i have a hard time swallowing the fact that an inferior giants team may win their second world series in 3 years while ron washington blew last year with some of the worst decisions in playoff history and sabotaged this year's team.

Yet he will be the manager next season too. I have no words.

"sabotaged"

Lawl.

I think you are correct in calling this out Eric. Sabotaged would suggest a strategic intent to destroy and I have seen no capacity for strategy from Ron Washington.

Oh good God....another I hate Ron Washington thread...

he said he'd go down on the sinking ship with michael young so he did indeed sabotage the team

sabotage (verb) - deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct something

You're questioning the integrity of Ron Washington when you erroneously spew crap like "sabotage" in regards to his handling of the team. He messed up, yes. He made mistakes that he's admitted to. It wasn't intentional. He's too fortunate to be in the position he's in to knowingly do anything to mess it up.

He didn't make mistakes. He made poor choices in spite of JD trying to give him talented young players which desperately needed. He stuck with one of the worst players in all of baseball and admitted they could've been winning a couple more games without him but went with the lazy argument that they're in first place. Well a couple more wins would've been pretty damn important huh? Wash gotta go. Plain and simple.

To me, this postseason has shown that Ron's undying loyalty is blatantly unjustified. Girardi benched ARod in a decisive postseason game when ARod has skins on the walls that could run laps around MY's. The situations are near identical - a proven veteran making more than he's worth is not producing at the plate or in the field. To be a manager in the big leagues, you have to make some tough choices, hurt some feelings - all in search of a better overall ballclub. Ron has shown he cannot do that. I believe it can be fixed, but to this point, his ability to make the tough decision has been nonexistent.

Lauding Joe Girardi for benching A-Rod? Seriously?

First of all that was an organizational decision by the Yankees, it wasn't Girardi's alone. That is one organization where the manager does not call the shots. Secondly, that was done as much to embarrass the player into demanding a trade as anything else, as the Yanks now don't want to pay for his back 5 years at $113 milliion. The Yanks were dead in that series, especially once Jeter somehow managed to break an ankle fielding a groundball (????). You may think that was some sort of bold move to bench A-Rod until you realize his replacement was 0 for 14 in the postseason. So no, that wasn't about anything other than the Yankee FO trying to free themselves from their obligation.

Also, Young had two hits in their one post season game this year. Just saying. You may not like Wash, and every manager makes moves that can be second guessed, particularly around bullpen use. But the Michael Young thing is so overblown it misses the point of why this team stumbled late.

he didn't admit to the majority of his mistakes Eric

"Young had two hits in their one post season game this year"

Michael Young is the difference between the Rangers playing ONE playoff game vs at least three.

Sabotage connotes an intentional act to destroy. Mistakes are errors in judgement, not intentional acts to undermine the team's success. Admitting to a mistake does not change it's character as a mistake. The question is whether Wash will learn from it and manage differently in 2012. Wash is an old school guy, not a bad guy.

I've been thinking, perhaps Ron Washington was loyal to his veterans simply because it's easier than having to make changes and tough decisions, due to his lack of managerial skills. Could it also be laziness? Whatever the case, he just didn't do his job this season. He was so afraid to make even the slightest change to any part of the team when things weren't going well. If his excuse for making changes to player roles or even the order of the lineup is that he might "lose the clubhouse", then the egos of the Rangers' players are a whole lot more fragile than I originally thought, and they should be ashamed of themselves for having the attitude of doing what is best for individuals rather than the entire team. I sure hope that wasn't the case. Hopefully JD and Nolan teach Wash, and perhaps some of the players, a lesson or two and make sure that there isn't this same lack of accountability and respect next season.

At what point are the players accountable?

The Rangers had the players not imploded down the stretch would have been able to win the West out right. Ron wasn't at bat all those times with runners on 3rd and less than 1 out. Ron didn't drop an easy fly ball in center. Etc.

Ron isn't perfect. He probably did trust his veterans too much and with decent reason as the guys had delivered big the previous two years. Unfortunately too many of them had down years at the same time. I can understand the Ron questions with regards to NL rules and I sympathize with the questionable decision to play Young everyday but...at some point it's on the players.

"Ron isn't perfect"

Understatement of the year. I think it's likely that the Rangers players would have played much better down the stretch if Washington had actually used his bench players once in a while to give them a breather. Elvis Andrus said on a radio talk show that the team was tired, physically and mentally. But I do agree that it isn't all on the manager who did a pretty terrible job this season; pretty much everyone deserves blame. There were a lot of things that could have made a difference in the end. The Rangers finished the season playing under .500 against their AL West rivals, much worse than their record against them in 2011, so perhaps they didn't deserve the title.

Of course some of it is on the players but newsflash: this is sports. It's much easier to replace one coach or a few coaches than an entire roster full of guys on guaranteed contracts, no matter how unfair it may be.

It's a chicken/egg thing - many players faltered because they either played too much or just had down years but Wash also steadfastly refused to make adjustments when the players were not performing. I personally am terrified of what will happen if this Wash/Young codependency continues to sap the life out of this team.

I don't like MY. But that aside, he is not the worst player in Baseball come on man. Is he past his prime, you bet. He won't accept it, and it appears his manager won't either. Should he have been benched ? Probably. I would have definitely used him off the bench or even a DH. Wash is just like every other manager, they make decisions based on what is happening in the game, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. One of the things I like about him is that he believes in his players, an admiral trait. But he needs to become less stubborn and play the hot hand and perhaps move a guy down in the order here and there, and insert a player here for a while. As I mentioned yesterday, I give him one more shot at this and if he can't do it with these players, time to move on and get another manager. Lets not forget that our pitching melted down too, may be the bigger problem here. Hambone is gone and Profar needs to come up. Play Mitch everyday. But we must get an Ace to help out Yu and Harrison. Can Neftali come back and be a set-up man or closer ? We love Joe, but he is getting long in the tooth. One more year Ron, I believe you have learned a a lot this year. Its a great group of guys, lets not freak out because it hurts. Let it hurt and lets man up next year.

"It's much easier to replace one coach or a few coaches than an entire roster full of guys on guaranteed contracts, no matter how unfair it may be."

So true, Jondar.

I'm glad the Rangers are not looking to do the easy thing, but instead are looking to do the right thing. The easy thing to do would be fire Wash. The right thing to do is bring him back in 2013.

For all you Wash haters, please find something new to bitch about. Wash is back in 2013. Deal with it.

@cigman

Actually, he was according to fWAR (-1.4). Right behind Brennan Boesch (-1.3) and Jeff Francoeur (-1.2).

He's not worse than say some reserve players, but in terms of everyday players in the MLB, he was the worst.