The world needs more of ’em, imo.

but didn’t see any quotes. but i didn’t read the entire article.

/AJM

either after or during the Winter Meetings, I’ll have to check.

But Kinsler did mention yesterday that blogs and media had been openly talking about Young moving to third last year so surely he knew that had to be a possibility.

right around the time the Winter Meetings ended.

So yes, a month.

1. The Contract. He has a bad contract, so what, it’s done, my friend. Explain to me how we can change his contract? We can’t.

We could try and move him to be rid of it. That’s a start. And so what if it’s done? What’s that have to do with anything? It’s there, it’s bad, it would be better if it was gone. I’m not sure why it matters that it’s already been done. That only makes it suck more because it’s actual.

You still never told me why we should cut him some slack. And if your answer is “because of the contract,” that’s just senseless.

2. I never said we SHOULD make mistakes, I said people make mistakes. Do they not?

Yes, they do. And the best teams avoid them. Just because another team makes mistakes doesn’t mean we should look the other way when the Rangers make a particularly awful mistake. You’re just spouting useless truisms right now.

After all, why is Young the bad guy when he simply signed the deal?

Who said he’s a bad guy for signing the contract?

Why not blame Hicks more

I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who likes Tom Hicks more than Michael Young. . .

after all, he’s apparently lost a ton of his net worth with foolish investments.

And even if he hadn’t and spent huge money, that wouldn’t make it a good contract. Just an easier to swallow but still just as bad contract.

Michael Young is not Chan Ho Park.

No, but his contract is just about as bad.

4. Players must perform, it’s in the contract you hate so much.

Oh, yeah. I see.

Logic is solid, but, logic says one pro-Michael Young GM makes a trade possible.

It’s not a majority that matters. The rest can hate everything about him.

This is all pretty irrelevant to the prior post. You pushed off the GMs opinions because they were just trying to create negativity. Obviously it only takes one GM who likes MY (and MY waiving is no-trade) for him to be moved. Who cares? Everyone knows that. What’s it go to do with what you said?

Question, how much is he over-paid? So, is all this fuss about money? How much?

By around 35% or so if the particulars of his contract as we understand them are correct. And that’s IF he doesn’t decline. He’s 32, that’s an awfully huge if that I doubt anyone gets behind.

And it’s not like the bonus/deferred portion of the contract doesn’t exist, so it’s really closer to 50% overpaid, and, again, only if he doesn’t decline.

And this is MLB, so. . .

Dan Symborowski, from Hardball times, I think, made some good comments on here recently. All owners in MLB make money. Some just choose to reinvest less into their team.

JD needs to remain respectful and stick to his guns.

JD did NOTHING wrong here.

Lets be honest here. The reason the Rangers signed Young for a giant extension is that they thought that Young brought something to the team beyond his play on the field. Something that neither ARod nor Teixeira brought – a selfless leadership. In an organization full of kids coming up, they needed a stable leader who played the game the “right way”.

That is why stat-centric people, especially around here, hated the contract. You can’t put a value on clubhouse presence (regardless of how much, positive or negative), and while they were certainly paying far too much for that intangible, in Young’s case it had a non-trivial value. Sure he may be overpaid, but if he extracts an extra win out of two or three guys on the team, he’s not nearly as bad to have on the roster.

So six months ago, I’d have argued that yes, Young is overpaid, but it isn’t the disaster that Cahill keeps whining about. But now, Young has shown that his intangible value is worthless. He’s merely a sum of declining offensive skills with limited defensive value, a clubhouse presence about as desirable as Milton Bradley in a bad year.

At this point, after Young’s temper tantrum, there is no reason for JD to try to placate Young. He’s blown it and sealed his own fate. The Rangers should tell him to go to 3b, play there and shut up. Or opt to void the contract.

Sitting next to Young.

People should not admit they were wrong when they weren’t.

This is Young’s mess – let him deal with it. Sure JD and Nolan can keep saying that they respect him and want him to play 3b for the team. But I don’t want to hear any “I’m sorry” for treating him like an employee under contract (unless he says those actually words)

He was goofy looking in a Simple Jack kind of a way and was always smiling.

is that the young players look to the veterans who are older than JD. My bet is that most of the players that don’t respect JD were ones he’s traded, Young, and maybe Blalock (though I’d hate to group him in here just because he’s been teammates and friends with Young for so long). Maybe Millwood too. I doubt Padilla really cares one way or another and I can nearly guarantee he hasn’t talked to Mench about his feelings. But what you are hearing is probably a very vocal minority. Most of this team is trying to carve out a role on this team and trying to become an everyday player. I don’t think they are going around bitching about how terrible of a GM JD is. And we did have a voice from the pitchers or at least the bullpen in CJ for a while. From what he said, I don’t the pitchers are part of the “JD’s terrible” crowd.

. . . it sure did seem like players had a problem with Billy Beane for treating them appropriately, as well.

But couldn’t this attitude of "news like this needs to come from Nolan!" be a problem?

Yep. But then, it gets back to chain of command issues, and that has been a problem with the Rangers ever since Tom Hicks took over.