has to take some of the blame for this team doing bad, he can’t just fire Washington and call it solved.

with the coach, not the GM. But its just stupid to think that these guys wouldnt want to play for Wash. He is thought to be very easy going. I wonder if he just comes off as being really dumb, not so baseball “coach” smart.

Daniels does need to take blame for putting this team on the field though. I liked our odds coming in as I do every year, but then, every year I set myself up for major dissapointment.

Current positions that could use a major upgrade- 3rd, SS, 1b, C. Oh well.

Are you saying 3B because Blalock is injured or due to Blalock? He has been awesome this year so I don’t know where you get that position from. Plus he is very cost efficient.. And if we start playing Salty everyday like we should at catcher then we shouldn’t need an upgrade there.

I’m willing to give Daniels the benefit of the doubt with this year’s roster at this point. He’s made mistakes in the past, but for nearly the past year or so I’ve been in favor of nearly every move (save probably Broussard). He’s handcuffed by Hicks’s unwillingness to really open his coffers (and the general lack of premium talent on the free market) and has managed to make this team one that should be formidable in the next few years.

To fire Daniels at this point would be ignoring the time horizon for which he’s made nearly all his decisions in the past year-plus. It’s easy to say he’s on the hot seat though since this team has started so poorly, but I don’t know what we really expected out of this team this year.

I think there has been a general overreaction to the Rangers losing streak and subsequent meetings. Myself included. It was, however, fun to speculate about all of the possibilities.

has until the end of next year, if not longer, in my book.

I think the best thing for the Rangers is what is happening in Dallas with the Stars right now. I truly believe that the reason the Rangers went into their nosedive after seemingly being set to churn out successful baseball at the end of the 90’s was the Stars winning the Stanley Cup. Reason is because Hicks practically bought his title in hockey. Frankly I am too lazy to look up the numbers but I’m pretty confident the Stars had one of the highest payrolls during their Cup run. Hicks believed that would translate to baseball. So what did he do, he went out and spent wildly. ARod, CHP, Todd Van Poppel, etc. He replaced Doug Melvin, who while not having the best track record with young pitchers had developed a very nice core of young positional prospects, with John Hart. So for the next several years he always thought we were that “one player away”. It was the same way with the Stars. The Bill Guerins and Jason Arnotts and such he would bring in because they were the best players available but he neglected the young guys. It still got him to the playoffs but we all saw they couldn’t make it out of the first round.

Now look at the Stars. They have an infusion of youth. Three rookie defensemen, which if you want to translate that to baseball would be like three rookie pitchers. They have identified their young forwards and locked them up long term, Ribiero and Morrow. This year seeing how they were going they went out and traded for another young forward with a big contract in Richards. Add in season vets like Modano, Zubov, Barnes, etc and they are arguably the hottest team in hockey right now.

Now lets look at the Rangers. Two years ago he hired a young GM who would give the farm system the attention it needed. During last season he committed to a full rebuild. Now looking toward the next few years the Rangers will have several young pitchers breaking into their rotation(Hurley, Harrison, McCarthy, Gabbard), they are identifying their young positional players and locking them up(Kinsler this season, Hamilton probably after this season, Salty and Murphy in the next couple years), they have a handful of veterans to sprinkle in there(Millwood, Young, Blalock, Bradley, etc), and when they find themselves in the hunt they can go out and acquire that big name guy to put them over the top.