Rangers May Fire Ron Washington
After a 7-16 start to the season - including a current 7 game losing streak - executives of the Texas Rangers will meet this weekend to address the club’s problems. Out of this meeting could come the end of manager Ron Washington’s short tenure in Texas, according to Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News.
Washington is scheduled to meet with team president Nolan Ryan and General Manager Jon Daniels today. Owner Tom Hicks is scheduled to be briefed by the end of the weekend.
Grant sums up the Rangers woes pretty well, reminding us that only five major league teams have ever lost 20 games before May 1 (Texas already has 16 losses); that the Rangers have the league’s highest ERA (5.54), lowest fielding percentage (.975), most errors (23) and rank 12th of 14 teams in runs scored per game (4.0).
Regarding Washington’s job security, Grant writes, “(Daniels) said he had talked with Ryan and Hicks about media speculation regarding Washington’s job, but had not addressed the manager’s job security. Hicks declined to comment.” So it sounds like the young GM and the club owner aren’t exactly giving their manager a vote of confidence.
But shouldn’t some of this blame lie with the man handing out the contracts and setting the roster? Y’know, the man who thought it might be a wise idea to trade Chris Young and Adrian Gonzalez for a pile of crap, and the man who thought it’d be a good idea to enter the season with Kevin Millwood as his ace?
In my opinion, I think new president Nolan Ryan should shelve the idea of firing Washington and instead put Jon Daniels in a Robin Ventura-type headlock for some of the bonehead moves Daniels has made over the years. What you say?
Filed under: Texas Rangers, _Polls
This is a tough one, the Rangesr are god awful right now . but it’s hard to say that it’s these 2’s fault or that they simply inherited a mega bomb that blew up big time in their face.
The one trade that was really really ugly for Daniel was the first one he pulled. the Gonzalez / Young for Eaton / Otsuka deal, after that most of his moves were at least logical, i give him credit for at least putting the Ranger’s farm system into reasonable shape again, but that’s going to take awhile to show the real dividence.
Organization like Texas that is sucking badly and has never actually been good (the only times they even reached the playoffs were when Nolan Ryan was simply too good for the rest of the team to suck enough unles i’m mistaken) needs patience. they need complete rebuilds. they can’t just hope for quick fixes.
I agree with you RW. A team like this needs patience before it can compete. Firing Ron Washington now would be giving him a raw deal.
But that trade you cite was pretty awful, no?
While I would agree that the Rangers don’t have much to work with, Ron Washington is still not a Major League Manager. I’m sure he was very good as a third base coach or whatever, but he doesn’t have the hard and gruff attitude needed to run a Major League Ballclub. Granted, I’m not sure you could classify the Rangers as a “Major League” Ballclub, but still… Washington isn’t the solution…. nor is Daniels…. and Hicks is an idiot. Sell the team to Nolan Ryan and go back to whatever business related garbage you di before.
And RollingWave…. the Rangers never made the playoffs with Nolan Ryan. It was about three years after Ryan retired that they finally earned their first opportunity to be tossed out of the playoffs by the Yankees.
it was awful, but there’s at least some semblence of logic at that time.
Gonzalez and Young were both nto playing too well, in Gonzalez’s case he’s blocked by Teix and he wasn’t showing much power even in Arlington. who woulda thought a hitter could suck in Arlington but do well in PECTO?
Young is a guy I just can’t really get myself to like, even as a Sabe guy that doesn’t care too much about SB he’s taking it a bit too far by allowing just about everyone to steal against him like little league. a considerable amount of his success was due to the park change.
Some people actually thought Eaton had potential (then again, so did Carl Pavano ekkk) and Otsuka was pretty good for awhile.