Texas Holds a Fire Sale To Salvage Future

When the Rangers promoted Jon Daniels to general manager in October 2005, the 28-year-old became the youngest GM in the game’s history. Owner Tom Hicks tried to mimic the Red Sox, whose wunderkind GM Theo Epstein had engineered Boston’s first championship since 1918 just a season before. Instead of raising pennants, however, Daniels has been forced to run up the white flag.Last in the AL West at 46–59, and headed toward their seventh losing season out of eight, the Rangers conducted a fire sale prior to yesterday’s trading deadline. In first baseman Mark Teixeira and closer Eric Gagne, Daniels held the two most desirable commodities in an otherwise thin market. He sent the team’s top hitter to Atlanta and their top reliever to Boston in an effort to replenish not only the big club but a depleted minor league system.Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way. Coming off of an 80–82 season, Daniels replaced veteran manager Buck Showalter with highly-regarded A’s coach Ron Washington. He didn’t spend lavishly; his big-dollar move was resigning Vicente Padilla, a stalwart in a mediocre rotation, to a reasonable three-year deal. Elsewhere, he made solid value pickups in Gagne, the former elite closer coming off two injury-wracked seasons, center fielder Kenny Lofton, and outfielder Frank Catalanotto. As short-term upgrades, they were expected to nudge the club toward contention.Then the team stumbled to a 10–15 start in April, and went from bad to worse when the injury bug bit. Third baseman Hank Blalock’s season ended due to a circulatory problem in mid-May, Teixeira missed a month before the All-Star break due to a strained quadriceps, and second baseman Ian Kinsler lost all of July to a stress fracture in his foot. All-Star shortstop Michael Young got off to the slowest start of his career, and the rotation yielded an MLB-worst 5.99 ERA, with journeyman Jamey Wright the only pitcher below 5.50. Calls to fire Washington made their way from disgruntled players to major outlets.With the season already shot, Hicks backed his beleaguered GM with a contract extension and tasked him with dismantling the moribund team. The problem is that Daniels’ track record includes a few high-profile fleecings that call into question his ability to undertake a rebuilding effort. To wit:• December 2005: traded second baseman Alfonso Soriano (a pending free agent) to Washington for outfielder Brad Wilkerson. Soriano swatted 46 home runs for the Nats, while Wilkerson, already coming off of an injury-plagued season, hit just .222 with 15 homers in 95 games. A shadow of his former self because of persistent shoulder problems, he continues to be a drag on the offense.• January 2006: traded first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, starter Chris Young, and outfielder Terrmel Sledge to San Diego for starter Adam Eaton, closer Akinori Otsuka, and a prospect. Otsuka seized the closer role and reeled off 32 saves after incumbent Francisco Cordero struggled, but a recurrent finger injury limited Eaton to just 65 innings of 5.12 ERA ball. Meanwhile, Gonzalez, the first pick of the 2000 draft, ended a five-year wait for a big league job by hitting .304/.362/.500 with a teamhigh 24 homers. Young took advantage of moving from a hitter’s haven to pitcherfriendly Petco Park, blossoming from a back-of-the-rotation starter to the Padres’ #2; his 1.82 ERA currently leads the NL. The duo’s efforts keyed the Padres’ NL West title and have them in contention again.• July 2006: traded Cordero plus three others to Milwaukee for outfielders Carlos Lee and Nelson Cruz. Though just 51-52 at the time, the Rangers were four games back in the AL West, and convinced themselves they were contenders. Pending free agent Lee, who’d already bashed 28 homers, continued to slug in Texas, but departed for the Astros over the winter. Cruz, a Lee clone, struggled in limited duty. He began this year as the team’s right fielder but was demoted to Triple-A after hitting just .188 with three homers. In Milwaukee, Cordero regained his All-Star form.Despite that history, Daniels did well at the deadline, particularly in dealing Teixeira. While trading the 27-year-old slugger won’t improve the offense in the short term, the move was unavoidable. Teixeira won’t be a free agent until after next season, but the Scott Boras client is determined to test the market and unlikely to return to a team that’s gone spendthrift since trading Alex Rodriguez. In return, Daniels snagged a veritable talent factory’s top three prospects in 22-year-old catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, 18-year-old shortstop Elvis Andrus, and 21-year-old starter Matt Harrison, plus two lower-level pitchers.Most intriguing is Saltalamacchia, a 6-foot-4-inch switch-hitter who projects as one of the game’s top-hitting catchers. Already boasting an elite backstop in 23-year-old Brian McCann, the Braves found at-bats for “Salty” at first base; after a hot start, a slump dragged his numbers down to .284 AVG/.333 OBA/.411 SLG. That’s light for a first sacker, but solid for a catcher, particularly on a team getting considerably less from incumbent Gerald Laird. Andrus is years away from the majors, but he’s been playing against competition that’s three years his senior, and with Young signed through 2013, time is on his side. Harrison’s a big strike-throwing lefty with solid control and good velocity; his recent shoulder soreness prompted the inclusion of the other two pitchers as insurance.In shipping Gagne to the Red Sox, Daniels acquired immediate help and future promise. Southpaw Kason Gabbard, 25, has filled in admirably for the injured Curt Schilling, putting up a 3.73 ERA through seven starts. His ability to induce ground balls by the dozen will aid a rotation that’s giving up the league’s highest slugging percentage. Outfielder David Murphy, 25, is a card-carrying member of the Future Fourth Outfielders of America; he’s a good enough defender to handle center field, and while his plate discipline improved markedly over the past year, his power remains middling. The key to the deal is 17-year-old Dominican Engel Beltre, a toolsy outfielder with good speed, a good arm, and power that’s evoked comparisons to Barry Bonds and Darryl Strawberry from scouts. It may take a decade to see who came out ahead here.Daniels made one other solid move prior to that pair, shipping Lofton back to Cleveland for another catching prospect, Max Ramirez. Thanks to a refined approach, the 22-year-old is hitting .306/.420/.500 in High-A, but his defense is suspect, he’s undersized (5-foot-11, 170 lbs), and he joins a farm system already stocked with the highly-regarded Taylor Teagarden behind the plate. A shift likely looms, though a bat of his caliber won’t go to waste.These moves won’t turn the Rangers’ 2007 around, but they’ve gone a long way toward restocking a system whose minor league talent ranked among the game’s bottom ten. For doing that, Daniels may just have earned his extension.Mr. Jaffe is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseball prospectus.com.

Texas Holds a Fire Sale To Salvage Future

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