a serious note, how many fans really like their manager? Maybe 5 teams? 10? No matter who we replaced Wash with, we'd still find issues with the replacement. The problem with the modern-day Rangers fan base is that it's expected we're going to go to the playoffs every year, and go far. Anything less is unacceptable. Using that as the reference to judge how good our manager is, it's safe to say there would be a pretty heavy turnover.

Wash took the Rangers to back-to-back World Series, and this year we led the division all but on day of the season. I consider the season to be a disappointment, but not at all a failure. And the problems with this team go far deeper than just the manager. From Josh Hamilton to an inconsistent rotation to a shaky bullpen down the stretch. Nothing Wash could do about those things.

It's funny, because I'm not pro-Wash by any means. I've been extremely critical of him as most fans are, but I feel like the other perspective needs to get out there.

The beauty of statistics and SABR is that it provides a way to argue and say you could do it better-after the fact. Anyone can run around behind past performances and point out what someone was doing wrong by using statistics and read columns by sports writers, then get on a forum and profess to be a SABR genius.....after the fact.

95% of the regular angry posters who spit their vitriol into these forums are basically either picking statistics that can be grabbed in 30 seconds or reading an article and then rephrasing it in a forum post as if it were their own idea. We hear and read maybe 15% of what goes on in a clubhouse but everyone has JD and Washington at odds with each other. The Young situation this year was most likely a result of what JD and Greenberg had transpire with Young during the offseason two years ago-that theory is as good as anyone elses'.

Reading regularly here, if you tally up the trade ideas we would trade 15 players for a net return of 5. I fail to see the reasoning that gutting a franchise based on a good year by a player-most players have a down year after a breakout year and revert to their level yet a year later. Also, there is no sabermetric for chemistry. People aren't robots and never will be. You cannot pidgeonhole someone forever-Napoli and Davis come to mind. No, I am not a Wash supporter, but neither am I a hater. Hate and the spite in these forums is embarrassing for me as a Ranger fan and you guys have made us the laughingstock of the league by screaming like a 4 year-old whose just had a toy taken from them.

I challenge the "stats experts" and geniuses on this board yet again.....use your saber wizardry to identify breakout players, guys who are on the cusp of a breakout year, guys with stats that tell you they are a good investment. Not one person has responded to several requests for this. Most just clutch and grab at someone's name whose just had the year of their life or one who even a casual fan knows is good.
Cherry picking superstars is not sustainable. You can't trade away 6 starters plus numerous bench/bullpen/minors prespects at a three-to-one ratio and have anything left, that is called "gutting the system". It doesn't work and never will, and I am not even going to address the idea of removing Washington, Maddox, and Coolbaugh all at once in the same year as some have suggested. Not unless you want to watch the Rangers have 4 or 5 seasons of 60 wins. Which makes me wonder if some of the supposed Ranger fans aren't actually other teams' fans and just fanning the flames. I don't need to name names, just reading the constant hate and juvenile postings in ten minutes' time will tell you who they are....never a good word, allways hate.

To me, its not really an issue of saber vs eyeball, because well, most ppls biggest gripe was that face had too much face time and he looked bad sabermetrically AND eyeball...y...so I dont think that was the issue.

The issue was that wash trusted his heart more than his eyes and mind. He believed in his heart that the guys would back him up when his eyes showed him that they had no intention of getting their collective heads out of their asses. Maybe wash learns from this colossal, and historical, failure. Maybe he doesnt. Thats what his future hinges on to me. Whether or not he makes an adjustment to his philosophy. I dont think he has to do a 180. He can let them go 90% of the time. I just think he has to recognize when the team cant pull their heads out of their own asses and pull them out for them (and preferably BEFORE the last game of the regular season).

Ron Washington is loved by his players...
'm not necessarily disagreeing or anything, but where is the proof of this? That is a common declarative that I've heard or have read often but I've read or heard anything tangible that actually backs it up. Personally, I get the feeling that some players actually do not respond very well to his managing style but I'll admit that this only a very distant, "eye-ball" perception that I seem to be alone in having.

Dark Reins, that's the no.1 defense of Washington, and it's nonsense. They say that the team plays really hard for him, except that there was no appearance of that this season whatsoever.

I like Wash's personality. ...but he's best suited to be a bench coach. His talents would serve well as the 'good-guy' on the management side who buddies up with the players. He's an awful field general though. This year he drove a ferrari off the road. The two previous years they succeeded, largely in spite of him.

As for his style, he's the epitome of the old school baseball guy. That is the exact opposite of the approach that JD takes to building the team. The result is misallocation of the tools JD puts at his disposal. I absolutely cannot understand letting this persist.

Wash just doesn't play the probabilities. For example, he took Yu Darvish out of the wildcard game and replaced him with Holland. His rationale was that he wanted the lefty-lefty matchup. Yet he had Uehara who is way better against lefties in the pen.

So in the most important game and situation of the year, Wash goes with Holland instead of Uehara. And anyone with an Internet connection can verify that that was a bad decision.

It would help if Wash were open to statistical analysis.

Eh, that wasnt really a terrible decision to me until you take into account the fact that he failed to shutdown an inning the game right before it. He was given a shot at that role and failed and this was the 7th inning with 2 outs. Its not like multiple innings were needed. I would have brought in koji or robbie or kirkman (in a role they are more familiar with than holland). But, there were other calls to me that were more questionable. Like playing MY in the field when the playoffs are on the line.

I'm not arguing that was the worst decision Wash has ever made. But often times a decision is debatable. In this instance, I don't think that the decision is debatable. If the goal was to set up a lefty-lefty matchup, Holland was not the best guy available for that purpose. When you look at Holland's #s against lefties and compare them to Uehara's, it's not even close.

This is a very obvious instance in which reliance on statistics would've led to a different and better decision.

Ace has this exactly right. The ideal situation would be using the combination of the eye test and Saber metrics to prove or disprove an assumption.

I think that Wash and Nolan believe strongly in the eye test and JD and the rest of the FO believe strongly in the numbers. If Wash feels like he has Nolan on his side, then it would explain why he so stubborn. The truth is that Wash and Nolan both will have to make some concessions and JD will have to work harder to prove his point with the numbers. Eventually they should be able to get on the same page.

Playing devil's advocate with the above-mentioned scenario -

I think some are overlooking the fact that the Rangers have a very good pitching coach, one who is very likely involved in the pitching change decisions made during a game. Therefore, isn't it reasonable to believe that Maddux also felt going to Holland was the right move? And if you agree with that statement, then why bash on Wash so much about it? Shouldn't Maddux be given some of the blame, or do you truly believe that Maddux wanted to use Koji, but Wash said no? My opinion would be that it was discussed between Wash and Maddux, and probably also Jackie Moore, and agreed upon that Holland was the best choice.

Alan, this is one of the concerns that I have when I hear people mention Maddux as a replacement for Wash. A lot of the questionable moves that Wash has made over the years involve pitching changes. If Maddux didn't object vociferously (and presumably he didn't), then what reason do we have to believe that he would've made a different call.

Maddux seems to get the absolute maximum out of his pitchers. So he must be an excellent pitching COACH. But the manager has coaches working for him. The manager needs to be more of an analyst than a coach. And analysis involves heavy reliance on data, advanced baseball statistics, and computers. I'm not sure that Maddux is more likely to use any of that stuff than Wash. If so, the argument in favor of Maddux would simply believe that you think his "gut" is better than Wash's "gut."

This dichotomy b/w statistics and the eyeball test is a false one to some extent. Statistics are sometimes used in flawed ways by people who don't understand them. But that doesn't mean the statistics are flawed. They need to be kept in context. Most statistics just summarize the past (wRC+). Some attempt to predict the future using past data (SIERA). There may be reasons to believe that past performance isn't indicative of future performance (e.g., the player has a limited statistical history, he's young and getting better, or he has changed his mechanics in some major way). In that case, a manager should take that into account in making predictions about future performance. But often times a player has an established history and there's no reason to believe that his future performance will deviate greatly from his past performance. In that case, "gut feelings" are irrelevant.

If Wash's "gut" told him that Holland is better than Uehara against lefties, then Wash's gut was wrong. Both those players have an established history against lefties, and Uehara is clearly better. It could be that Holland will make some breakthrough in the future and become better than Uehara, but there's no reason to believe that breakthrough would occur during the Baltimore game. Using Holland in that instance was just a bad move.