Dave Cameron on the Rangers

I’m not thrilled about getting Chelsea again, but I figured Liverpool would have to beat at least one English team on the way to the final, if not two. At least now we’ll get Bayern Munich or Barca if we advance, and there’s no manager better at knocking off Spanish clubs in Europe than Benitez.

In any case, it’s going to be hard going from here on out, but I’m optimistic that after beating United, Chelsea, and Madrid twice this year, that the Reds can win #6.

It’s basically a way to recoup some of the money you spend on new players. Ownership usually sets a budget for player purchases each off-season, so selling off players you don’t need gives you a little extra over your allotted budget. Not all clubs do this, but the big ones usually do.

Say you’re told you can spend $20 million (net) to buy a new goalkeeper, midfielder, and forward. If you buy those three, you also have to get rid of the guys they’re replacing. So if you sell the three old players for $10 million, you can then spend $30 million on the new guys and still stay within your net budget.

I’m fine with hating Loria. However when that is just part of an organizations rating and he gives a B-, B-, and B+ in the Front Office, and Major and Minor League talent areas I can’t see him justifying an overall grade of a D.

I’m sure many here would give Hicks a D or F. Does that mean the Rangers should be lower than they are? There is no way that a fairly new team with 2 WS championships and some very good talent in the Major and Minor leagues is the 2nd worst organization in baseball. Especially given the financial restraints they have to work with. That’s just insane imo.

They’d be at worst an intriguing dark horse in pretty much every other division.

you do realize they are poised to have one of the best rotations in baseball, right? And as dirk says below, the Jays have some legit talent coming up the system and would be much more competitive if they didn’t play in the same divison as three of the best four teams in baseball.

I thought his view was pretty well-balanced. His accusations are accurate regarding the pitching staff, although I think you have to include Padilla as a potential plus if you count on Millwood. Padilla is a headcase, no doubt, but when it all clicks, he is a pretty ridiculous pitcher.

Although it does frustrate me to see the B-Mac/Danks trade included as a negative for Daniels, and I think he should’ve at least noted Daniels’s recent drafts, overall it evened out considering how much he values Hicks’s supposed commitment to spending money (which may be a prediction that comes to fruition if/when the team starts seriously contending).

He dabbles too much occasionally, but he has proven time and again that he’ll spend money when really needed (except for Juan Cruz, so we should whine forever about Hicks now…). I still see Nolan’s role as keeping Hicks in check, not Daniels. Which I guess is my problem – there is this idea that Daniels is some kid running loose who needs to be controlled.

When Daniels came into the GM role, he had a franchise with little farm system and a team facing a “win-now” set of talent. His moves that first offseason have to be looked at in that light: the Young/AGon trade was motivated by two things: nowhere to play Gonzalez because Teixeira wouldn’t move off first, and the pressure to bolster a bullpen that hurt the team in 2005. The Soriano trade was, in my opinion, a worse deal. But it too wasn’t horrendous at the time. JD was trying to build a competitor with the pieces he had at the moment. He made first year mistakes and was taken advantage of by his colleagues since he was a rookie.

Since then though, his mistakes haven’t been major. Danks/B-Mac was just baseball fate going against us – nothing more. The whole Sosa thing? Far too overblown around here – Botts proved that he wasn’t worth the aggravation. The Michael Young contract? Probably as much Hicks as Daniels, and it provided stability the organization needed with seeing Teixeira bolt and Soriano get dealt for peanuts. Gallaragga? Who cares. Ron Washington? Hicks more than JD, and passing on the alternative (Trey Hillman) hasn’t shown to be a mistake.

Put another way, since Daniels has been GM, the Rangers would have climbed such an organization depth chart every year – probably from high 20s in 2006 about 4-5 spots every season. Now they are 12th. We all know Hicks hasn’t helped with that. That is a huge annual improvement.

As for the Padres, every argument you have can be said for the Astros. They’re parallel organizations. They each had success in the mid-decade, but drafted horribly and focused on propping up aging clubs as opposed to building long-term depth. The ownership of each has been awful, which is very true. Yet Towers gets love and Houston gets bashed? I don’t get it.

He specifically says in there that he isn’t judging them on what they have done historically. San Diego fielding a winning team a few years ago isn’t relevant at all in the discussion of how likely they are to win a World Series in the future.

but Padilla was every bit as good as Millwood last year if not better.

I’m sorry, but 170 IP with an ERA+ of 87 isn’t going to cut it for me. That isn’t “decent starter” territory, it is mediocre back-end guy territory.

Matt Harrison was erratic, but showed a lot of promise. BMac was effective but not healthy. If there is any reason to be optimistic, it is them – not Millwood or Padilla

Now that I’ve scanned his other reviews, considering that a ‘B’ is the highest grade he’s handed out so far, I can’t really complain too much about it.

I just don’t get how he’s grading front offices. If you are grading based on how they’ve guided their club to their current situation, then you have to give Kevin Towers a much lower grade. If you are going off of past successes, then you have to give guys like Dombrowski higher grades.

It seems like he’s basically giving the sabermetric-minded GMs a positive bias, and the more old school guys lower grades. And then he’s arbitrarily applying past results to some people and not others. As much as I hate Sabean as a GM (who he gave a ’D’), you have to admit the Giants are in better shape than the Padres right now due to Sabean & co.‘s drafting, and both GMs have had similar successes and failures over the past decade. He gives Jocketty a ’C’ based solely on the fact he isn’t upgrading Cincy’s analysis like he’d like.

Anyway, I guess I’m complaining that Daniels is only one spot above Towers, who is simply a bad GM, imo, and the same as Seattle, who really hasn’t done all that much yet. Overall, it just looks like a case of him overrating Towers instead of underrating JD & co.

:D