The Mike Napoli Question

It's the Monday before Winter Meetings Week, and aside from the concrete new development of Evan Longoria's six-year, $100 million contract extension, and the still-developing jaw-dropper that is the Dodgers' new 25-year, $6-7 billion television deal, the big hot stove story of the moment appears to be Mike Napoli's Mystery Tour. We heard over the weekend that Red Sox brass wined and dined Napoli over dinner on Saturday (albeit without a formal contract offer materializing, per reports), and today we're hearing that Napoli will meet with the Rangers later this week, and from those facts it's pretty easy to divine that Napoli is nearing decision day.

We may not have an especially firm grasp on where Napoli is going as of yet, but we know the deal with these multi-city free agent tours, and once a given free agent's tour of the country ends, he tends to commit to his preferred destination pretty quickly. Or sometimes he takes more than a week to decide. Or sometimes he signs before even finishing the tour. I suppose that means Napoli could actually sign at any possible moment. Have you ever thought about it?

Ken Rosenthal has a pretty lengthy read this morning on the matter of Napoli's free agency and where he might end up landing, and here are the bullet points that strike me as particularly noteworthy:

● The Red Sox envision Napoli as more of a first baseman than a catcher (WEEI.com's Alex Speier affirms this while noting that they also view Napoli as a "fallback DH option for David Ortiz"); nevertheless, "Napoli ... appears to be the team’s No. 1 target over outfielder/first baseman Nick Swisher, a switch-hitter, first baseman Adam LaRoche, a left-handed hitter, and others."

● "The Rangers want Napoli back, but according to one source, 'they want him to return on their terms, and Mike wants to return on his terms.' Translated: The Rangers want to hold Napoli to three years or less. And Napoli wants his four years."

● "The Rangers could attempt to bring Soto back at a reduced salary; the team’s pitchers liked throwing to him, and Soto would figure to be motivated in his free-agent year. Such a move, though, would make more sense if the Rangers were confident of finding offense elsewhere — perhaps by keeping Hamilton, perhaps by trading for Diamondbacks right fielder Justin Upton." (As Rosenthal himself reported several days ago, however, negotiations between Texas and Arizona have reached a stalemate of sorts, as the latter continues to demand nothing less than Elvis Andrus or Jurickson Profar for Upton, and the former is still resistant to doing business at that price point.)

Napoli makes for a rather fascinating valuation case in that he possesses certain highly prized attributes -- namely, the huge power and the ability to play catcher -- and is less than 24 months removed from the kind of monster offensive campaign that general managers dream of at night. The potential to be great is nice and all, but what's even nicer is when the potential fully actualizes in the way that it did for Napoli in 2011, because it establishes a high-water mark that you can point to and say "yeah, he's done it before, and that means he could do it again." The Mike Napoli of 2011 was a wrecking ball of MVP-caliber proportions from both sides of the plate, and for all the struggles that both preceded and followed his 2011 season, you can't stop dreaming about a repeat of that season ... or a reasonable facsimile thereof. 

And I suppose that flows nicely into the darker reality of the Napoli valuation case, which is that it may not even be fair to Napoli for us to dream on another season resembling 2011. At the end of the day, he's a lumbering slugger on the wrong side of 30 who's (a) loaded down with old-player offensive skills and (b) difficult to place defensively, given that he's either a good-hitting catcher who's a liability behind the plate or a rather ordinary offensive/defensive first baseman. * It's not my intention to denigrate Napoli's skill set or his past contributions to the Rangers; rather, I'm concerned about what the Rangers can reasonably expect to get out of Napoli going forward if they commence with a serious push to re-sign him, and I suppose you could say that I'm not terribly optimistic about what the next 3-4 years may hold for Napoli as far as deterioration of his skill set is concerned.

[* In the aforementioned Napoli piece, Rosenthal referred to Napoli as an "offensive force no matter where he plays." I've been going back and forth on this -- he does have a 177 wRC+ season (2011, TEX) and a 146 wRC+ season (2008, LAA) in his back pocket, but those are the only two occasions in his career where he has topped a 121 wRC+ in a single season. In 2010 and 2012, Napoli posted wRC+ totals of 115 and 114, respectively. There's a lot of power behind those numbers, and I suppose you can classify Napoli as an offensive force on that basis alone, but those wRC+ numbers are quite pedestrian if they're swapped away from catcher and into a 1B/DH capacity. You obviously can't throw 2011 out, but the question you have to ask yourself is, how much predictive value is behind that season?]

I imagine there are voices within the Rangers organization who are similarly skittish on Napoli's three- to four-year projection, and as I suggested last week, I think there was some pretty strong trepidation within the upper ranks of the organization about making a qualifying $13.3 million offer to Napoli when his acceptance of that offer would have jacked the estimated payroll close to $125 million. If you follow those two assumptions to their logical conclusion, you end up assuming that the Rangers want to do something close to the offer that Napoli rejected last winter, perhaps along the lines of three years, $36-38 million (or lower) where the contract is backloaded to minimize the impact on the 2013 payroll and to shift some of the burden into years with more financial breathing room.

I don't know whether that's enough to seal the deal. I also don't know whether the Rangers are even interested at that price point, or whether they're already piecing together a plan to compensate for the anticipated loss of Napoli's innings behind the plate and power production. Part of what makes this such a difficult question to work through is that there isn't a readily apparent/attainable option on the market who can replace those things that Napoli brings to the table, and, as such, we're concerned about the unknowns that must be addressed if he walks. On the flip side, though, we're concerned -- or at least I'm concerned -- about the prospect of Texas caving and dropping $40-plus million on someone with a questionable offensive projection and withering defensive utility.

I love Mike Napoli. I'd love to see him win a World Series ring here. It's completely within the realm of possibility that Texas could commit stacks of cash to Napoli and that he could justify their faith in spades. I just wish I could convince myself that the odds of this possibility are all that great -- or, for that matter, that he's the right buy for Texas at the contract salary/length he's probably going to command.

Thanksgiving Eve Rumors And Things

Well, it's Thanksgiving Eve, half of the country (or more) is on the road, and I'm joining the ranks of the traveling this afternoon, so here's some stuff that's floating around out there:

● The Rangers have entered preliminary negotiations with Matt Harrison's agents on a possible contract extension that could keep Harrison in Texas beyond his current club-controlled window; Harrison will be free agent-eligible after the 2014 season, and, per Matt Swartz's salary arbitration forecasts, is projected to make $6.1 million next season (Jeff Wilson, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

● One Diamondbacks person claims that there is a 90 percent chance that Justin Upton will still be in Arizona when spring training begins; Jim Bowden states that Jon Daniels refused to budge on moving either Jurickson Profar or Elvis Andrus for Upton, and the Diamondbacks similarly refused to budge when the Rangers attempted to move Mike Olt and Martin Perez for Upton; Ken Rosenthal's sources hear similar things as far the Rangers and Diamondbacks having reached a stalemate on a possible Upton-to-Texas deal (FOXSports.com)

● Industry people believe that the Blue Jays could pull the trigger on a deal sending catcher J.P. Arencibia to a catcher-needy team such as the Rangers, but Rosenthal surmises that they may choose to hold onto their catching surplus while they monitor Travis D'Arnaud's rehab from a season-ending knee injury; several days ago, MLB.com's Gregor Chisholm noted that both Arencibia and John Buck were on the Rangers' list of targets (Twitter)

● Texas added shortstop Leury Garcia and left-hander Joe Ortiz to its 40-man roster last night, and also reworked the mid-season Geovany Soto for Jake Brigham trade by reacquiring Brigham -- who went on the disabled list shortly after the deal with elbow problems -- in exchange for Barret Loux and a player to be named later (Dallas Morning News)

The Rangers' 2013 Payroll Situation: $110MM And Counting?

So much money. So much #leadership."It will be [safe to say that there will be a nine-figure payroll next season]. Success follows success. By 2015 the goal is that this team will be self-sustaining, but our payroll may be another 40 or 50 percent higher. So that will move you up to a level where you should field a great team year after year. We just need to bridge the gap [between now and the TV contract] to get this great franchise to permanent success." - Rangers owner Bob Simpson on November 8th, 2011

They suffered yet another heartwrenching finish in 2012, one that saw their season end several rounds earlier than it did each of the previous two years, and based on much of the feedback that I've seen and received over the last month and a half, I can't help but feel like the fan base is still locked in a state of disbelief over how it all went down.

The reality, however, is that there will come a day when the cloud of lethargy hanging over the fan base will break, and this is the time of year when monster transactions flow freely and dreams of baseball grandeur begin anew. Our lingering disappointment could be obliterated in a moment's time at any moment during the next couple months. That's the beauty of hot stove season -- there's no direction you can look other than forward.

And when you start looking forward and digging into the business of possible moves that the Rangers could make during the 2012-13 off-season, you find that payroll will, as always, be a key determinant of just how much additional value they can pump into their roster. Team ownership supported Bob Simpson's bark with financial bite, as the Rangers' 2012 Opening Day payroll ($120.5 million) ranked as the sixth-highest in baseball; just two years earlier under the crumbling regime of Tom Hicks, that figure was $55.3 million, or the fourth-lowest mark in baseball. That's a 218 percent increase over two years.

Now, granted, it does get a hell of a lot easier to jack the payroll when you're running record attendance numbers and nearly maxing out some of your income streams, but ownership has both the motivation and the means to adequately capitalize the Rangers through the foreseeable future, and one hopes that will help prevent another extended stretch of mediocrity (or worse) from descending upon the Rangers as they prepare to tackle several upcoming waves of roster turnover. Money can't fix a broken team on its own, but it can help sustain and augment a foundationally sound talent base, and there's value in having the wherewithal to get (and keep) the players you want.

Earlier this week, however, MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan may have tempered some of the grander payroll expectations lingering out there when he noted that the Rangers, according to their preliminary projections, would "likely spend around the same as this past season, somewhere between $120-130 million." If we take that projection and run with it, we can back into an estimated off-season budget by determining (a) how much money the Rangers have already committed to their 2013 roster, and (b) how much money they're likely going to commit beyond that amount to retain their arbitration-eligible players. Here, then, is what their 2013 payroll situation looks like (via Cot's Baseball Contracts):

SIGNED FOR 2013 (10 PLAYERS @ $86.35 MILLION*)

DH Michael Young -- $16 million (FA-eligible after 2013)
3B Adrian Beltre -- $16 million (FA-eligible after 2015-16)
2B Ian Kinsler -- $13 million (FA-eligible after 2017-18)
OF Nelson Cruz -- $10.75 million (FA-eligible after 2013)
SP Yu Darvish -- $9.5 million (FA-eligible after 2016-17)
CL Joe Nathan -- $7 million (FA-eligible after 2013)
SS Elvis Andrus -- $5.05 million (FA-eligible after 2014)
OF Leonys Martin -- $3.25 million (FA-eligible after 2018 at earliest)
SP Derek Holland -- $3.2 million (FA-eligible after 2016-18)
SP Colby Lewis -- $2 million (FA-eligible after 2013)

[* The $86.35 million total includes Scott Feldman's $600,000 buyout for 2013, which Cot's included as part of the Rangers' guaranteed 2013 obligations. In the cases of Nelson Cruz, Elvis Andrus, and Leonys Martin, prorated shares of their original signing bonuses have been added onto their 2013 base salaries (which conforms with baseball's payroll reporting conventions). Yu Darvish is also linked to a $51.7 million posting fee which the Rangers recorded as an intangible asset and are amortizing over six years for accounting/tax purposes; no portion of the posting fee is included for payroll reporting purposes, though. It is unclear to what extent the Darvish posting fee affects the club's internal budget.]

This, I think, is pretty straightforward, and it's difficult to imagine more than one of these names being gone in four and a half months. Elvis Andrus has, of course, been the subject of growing trade speculation over the course of these last few months, and I imagine the smoke is only going to intensify as we near the winter meetings in early December ... but as a practical matter, Elvis probably isn't going anywhere, because a trade will require (a) a huge bounty of returning talent, large enough that the Rangers feel they have no other choice but to pull the trigger; (b) organizational certainty that they can live without Elvis long term (and that they can't re-sign him); and (c) some amount of confidence that Jurickson Profar, who has 17 plate appearances above AA ball, will be ready very, very soon.

Conditions (b) and (c) are iffy, but you can get around them if the trade is right. You can't get around (a), though, because Elvis's tour of duty in Texas almost certainly figures to roll on if they can't find a tremendous return for him. Kinsler, Cruz, and Holland are all names that could conceivably be moved, but none of the three fared particularly well in 2012, and I have my doubts that anyone will come calling on those three with offers that the Rangers find too enticing to pass up. Young, meanwhile, could be the one player that the Rangers actively work to find a new home for, although the best case scenario there -- from a roster construction standpoint, that is -- probably revolves around Texas netting only a marginal player or two for some salary relief that they burn on a superior 1B/DH option. Is he going anywhere yet this winter? Probably not!

ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE FOR 2012 (4 PLAYERS @ EST. $17.8 MILLION)

SP Matt Harrison -- est. $6.1 million (FA-eligible after 2014)
OF David Murphy -- est. $5.6 million (FA-eligible after 2013)
SP/RP Neftali Feliz -- est. $3.1 million (FA-eligible after 2015)
C Geovany Soto -- est. $3 million (FA-eligible after 2013) *

[All arbitration salary projections courtesy of Matt Swartz and MLB Trade Rumors, who together created a model that strips some of the guesswork and subjectivity out of the arbitration projection game. It is important to note that Soto will likely be non-tendered -- his arbitration projection is $4.6 million for 2013 -- and that the $3 million figure listed above is my guess at what he will pull down through a non-arbitration deal with Texas. If you believe that's a faulty adjustment or that Soto won't be back, adjust accordingly; however, keep in mind that even if Soto does leave, there's a strong chance that Texas will end up dropping $2-3 million on some different No. 2 catcher anyway.]

I feel that this group bears a vague resemblance to the above guaranteed contract group in that you can sort of squint and tilt your head to one side and envision different scenarios where either of Harrison or Murphy are traded this winter. Again, though, it's far likelier than not that they both begin the 2013 season as relatively significant pieces of the Rangers' roster. Feliz figures to be rehabbing deep into the summer months and may or may not make it back to the majors in 2013 in a relief capacity; regardless of how his convalescence plays out, though, he'll get paid and continue to accrue major league service time, so the sooner he can resume generating value, the better.

INDENTURED FOR 2012 (11 PLAYERS @ $500,000/PLAYER, OR $5.5 MILLION)

SP Alexi Ogando
SP Martin Perez
1B Mitch Moreland
OF Craig Gentry
CIF Brandon Snyder/Mike Olt/comparable player
RP Wilmer Font
RP Robbie Ross
RP Tanner Scheppers
RP Michael Kirkman
Catcher X
Outfielder X
Reliever X
Reliever Y

So as to avoid any confusion about what I'm doing here, I'm filling in the 13 remaining blanks on the Opening Day 25-man roster with pre-arbitration guys who are making the league minimum -- $490,000 in 2013 -- or close enough to the minimum that it all centers around an average of $500,000 per player. No, they're not going to go into the season with gaping holes behind the plate, in the outfield, and in the bullpen; I also strongly doubt that they'll go into the season with Martin Perez as their No. 5 starter. The idea here is to give us a payroll baseline that we can adjust accordingly if/when some higher-dollar acquisitions come down the pipeline.

And no, I'm not assuming any free agent re-signings. I don't know what basis you would have for assuming the returns of Josh Hamilton or Ryan Dempster or Mike Napoli or Mike Adams or Koji Uehara or Mark Lowe at this point in time; sure, they could end up signing comparable players for comparable prices, but the entire idea here is to figure out where their salary projection is before they make any off-season moves.

FREE AGENTS FOR 2012 (9 PLAYERS)

SP Ryan Dempster ($14 million in 2012)
OF Josh Hamilton ($13.75 million in 2012)
C/1B Mike Napoli ($9.4 million in 2012)
SP Scott Feldman ($6.5 million in 2012; 2013 option declined, $600K buyout)
SP Roy Oswalt ($5 million in 2012)
RP Mike Adams ($4.4 million in 2012)
RP Koji Uehara ($4 million in 2012)
RP Mark Lowe ($1.7 million in 2012)
RP Yoshinori Tateyama ($1 million in 2012; 2013 option declined, buyout unknown)

If you crammed the business end of a loaded gun into my ear and told me to pick the player on this list who is the likeliest to re-sign with Texas, I'd take Uehara. After him, I'd take Napoli. After him, I'd take Tateyama (on a minor league deal). And after the three of them, I'd take nobody -- Dempster didn't fare well here and is probably headed back to the Senior Circuit, Feldman/Oswalt are history, Adams will likely land elsewhere as a setup man, Lowe feels like he's run his course in Texas, and Hamilton will almost certainly prove too rich for the Rangers' blood.

So, adding everything up, those 25 players I've slotted for the Opening Day roster -- including 13 pre-arbitration players, some of whom are roster plugs -- plus Feliz's $3.1 million arbitration projection plus Lewis's $2 million salary plus Feldman's $600,000 buyout comes out to:

PRELIMINARY ESTIMATED 2013 PAYROLL: $110.65 MILLION

That, again, is their baseline 2013 payroll obligation. They could conceivably end up lopping a few million dollars off that total if they should manage to shed some of that obligation by trading Young or Kinsler or Cruz, or if Swartz's arbitration projection model completely breaks down with the Rangers and Murphy/Harrison/Feliz collectively bank less than $14.8 million, or if they dump Soto and end up going really, really cheap at backup catcher. I'm not betting on any of those things happening, though, and, ultimately, I think that $110.65 million figure is a pretty accurate reflection of what the Rangers' front office/ownership expects to commit for 2013 before adding any free agents/trade acquisitions.

And that, in conjunction with Sullivan's reported $120-130 million budget, brings the Rangers' decision to not make a qualifying one-year offer to Mike Napoli into clearer focus. I imagine there was some pretty significant trepidation in the room about making a $13.3 million offer to Napoli that, if accepted, would have jacked the estimated payroll to $124 million before doing anything about the outfield, the starting rotation, or the bullpen. I dig Napoli as much as the next guy, but he's now more than a year removed from his monster 2011 campaign, and 2012-like production is much closer to what you can expect out of him going forward than 2011-like production. Monster power is great, but the offensive plunge was alarming, the defense behind the plate looked more suspect than it did a year before, and he's now on the wrong side of 30. I'd like to see him back, but I get why the offer wasn't made.

I think this should also serve to temper some of the expectations being bandied about as far as the Rangers making a serious run at a marquee free agent such as Zack Greinke -- sure, they could backload the hell out of such a deal in anticipation of another $30-plus million in expiring contracts coming off the books next winter (and, for that matter, in anticipation of their coffer-filling TV deal with FOX Sports Southwest that begins in 2015), but they would still end up around $125-130 million for 2013 just by adding Greinke alone, and before addressing any of their other roster holes. To make that work, ownership would need to be prepared to move above and beyond the $140 million mark for next season, or they would need to shed some of their existing payroll obligations. 

And, again, Sullivan's reported $120-130 million figure was, in his own words, a "preliminary" payroll projection. I don't think that's a hard cap so much as it is a budgetary preference -- if the right opportunity presents itself along the lines of a marquee free agent or an expensive trade option coming into play, and if the front office can sell ownership on it, then you could end up seeing something north of $140 million next season. I think it's reasonable to assume there's some amount of wiggle room in there that would permit them to add special over-budget exceptions.

One big question, though, is whether front office is sold enough on any of the currently available options to commence with a serious sales pitch to ownership while knowing that it could be a very tight fit salary-wise, and that it could blow most of the Rangers' flexibility to add payroll at the 2013 trade deadline.

Greinke? Perhaps. B.J. Upton? Iffy. Josh Hamilton? Doubt it. Nick Swisher? On the fence. You get my point.

The other big question here is where they should actually choose to allocate their remaining resources. If we assume a modest payroll increase to the upper end of Sullivan's reported projection ($130 million), the Rangers have about $20 million left to add a No. 1 catcher, an outfielder, a starting pitcher, and at least two relievers. From those facts, you can pretty easily infer that there are trades incoming -- yes, they could obtain all of those pieces on the open market, but $20 million spread out across that set of needs isn't going to get you very far in free agency, and I think it's logical to conclude that at least a few of their identifiable roster holes will be addressed by swapping in-house talent for less expensive players with multiple years of club control remaining. 

Alternatively, they could address their outfield depth problem by going ahead and moving Ian Kinsler into a COF spot, summoning Jurickson Profar to play second base, and holding steady with Elvis Andrus, which would open things up a bit more as far as the payroll situation is concerned. (Then again, I'm not the staunchest adherent of the Kinsler-to-COF idea.) Or they could end up moving Andrus in a deal for a starting pitcher or corner outfielder that opens up the shortstop position for Profar while simultaneously attacking one of those other roster holes; that, however, would require conditions (a) through (c) all being met, and I still think it's likelier than not that Elvis stays put this winter.

Also, keep in mind that I'm more concerned about Texas shoring up the corner outfield spots than I am center field; it's a bit risky, but I'm on board with a platoon-type 50-50 playing time setup in center field consisting of Leonys Martin and Craig Gentry that helps maximize each player's offensive output while protecting them both from overexposure. This kind of setup would require Ron Washington's unconditional support to work, though, and I think you can understand why I'm quite hesitant about taht condition. If he's completely off board with the idea, or doesn't trust Martin and/or Gentry for whatever reason, then yeah, they're going to need a CF-capable outfielder.

The bigger issues, though, may be at catcher and the starting rotation, and that's because the depth is sketchier at both areas. Even in a worst-case scenario where the Rangers grab some fifth outfielder fresh off the scrap heap, you still have above-replacement starters at both COF spots in David Murphy and Nelson Cruz, and you have a decent CF pairing in Martin/Gentry. Your outfield probably won't thrive if you roll only with internal options, but it could be worse. At catcher, though, there are no internal above-replacement options, and I'm doubtful about Martin Perez's chances of performing at the level of even an league-average No. 5 starter if he opens the 2013 season in the rotation. If everything else goes to hell, you can plug him in and hope for the best, but he's just not ready.

Despite the rather negative tenor of those last few paragraphs, it's not my intention to go full-on doom and gloom with this post, nor do I think this is going to be a doom-and-gloom-type off-season for the Rangers. They have some pretty significant holes in their projected roster that need to be squared away, and they're going to have to pull it off on a reasonable budget with a relatively weak free agent class, but do bear in mind that they still project as the best team in the AL West for 2013 -- per ESPN.com's Dan Szymborski -- before adding a single free agent or consummating a single trade.

That, of course, didn't end so well for Texas in 2012, as the early-season "best team in baseball" with the biggest and brightest pre-season projection collapsed at the finish line. I absolutely get the skepticism over being the best team "on paper." In the end, though, what else can you really do other than maximize your post-season chances and then hope to emerge victorious from a series of weighted October dice rolls?

It's that first part, the "maximize your post-season chances" bit, that we're focused on right now, and suffice it to say that it's much easier to do that with financially supportive ownership and a top 5-6 payroll than it was during the latter years of, uhm, that other guy who keeps making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

And The Beat Goes On: Nov. 16th

I'm no good at seamless transitions right into these posts, so here's this morning's song (h/t Fullertron), and some links below that, and Vlade will be happy with that:

● Jeff Wilson writes that the Rangers are beginning to get a little clarity on Josh Hamilton's timeline, and talks about Ian Kinsler's openness to changing positions if the Rangers should need him to do so, as well as the Rangers playing two spring training exhibition games at the Alamodome next spring. Gerry Fraley has a post on Kinsler that mostly rips on him for not making himself more accessible to the media, so you can check out that scene if that does something for you.

● Randy Galloway says that the Rangers were expected to meet with Torii Hunter before he committed to the Tigers in exchange for a two-year, $26 million contract earlier this week, and speculates -- probably correctly -- that the Rangers didn't want to be involved at that price point. He also remarks that Jon Daniels "seems sincere" in wanting to keep the door open for a possible Josh Hamilton return (no matter how unlikely that might be), and remarks that his opinion seems divergent from other opinions within the organization as far as possibly having him back. 

On a related note, Relativity Media has secured the rights to Josh Hamilton's biopic. #movietalk

● The Cy Young/MVP awards all dropped over the last 48 hours, and David Price, R.A. Dickey, Buster Posey, and Miguel Cabrera all netted top honors. I made a reference to this incident on Twitter the other day, and I think it merits mentioning again solely for the awe that it inspires: six and a half years ago, on April 6th, 2006, Dickey was shelled for a team-record six homers in 3.1 innings by the Tigers at the Ballpark, in what ended up being his final appearance as a Ranger. He spent the remainder of his 2006 season slogging away at Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he struggled to maintain an ERA under 5.00 or a strikeout-to-walk ratio above 1.3. He was in his age-31 season and was on a career trajectory that figured to have him out of pro baseball within a year or two, at most ... and today, he's the reigning Cy Young Award winner. I can't wrap my head around it.

Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson To Blue Jays In "Epic Trade"

Well, let's follow the timeline, shall we?

Source: #BlueJays on verge of acquiring Josh Johnson from #Marlins. Deal could be even larger than that.

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) November 13, 2012

Buerhle headed to #BlueJays along with Josh Johnson, sources tell me and @jonmorosi.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 13, 2012

Yunel Escobar and Hechavarria part of package going from #BlueJays to #Marlins. Monster deal.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 13, 2012

#BlueJays and #Marlins are in midst of EPIC trade right now, sources say. And I mean EPIC.

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) November 13, 2012

Jose Reyes could - repeat, could - be part of this. Two shortstops - Escobar, Hechavarria - going from #BlueJays to #Marlins.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 13, 2012

Inclusion of Reyes unconfirmed. What we know: Buerhle and Josh Johnson to #BlueJays. Escobar, Hechavarria to #Marlins. And more both ways.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 13, 2012

Blue Jays payroll doubling with one GIGANTIC BLOCKBUSTER with Marlins

— JIM BOWDEN (@JimBowdenESPNxm) November 13, 2012

Summation of the forthcoming Jays-Miami deal: Just about everybody making money is going to Toronto.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 13, 2012

Confirmed to #Marlins thus far by me and @jonmorosi. Escobar, Hechavarria, H. Alvarez, Nicolino.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 13, 2012

Confirmed to #Marlins thus far by me and @jonmorosi. Escobar, Hechavarria, H. Alvarez, Nicolino.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 13, 2012

So, from what I can tell, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, and possibly Jose Reyes are going from the Marlins to the Blue Jays in what may end up going down as one of the single largest firesales that professional baseball has ever seen. For the record, Buehrle, Johnson, and Reyes are collectively owed $157.75 million.

The Miami Marlins opened their new stadium less than nine months ago.

Tuesday Morning Rangers Notes: Things Are Sorta Happening, Right?

RIGHT???

● The Rangers made a "significant run" at Korean left-hander Ryu Hyun-Jin that was thwarted by the Dodgers' winning $25.75 million bid, but they are not operating with an operating budget, as "according to preliminary projections, they will likely spend around the same as this past season, somewhere between $120-130 million" (T.R. Sullivan, MLB.com)

● Texas reportedly attempted to swing a deal that would have sent Mike Olt -- it's unclear if he would have been packaged with anyone else -- to the Braves for shortstop Andrelton Simmons, who then would have been traded to the Diamondbacks for Justin Upton; Atlanta wouldn't pull the trigger, though (Danny Knobler, Twitter)

● Free agent outfielder Torii Hunter is intent on signing soon, probably within the next two weeks, and the Rangers have been named as one of the more interested parties, with T.R. Sullivan suggesting that the Rangers envision Hunter as a starting corner outfielder alongside Nelson Cruz (in another corner) and a Leonys Martin/Craig Gentry platoon in center field; however, the Tigers appear to be Hunter's most aggressive pursuer at this time (Scott Miller, CBSSports.com)

● Mike Napoli is attracting interest from "a bunch of teams" (with both the Red Sox and Yankees being rumored possibilities), and says that while he would prefer to catch, he is open to a position change if it means he will get into the lineup on a regular basis; Napoli also says that he has loved playing in Texas and made it fairly clear that he would like to return, although I don't think there's much reason to believe the Rangers can parlay that into a discount; in other news, "rival executives say they don't expect the Rangers to tender a contract to catcher Geovany Soto," and the potential departures of both Napoli and Soto could leave Texas in a perilous spot catching-wise (Richard Durrett, ESPNDallas.com)

And The Beat Goes On: Nov.12th

Guess who's back, back again ...

● Since I'm going to at least attempt to play a little catch-up here and not pretend that a bunch of stuff hasn't been going on, Hamilton declined the Rangers' qualifying offer on Friday, and there are rumblings that the Rangers' eventual offer to Hamilton will max out at three years, which the Rangers fervently deny. So it goes ...

● Bob Nightengale reported last week that the Rangers attempted to swing a trade for Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons that, in theory, would have allowed them to move Simmons in a separate deal to the Diamondbacks for Justin Upton without touching Elvis Andrus or Jurickson Profar. That ship appears to have sailed, though, and per Ken Rosenthal, the Rangers are still refusing to budge on moving either Andrus or Profar for Upton. I should have a (legitimate) post up later today delving further into this Upton thing and some of the commonly whiteboarded scenarios that have been kicked around ever since the MIF logjam began to take shape.

● Richard Durrett names some Rangers who need to step up their performance in 2013, including, notably, Derek Holland and Nelson Cruz (the latter of whom will bank $10.5 million in his final year of club control in 2013). Durrett questions whether Cruz will be able to establish himself as part of the club's longer-term plans, which leads me to point this out: he's entering his age-32 season, he's posted back-to-back <2 WAR seasons, and he's posted a wRC+ north of 115 only once in his career (2010, which is drifting further and further away in the rear-view mirror). I've been in love with the tools from day one, and I will always cherish his post-season contributions and respect the fact that he came back from the verge of being released to becoming a key piece of this team ... but I have some trouble believing that Cruz is going to still be part of the organization come spring 2014.

● Over the weekend, the Dodgers won the bidding for Korean left-hander Hyun-Jin Ryu at $25.7 million, and I suppose that, in turn, means that the Rangers "lost," given the reports that they submitted a bid; it feels like the potential for the winner's curse rearing its ugly head at the Dodgers may be greater than usual here, though, with some in the industry -- notably Keith Law -- being fairly bearish on his chances of being more than a "back-end starter with some question about durability." 

● T.R. Sullivan reiterates that Texas intends to pursue Zack Greinke, and mentions some of the offensive options that the Rangers could pursue while noting that they're "lukewarm" on Nick Swisher and disinterested on Michael Bourn.

● Jurickson Profar popped his first career walk-off homer in yesterday's DWL tilt. 

"You Can't Kill Me, Because I'm Already Dead"

Some stuff floating out there today, because I've been missing in action for far too long (again):

● Justin Upton is supposedly up on the trading block again (in the view of other teams, at least, and as we all know, perception is always reality), and the Diamondbacks reportedly covet either Elvis Andrus or Jurickson Profar in exchange for Upton, with the Rangers themselves coveting Upton but refusing to budge on either of those names thus far. Dave Cameron took a stab at the Upton vs. Andrus question, and concluded that a one-for-one swap would make more sense for Arizona than it would for Texas, given that Andrus has a more club-friendly (albeit shorter) contract on an AAV basis. I suspect the Rangers share that sentiment inasmuch as they believe they should get more back from the Diamondbacks for Andrus than just Upton, and if there's anything that's going to derail such a natural trade match, it will probably be incongruent views on the parts of the Rangers/Diamondbacks on how much Andrus/Upton are really worth.

Ben Rogers tweeted yesterday that the Andrus camp is seeking seven years at $18 million per year after his final two years of club control -- now guaranteed at $11.3 million total -- expire. If Texas pulled the trigger on that extension tomorrow (and there is absolutely no reason to believe that they will), the Rangers' obligation to Andrus over the next nine seasons would total $137.3 million. Only two three shortstops in baseball history (Alex Rodriguez, at $252 million from 2001-10, Derek Jeter, at $189 million from 2001-10, and Troy Tulowitzki, at $157.8 million from 2011-20) have ever been guaranteed more than what Andrus is reportedly seeking.

I, for one, am still trying to work through the issues of (a) how likely Upton is to realize his upside, (b) Profar's likely short-term projection (Dan Szymborski forecasts him as a three-win player if cast in a full-time role in 2013), and (c) Andrus's longer-term offensive projection, of which I remain skeptical.

● In today's "sorta kinda relavant" transaction news, the Rangers have acquired sidewinding lefty Tommy Hottovy from the Royals in exchange for a player to be named later and cash, thereby expanding their 40-man roster to 35 players. Hottovy, 31, spent the better part of the last decade in the Red Sox organization before catching on with the Royals and churning out 50 quality innings at AAA-ball (and a handful of major league appearances) in 2012, and if enough things spin in the right direction for him next spring, he'll be in the mix for a lefty-throwing spot out of the bullpen. You all know the game by this point, though -- there's a decent likelihood that he never pitches a single inning for the Rangers, let alone meaningfully contributes for the Rangers (though he does have an option remaining). 

● Meanwhile, in the last week, we've heard rumblings to the effect of (a) Josh Hamilton seeking seven years and $175 million, (b) Mike Adams questioning Josh Hamilton's reliability and the notion of Texas dumping y (which one would presume to reflect the overall clubhouse sentiment on Hamilton), and (c) the front office refuting the perception that they don't want Hamilton back. I don't expect an extension of the Hamilton-in-Texas tour unless a static market develops where those clubs that are interested either (a) lack the revenues to support what will likely be an eventual nine-digit commitment, or (B) are too unnerved by the other variables to fall in love with the monster 2011 production.

Alexi Ogando Will Start In 2013

And now this, per Anthony Andro: 

Rangers have told Alexi Ogando he will start next season.

— Anthony Andro (@aandro) November 2, 2012

More in a bit.

Rangers Issue Qualifying Offer To Hamilton; No Offer To Napoli

Per MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan, the Rangers have reportedly made a qualifying one-year, $13.3 million offer to Josh Hamilton, and have declined their option to make a qualifying offer to Mike Napoli. Both Hamilton and Napoli became free agents earlier this week, and the Rangers' decisions come hours in advance of tonight's 11:00 p.m. CDT deadline, at which time they will lose their exclusive negotiating rights with their eligible free agents.

Hamilton now has until next Friday to make a final decision on whether to accept the Rangers' offer, although the chances of him pulling that trigger are essentially nil. If he should depart in free agency, the Rangers will be able to receive draft-pick compensation; if Napoli should depart in free agency, however, the Rangers will receive no draft-pick compensation.

Per Jon Daniels (via Anthony Andro), the Rangers would like to have Napoli back next season, and will attempt to negotiate some sort of a deal, but weren't comfortable making a commitment at the one-year, $13.3 million level. Per T.R. Sullivan, the Rangers "have not ruled out the possibility of re-signing Hamilton but are unlikely to do so if it costs [$20-million plus annually]."

Report: Rangers Have "Serious Interest" In David Ortiz

Immediately after Game 7 of last year's World Series, I set my own baseball healing process into motion by punching up an online stream of a live Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters game and watching Yu Darvish murder some poor NPB lineup from 6,000 miles away. I can't recall who he faced that night, but I do recall having the distinct impression that his opponents knew Darvish was coming for them, knew what he was capable of doing to them with a baseball, and still couldn't do a damn thing to stop him.

That was a therapuetic, beautiful experience that brought me back to a good place in terms of wanting to talk about the Rangers, because we knew at the time that Darvish might very well be a Ranger several months later on, and when you've sunk to such depths of despair and self-pity as this fan base (and I) did after Game 7, you need great things to dream on.

And maybe that's the case again in the here and now, because, as you all well know by now, I've had a very difficult time conjuring up the motivation to write about this team over the last month (beyond needlessly introspective tripe like this). I also don't like hitting the keyboard unless I feel I can add something of real value to the larger discussion, and, for the last month, there have been precious few moments where both of those necessary ingredients have been in place. But it takes only one juicy rumor -- one enticing thing to dream on -- to shock you back to reality, and I feel like Ken Rosenthal may have done that to me this morning.

Because Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Rangers have expressed "serious interest" in free agent David Ortiz, and "envision him as a left-handed hitting replacement for ... Josh Hamilton." That doesn't particularly surprise me, and I also don't think it would be wise to bet on Ortiz-to-Texas actually happening (Ortiz wants to go back to Boston, and Boston wants him back), but weirder stuff has happened in free agency than egos being bruised by perceived below-market offers and negotiations crumbling to dust.

The fact that Ortiz lost the final two and a half months of his season to a strained right Achilles burned at least a sliver of his market value (that and the fact that he's about to turn 37), but he's still a premium offensive force who has churned out a .312/.405/.576 (159 wRC+) triple-slash line with 52 home runs over the last two seasons (spanning 988 plate appearances). We can argue back and forth all day about how much an age-37 slugger is going to have left in the tank and fret about the very real risk of overpaying for past performance, but the reality is that Ortiz has still been right there among the 5-10 best hitters in baseball over the last couple of years, and that's exciting. It's exciting to think about a player of his handedness and talent and on-base capabilities and raw power hitting in the Ballpark, regardless of whether he's about to hit the downside of his career or not.

This also merits a reminder that revenues are growing within baseball (especially with the proliferation of lucrative new TV deals for specific teams and the across-the-board rise in national TV money) at the same time that it's harder to spend lots of money on amateur talent, and that we should expect to see a rise in the value of a win on the open market. Ortiz reportedly wants a two-year deal worth between $25-30 million from the Red Sox; I would count on him netting a bit more if he ultimately did land in Texas (perhaps closer to $34-35 million on a two-year pact), but I can think of much worse things than throwing $17-18 million annually over a short-term commitment at one of baseball's reigning offensive monsters.

The problem? Beyond the money factor (and I don't think any of us have an especially firm grasp of the Rangers' target 2013 budget, or how much they'd actually be willing to spend on Ortiz), there's the elephant in the room that is Michael Young. Ortiz is about as DH-exclusive as a player gets (he hasn't played more than 10 games in the field in any given season since 2004), and with Young still being under contract for the 2013 season, you would be forced to roll with one of the following options in order to accommodate Ortiz taking over at DH on a full-time basis:

(a) Giving Young a full-time gig at first base (or giving him some playing-time distribution that, say, gives him 85 percent of the at-bats at first base and still allows him to sub at second and third base), and kicking everyone else, including Mitch Moreland, to the curb;

(b) Moving Young into a part-time role where he nets full playing time against lefties and only a little playing time against righties, while still moving him around the 1B/2B/3B horn;

(c) Moving Young into a full-fledged bench role;

(d) Trading Young (nobody's going to make that deal unless Texas eats 80-plus percent of his remaining salary and gives up little to nothing, and even that sounds like an overly optimistic scenario);

(e) Releasing Young, which I suppose is what would happen if the Rangers decided unequivocally that he was no longer in their plans but Young refused to waive his no-trade clause under any circumstances.

(A) is not an appealing idea for plainly evident reasons. (C) is never going to happen with Ron Washington at the helm, so let's not even waste our time contemplating it. (D) could happen in theory, but it would require Young becoming irredeemably hissed off at the Rangers for pushing him aside (which I assume is the only thing that would compel him to waive his no-trade clause), and a trade partner that is ready to believe in his bounceback potential. If (E) comes to pass, I assume we're going to be on Code Red status. And, yeah, (B) actually does make sense, because Young does still have some utility against southpaws ... but that would require Washington bailing from a sinking ship, and I can't say I'm brimming with confidence that he would actually do that. 

There are your obvious "what would they do with Michael Young?!" scenarios. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that I'm forgetting something else obvious. It has, after all, been a while since I've seriously engaged the baseball-crazed lobe of my brain. I'm also kind of dubious as to whether this is something we should even spend an excess of time and energy thinking about, because Ortiz could end up re-signing with Boston as soon as today, and that would instantly render the majority of this post obsolete.

But, you know, even if this only lingers out there for a few hours, it's kind of fun to dream. It's kind of fun to be doing this again. 

Rangers' Broadcasting Teams Remain Intact For 2013

The sad, bizarre tale of Dave Barnett's broadcasting stint with the Rangers has apparently reached its conclusion this afternoon, as the local beats are all reporting on Twitter that the Rangers will be sticking with Steve Busby and Tom Grieve in the television booth for the 2013 season. Eric Nadel and Matt Hicks -- who was brought in from the Corpus Christi Hooks back in late June after Busby hopped from the radio to the television side -- will continue broadcasting the club's games over the radio airwaves. 

This, for all intents and purposes, appears to be the end of Barnett's three-plus-year stint with the Rangers, as he was brought in after the 2008 season to replace Victor Rojas as the club's radio color commentator, and then jumped to the television play-by-play chair in May 2011 after the Rangers bailed on John Rhadigan less than two months into the season. Barnett suffered a disturbing on-air incident on the evening of June 18th that led to a battery of medical tests (the official cause of the incident was apparently never determined with total confidence), and it was announced on July 2nd that he would not return to the Rangers for the remainder of the season. He did, however, make his formal return to broadcasting when he began calling University of North Texas football games for KTXA 21 in early September, and the reports on his current state of health are favorable.

Busby will open the 2013 season as the ballclub's fourth different Opening Day television play-by-play voice in as many years. 

Roster Moves And Decisions And Changes ... Of Another Sort

I would throw up another concilatory message about my sporadic presence here over the last month, but you're all tired of that, and I get that you're tired of that, and I don't need to talk about that anymore, because it turns out that we have some roster moves coming down this afternoon to mark our official transition from the season that was into the off-season that is now.

Per John Blake, the Rangers have declined their 2013 options on Scott Feldman and Yoshinori Tateyama, have purchased the contract of right-hander Justin Miller from Triple-A Round Rock, and have activated Neftali Feliz from the 60-day disabled list. Shortly before that round of announcements, T.R. Sullivan noted on Twitter that Feldman's desire is to ply his craft elsewhere as a starting pitcher, and in light of that and his oddly disappointing season (a season where the defense-independent markers were quite sturdy, but the ERA was awful), it's hard to see much reason for believing that Feldman will even be back on a reduced-rate deal. We talked for the better part of the summer about how Feldman just had the look of someone who desperately needed a change of scenery, and now he's in line for exactly that.

Tateyama, meanwhile, sees his low-dollar 2013 option declined (the specific value of the option/buyout has not been disclosed, but it's generally believed that his 2013 option was worth around $1-1.5 million), and his future in Texas seems very much in doubt. He's the quintessential righty killer (141 PA, 38 K, 5 BB, 1 HR, .200/.234/.274 from 2011-12), but the problem is that, for one reason or another, he hasn't been utilized in that way, with the Rangers electing to utilize him in the lowest of low-leverage roles in 2012, and generally utilizing him far too often against lefties (116 PA, 23 K, 12 BB, 11 HR, .272/.353/.641 from 2011-12) for him to provide any sort of material value to the big league club. I harbor serious doubts as to whether he fits into the Rangers' plans going forward.

As far as the Feliz/Miller additions are concerned: Feliz was an expected procedural move, and Jason Cole shares a few thoughts on the Miller addition on Twitter: "Not too surprised the Rangers put RHP Justin Miller back on the 40-man. They've got some more roster flexibility this offseason, and Miller told me yesterday that his Tommy John rehab has gone well. He's aiming for a mid-to-late April 2013 return to game action." If all goes according to planned next year, Miller will again hit the developmental track in the hopes of eventually ascending to the majors in a relief role (most likely in 2014), and Feliz will made a clean return from Tommy John surgery and possibly -- not probably -- contribute out of the Rangers' bullpen down the stretch in 2013. Should we count on any of that happening? Who knows! Anything can happen!

And speaking of anything being able to happen, I have learned this afternoon that I will be joining the ranks of the gainfully employed beginning in January, after completing my Master of Science in Accounting Degree at SMU in December. I am thrilled beyond words, and cannot wait to begin my career ... and as for what that means for the future of Baseball Time in Arlington, it's going to mean that the new voices on the site that I've been promising for a while are finally going to materialize.

The reality is that I'm about to enter a phase of my life where my old 2010-11 workrate is going to be impossible to maintain (though by no means will I be dropping off the face of the earth, except perhaps during busy season), and my hope is that I will be able to bolster the roster to the point where BBTiA will still be at the cutting edge of Rangers analysis -- and, for that matter, where you'll never see a posting layoff again. To everyone who ever read a single word that I wrote, who ever cared one iota about what I had to say ... you all made this possible. Much love.

Monday Morning Open Thread

I'm almost back, but not quite. Not yet, at least. In any event, though, the Giants are World Series champions (again), the off-season is here, and the open floor of free agency is opening up, with Texas needing to make final decisions on whether to extend qualifying one-year, $13.3 million offers to Josh Hamilton (a virtual certainty) and Mike Napoli (a tad less certain) by Friday afternoon. 

I'll be back soon to dive into it.

Entitled

During the winter between the 2010 and 2011 seasons, I wrote a piece about what I thought had made the Rangers organization so successful and, in addition to doing a great job of identifying talent, what it boiled down to was that Jon Daniels and Ron Washington were running a meritocracy.  The jumping off point was how Michael Young seemed to believe that he was immune from the rules of an organization  that was driven by the singular goal of getting better, no matter what. 

C.J. Wilson begged for a slot in the rotation, so they gave him the chance to earn it which he did. Alexi Ogando rocketed from the DSL to the majors in short order because he earned it.  Rich Harden sucked and was sent packing.  Almost everything was open for discussion.  Anyone who demonstrated they could do the job and best serve the organization in a role had the role and any role that could be improved upon was subject to be improved upon. No entitlements. There was no pecking order. You either did the job and got the job or you didn't do the job and lost the job.

No one was immune, not even Young. After he didn't cut it at third base in 2010, he was out and Adrian Beltre was in for 2011. Yet, after he put aside his pre-spring training hissy fit and demand to be traded, Young settled into his new role and produced at the plate like he had never produced before. 

Was the message to Young -- that if you aren't going to do the job, we'll find someone who will -- something that drove him to his best offensive season?  Was it something that drove the entire roster to understand that they had to show up every day, put everything into it or risk losing their spot? 

If you believe in accountability, it's hard to argue that it didn't play a role in what drove Young to a stunningly productive season at the plate in 2011.

We hear a lot about accountability with respect to the local sports scene, especially with the Cowboys for whom there appears to be none. For a time, it was quite easy to compare and contrast Arlington's neighboring professional sports franchises and point to accountability as the secret sauce that made one of those two organizations the envy of their sport and the other the laughing stock of it's league. (Well, accountability as well as a full-time GM vs. a part-time GM).

As the 2012 season began to stall during the summer and then went into a spectacular nosedive in September, I thought frequently about my meritocracy theory and how this organization had clearly abandoned that approach and become an organization with a culture of entitlement.

Throughout the summer, I expressed this primarily by issuing admittedly snarky tweets about Michael Young's expansive role both at the plate and in the field in 2012 in spite of wielding one of the two or three worst WAR's in the game, but this was not the only issue, just the most obvious and the most frustrating.

Obviously, continuing to allow Ian Kinsler to bat in the leadoff spot in spite of a poor approach and even worse results had the scent of entitlement attached to it. Through the heart of the summer when David Murphy was the club's hottest hitter and the most likely to get on base on a regular basis, we continued to see Kinsler and his .312 OBP hitting at the top of the order and Young with his .682 OPS hitting in the middle.  The fact that Murphy posted a .380 OBP and a .859 OPS did not expand his role much. He got 457 at-bats.  Young got 611 ABs and Kinsler got 655.  

Craig Gentry spent weeks at a time on the bench in spite of doing everything you could have possibly asked him to do when called upon. Delivering a breakthrough .304 / .367 / .392 / .759 performance at the plate and once again providing what was, by far, the best outfield defense of any Ranger didn't earn him much. As the club fell apart down the stretch, Gentry appeared -- if at all -- as a pinch runner or late-inning defensive replacement.  

For whatever reason, in 2012, a Ranger couldn't do much to earn a bigger role because roles were spoken for and, it seems, could not be lost no matter what.

The old "produce or we'll find someone who will" approach applied to exactly two veteran players this year:  Yorvit Torrealba and Roy Oswalt.  In 2012, a veteran could struggle mightily not for weeks while he was given a fair chance to straighten things out, but for months and there would be no response from the manager other than to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the reality of what was happening. 

With the 2012 Rangers, a player could quit on plays, take himself out of the lineup in the middle of a game, take a week off in the middle of a pennant race, come back and show absolutely zero passion or interest and continue to have his way.

I find it very hard to believe that any of this could have gone on with the 2010 Rangers. Someone would have put a stop to it. Right?

If we are to believe all that has been written about the clubhouse dynamics at RBiA over the past few years, it is Michael Young who was the accountability czar in the room.  The 2010 Michael Young, it would follow from what has been written over and over and over again, never would have allowed 2012 Josh Hamilton to happen to his clubhouse. 

Clearly, 2012 Michael Young was unable to reign in the eccentric Hamilton and now a whispered narrative is beginning to emerge from the clubhouse:  Hamilton was an emotional drain in the room;  they had to twist Hamilton's arm to play on far too many occasions; Hamilton didn't fit in with the grinder mentality that the rest of the roster possessed; Hamilton was on an island in the room; players rolled their eyes at Hamilton's maladies, mental or physical, real or imagined, etc.

Was there simply nothing Young could do to control what we are led to believe is a clubhouse that he controls so completely that it would implode if he were to leave it? Or has he lost his clout? 

And if he has lost his clout, was it because he was allowed to play every day in spite of being an anchor in the middle of the lineup that the rest of the guys were forced to attempt to drag around for 162 games?   Did his credibility vanish when it became clear that no one would hold him accountable? Can you still be the accountability czar in the clubhouse if nobody is holding you accountable?

Which brings us to Ron Washington.  

I am not saying that it was Michael Young's responsibility to enforce accountability for the 2012 Rangers. I am simply taking note of what we have been told by those closest to the team:  Whether or not it was Young's job to wield massive power and control in the clubhouse, he did so.  Either the manager ceded that power to him, he simply took it, or the manager's inability to wield control over the clubhouse forced Young to step up to fill the void.  However Young came to power, he did so to such a degree that he made himself indispensible.

But I have to ask: Can a manager who has either ceded or lost control of enforcing accountability in the clubhouse get it back?  Can a manager who has ceded or lost control of enforcing accountability in the clubhouse to one player ever assume the role of enforcing accountability when the player who has usurped that power fails to get the job done and is not held accountable by anyone?

The 2010 and 2011 Rangers were shown  that if you don't get the job done, someone else would be given the chance  to do the job. That really wasn't the case in 2012.

In 2010, Chris Davis came into the season with the first base job, but he didn't produce enouth to keep it (.571 OPS in 45 games) so he was replaced. Justin Smoak also failed to get the job done  became expendable by not producing sufficiently (.670 OPS in 70 games) to make himself essential. The Rangers went out to get Jorge Cantu to fill a void at first, but he didn't produce (.605 OPS in 30 games).

And then they gave the manager a rookie, considered by many to be a marginal prospect at best, named Mitch Moreland. The manager gave Moreland a chance to earn the job, and he did (.833 OPS in 47 games).  In spite of being a rookie with no experience, Ron Washington penciled him into the lineup more often than not down the stretch and was rewarded with a stunning post-season performance by the kid (.348 / .400 / .500 / .900 in 15 postseason games). 

Contrast that with 2012 when the manager was handed two of the top 10 offensive prospects in baseball and refused to see what they could do.  Worse, he evidently used the lack of a veteran bench as his excuse for over-exerting his veteran starters.  On several occasions, one of the worst shortstops in recent MLB history -- several years removed from playing the position -- got a handful of starts as the best shortstop prospect in baseball sat and watched from the dugout.

What might Jurickson Profar have offered to the 2012 Rangers? Might he have been to the the 2012 Rangers what Moreland was to the 2010 Rangers? Might he have been more than that?  

I think back to an interview I did for the DMN with Jon Daniels after the 2008 season and one of the things that stood out to me was what Daniels said in response to a question about what he thought Washington brought to the table.  In a transparent poke at Buck Showalter, Daniels explained that if the entire Rangers roster fell ill in Anaheim for some reason and was unable to post up, they could send Washington the Bakersfield roster and he would go to war with them against the Angels expecting to win.

The point of the story was that Washington simply took whatever grocieries he was given and went about the business of making the best meal he could out of them.  Clearly, that guy no longer exists. In 2012, he wanted to cook with the old groceries even if they were starting to rot because he didn't know what the new groceries would taste like.

A clubhouse insider recently told me a story about a member of the front office baseball operations braintrust suggesting that Washington bench Kinsler for a week this summer.  This was scoffed at by the insider on the grounds that "you don't punish Major League players."  He did not say whether Washington shared this belief, but it sounds consistent with what Washington did this summer.  But the point that is lost on insider who relayed this story is that benching a player for failing to do his job is notpunishment.  It is accountability. 

I have thought about all of this constantly this week for somewhat obvious reasons. Sure, Joe Girardi is fortunate that it wasn't Derek Jeter but Alex Rodriguez who went completely into the tank this October. He never could have done that to Jeter.  Then again, Jeter held up his end of the bargain. He didn't put his manager in the position where he had to deal with that sort of a mess. Washington had to endure an entire summer with both his Jeter (Young) and his A-Rod (Hamilton) providing next to nothing to the cause and no doubt this was a monster of a problem, but it is equally clear that Washington did a very poor job of addressing the mess. 

Thus, it is certainly compelling to see a manager who refuses to sit by doing nothing about it while watching his ballclub go down the tubes with a fading star serving as an anchor dragging the thing down.  Having the cojones to sit Rodriguez did not save the Yankees season for Girardi, but I would bet that that there won't be a single player who shows up at Yankees camp in the spring who thinks he is entitled to a damn thing.  An old, stale organization just got a big wakeup call from within.  As their season went down the tubes, the manager sent the entire organization a message that there are no entitlements and there will be accountability.

Meanwhile in Arlington, the final message from the manager was just the opposite and, absent a significant intervention on the part of the front office, Rangers will report to Surprise in the spring with some believing that there is nothing they can do to lose a job and others wondering if there is anything they can do to earn one. And if that doesn't change, this thing will continue to grow very stale.

I am certainly not advocating that the Rangers make the same mistakes that the Red Sox made in response to their epic meltdown of 2011. Ron Washington won't be replaced and he shouldn't be.  He can't march in there in the spring and suddenly suddenly become a ball-busting manipulator, but he must get back to being the guy we heard about in the early years of his tenure here:  the guy who told players the truth, whether they liked it or not; the guy who assigned roles based on maximizing his personnel assets rather than worrying about hurting someone's feelings.

The front office will probably try to make Washington's job easier by moving Michael Young.  If they succeed, then Washington will have to find a way to assert himself more as a leader and hold players accountable and if not -- which is the far more likely scenario -- he will have to find a way to demonstrate to the rest of the clubhouse that the Rangers will once again be a meritocracy come hell or high water and that those that don't do their jobs will be held accountable. No matter who they are.