has a ton to do with it too.

Were we not a team building from within before he got the job? Did we not have a low end payroll before he got the job that is going to stay the same next year?

And until his methodologies like sprints and throwing batting practice start translating into Ws then he hasn’t done anything. Maybe he should focus on the primary job of Team President which is to get butts in the seats and tell Mr Hicks that you don’t raise season ticket prices after so many straight losing seasons. Maybe he should be doing that instead of trying to get everybody in our organization to be freak of nature HOF fireballers.

I think Adam was reacting to the feeling that sports starts are somehow qualified just because they played well, not against Ryan himself. Ryan needs to be judged on his actions and effectiveness, not his Hall of Fame playing status. So far, so good.

that Nolan is more of a help to JD than a hindrance. Hicks is just loony enough of an owner to make poor decisions and JD probably isn’t powerful enough to change his mind. But Hicks will listen to Nolan. If Nolan says "we’ve done the math, the team should (raise payroll to sign Sheets/re-sign Bradley/make a big risky trade/etc.), Hicks will listen to him. I’m not sure JD has that much influence over the guy with the money.

But I think you are misunderstanding things. We, or at least I and I believe quite a few others, don’t view Nolan as just a figurehead. He did have legitimate success owning a minor league franchise. He made it a fun experience for fans and families to come to a ballgame. But what he didn’t have any control over whatsoever is personnel. None. Just like whoever owns the Roughriders, or OKC, or Bakersfield, or hickory doesn’t have any control over who plays for their team Nolan had zero control over who put on a Round Rock jersey. That was all handled by the major league parent organization. Nolan also didn’t have any influence on how that ML club developed their players. Each team has their own ways of developing their prospects in their minor league system.

So when Nolan Ryan comes in and seemingly steps into a role where he is trying to implement his way of training and his way of this and his way of that it does irk me as a Ranger fan. There are numerous examples of great players being complete idiots in front office or coaching positions. Isiah Thomas, Micheal Jordan, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, etc. Those were some of the all time greats in their respective sports but when put in a leadership position their teams did not succeed. And I do realize some players do have success as coaches/front office personnel. But when Nolan comes in and starts saying “Back in my day” or “This is how I did it” it makes me cringe because not everybody is capable of being Nolan Ryan. Hell no one is capable of being Nolan Ryan.

The hire of Maddux was weird to me only because how it was reported. It was reported that they didn’t even interview him face to face and it was a Nolan driven decision. Im sorry but the team President shouldn’t be deciding who the pitching coach is and damn sure shouldn’t be doing so without even a face to face meeting.

Personally I think Nolans primary focus should be finding a way to get people to the stadium. Tell Tom Hicks to not raise season ticket prices after another sub 500 season. Start producing some television commercials where Nolan is urging fans to come out to the ballpark. Find a way to get all the OF wall panels to match to make the ballpark look nicer. If after all that he has time to go work with some of the younger pitchers thats fine. Nobody is going to turn down advice from a HOF player.

Wipe his memories of Boston, give him plastic surgery to make him look like Doug Mathis and send a surgically altered Mathis to replace him in Boston?

If that is the case would you do a Salty+Feliz for Buchholz? Which has more upside Feliz or Buchholz?

Sheets seems curious… I want to agree with you, but what is his worst-case? For example, what if he’s more than a little sideways medically?

Granted, he’s not Mulder or Lieber, but might his medicals prevent any and all 4-year offers if they’re bad enough?

I think the actual worst-case is an incentive-laden 1-year deal.

have no false Pedroias before Face.

I disagree. From my understanding of the system (which I admit is limited to only a short amount of time reading it), I don’t like it. I think that its quantitatively shallow. My interpretation of what they do is perform regressions on players stats, normalize them to the population, and then basically claim that there is a 50% confidence that the stats will fall one way or another. In a way, its assuming that everything that causes noise within one players performance can cause noise in other players’ performances.

Now, I’ll admit my opinion is biased by my background since I model complex systems. You can understand general trends at a population level – as is being done in the Marcels system – but there is very little to be gained at the individual level. There is no “projecting” going on here – its just making a regression from their past numbers and adding noise. Since Masterson had good numbers last year and Buchholz didn’t, he’ll look better.