DALLAS — Before firing his president and channeling the typical exasperated Rangers fan in the process, Ray Davis had been a ghost. Just as he promised. He once said he never expected to do another press conference. That was 11 years ago. By my count, he’s violated his oath about as often as a Trappist monk.
No Rangers owner in my time has been nearly as reclusive. Taking the pulse of the others was never a problem. I talked to Eddie Chiles about how he accidentally almost sold off the Rangers to Tampa Bay, laughed in dugouts with George Bush, traded shots by email with Tom Hicks.
Ray Davis? We shook hands once.
The reason for belaboring the point is that it’d be rare for any owner to sanction the dismissal of a manager or head coach, then, 48 hours later, whack the guy who did the firing. Crazy stuff. The fact that Davis did it suggests he’s not the silent accomplice he’s always seemed.
Frankly, I figured Davis was just fine with Jon Daniels, and I’m pretty sure JD was under the same impression.
Explaining his motivations for firing a man who’d worked for him 12 years to the month, Davis famously said at the press conference, “We are not good. And we haven’t been good for six years.”
Now that he’s come out of his cave, it seems obvious to ask why he waited so long, and what does it mean going forward?
For all the Daniels haters out there, of course, the announcement was reason to crow. Jon Boy, they still call him, even after all these years. A sizable portion couldn’t even begrudge him the only World Series appearances in franchise history. They hold that the 2010 and ‘11 seasons were the work of Nolan Ryan, not Daniels, despite all reporting to the contrary. Easy enough to see how this happens. Ryan is a bona fide Texas legend, while Daniels is an Ivy Leaguer from Queens.
Listen, I’m Texan, born and bred. I’ve worshiped at the feet of Big Tex. Stared dizzily from atop the San Jacinto Monument. Remembered the Alamo. Written about the Galveston flood. Driven through countless Dairy Queens. One of the lessons I’ve learned on these many trails is that we occasionally get tangled up in our own mystique. That, and people believe what they want to believe these days.
If Davis wanted to fire Daniels simply because the Rangers haven’t been good in the last six years, it probably was reason enough. Daniels’ dismal record in draft and development made another compelling argument.
Except when you consider the Rangers’ farm system hasn’t been this deep since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when Tom Grieve and Sandy Johnson stockpiled the likes of Pudge Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Ruben Sierra, Sammy Sosa, Kenny Rogers, Kevin Brown and Bobby Witt, to name just a few. Can Jack Leiter, Kumar Rocker and Josh Jung follow in their fossilized footprints? Seems like a tall order, but if they simply end up in the same neighborhood, it’ll be quite a parting gift from the former president.
As for the Rangers’ immediate prospects, Daniels never sold the half-billion dollar signings of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien as the final pieces of a contending team. He signed them because he had the payroll flexibility, and talent of that caliber rarely comes available. Even then, he made it fairly clear that 2023 was still the target for playoff contention.
Somehow that message got lost in the translation this season. Seager and Semien raised hopes, even expectations. The organization’s own marketing early on this season suggested that fall baseball might be imminent.
Another lesson learned: Nothing frustrates this fan base quite like overpaid talent and promises deferred.
Is Davis, ultimately, no different from the average Ranger fan? Does it bother him to get so little bang for his buck?
Or did he finally decide, as most owners do, that attendance rules?
Globe Life Field is drawing 24,429 fans a game heading into Friday, roughly 1,500 fewer than last year, when the product was far inferior. This isn’t what Davis had in mind at his last press conference, where he announced an agreement with the city of Arlington to build a retractable roof stadium. New digs invariably mean overflowing revenue streams, except that’s not now it played out. First, it was the pandemic, then a pathetic product. Despite a park as cool as the other side of your pillow, the Rangers are averaging a little more than half what they drew across the street in the summer of 2012.
Did Davis fire Daniels hoping a clean slate might invigorate all those discontented fans? Hard to say. He certainly didn’t make life any easier on the Rangers’ front office. Daniels, in the last year of his contract, was already widely believed to be stepping back from the controls as Chris Young studied up on the operating instructions. As he proved back in the day with the impulsive A.J. Preller, Daniels generally works well with others. Young was no different. He might even have had the last say on taking Rocker with their first pick.
Now either Young has to take on an entirely different side of the organization, or Davis must hire another president.
And what happens if the next president or GM or manager doesn’t work out? Will Davis have a quicker trigger then? Or will his decisions be driven by turnstiles?
These are questions to be answered another day at another press conference. Maybe I won’t be on vacation next time.
