From a blog post by Jim Reeves this morning:
OK, I think we've all pretty much agreed that the Rangers bungled the Michael Young situation badly. Jon Daniels and Ron Washington (and I've been told he said almost nothing) can't walk out of that meeting with Young feeling as he did.
We do? We all agree the Rangers bungled the situation badly?
According to Reeves in this morning's column, the correct way to handle the situation would have been to beg Young to move to third base, and when he said no, come up with something else.
Presumably that would involve trading Elvis Andrus for whatever you could get for him, because if Young doesn't want to move off of shortstop, and you aren't going to make him, then there's no point in having Andrus in the organization.
So, here's what I don't get...how could Daniels and Washington have walked out of that meeting with Young feeling happy?
I find the suggestions that the problem wasn't with the fact that they wanted Young to move, but with the fact that they told him he was moving instead of asking him to move, a bit disingenuous. We are supposed to believe that Young is so mad at being told he was going to move to third base that he demanded a trade, but if the g.m. and manager had just politely asked, he would have been fine and would have agreed with it?
That's crap.
So what was supposed to happen? How should they have handled the situation? Just accepted that Young is going to be at shortstop forever more? Punt it until spring training? Hope that Young decided, on his own, that he should switch positions?
I don't get it. The Rangers may well have bungled the situation -- I don't know. But I'm not quite sure how it is those on the outside believe the situation could better have been handled, other than simply having management abdicate responsibility for the decision and let Young do what he wanted to do.
Which, I guess, is what Reeves, Galloway, etc. want. After years of criticizing the Rangers for letting the players run the show, now the problem is that a player should be allowed to decide whether he's going to change positions or not.
Although I wish I could go find the old columns from a few years ago, when the Cowboys switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4 and wanted Greg Ellis to move to OLB. Because I don't remember nearly as much criticism of Bill Parcells & Co. from the sports media, and I remember a hell of a lot more criticism of a guy who was viewed as the ultimate team player at Valley Ranch being selfish and not making a position switch for the good of the team.