Why Texas Rangers are cleaning house

The Texas Rangers fired Jon Daniels as president of baseball operations days after they dropped fourth-year manager Chris Woodward. The former had served the MLB outfit for 17 years. 

“Jon’s accomplishments in his 17 years running our baseball operations department have been numerous. … His impact on the growth of our player development, scouting, and analytics groups has been immense. Jon has always had the best interests of the Rangers organization in mind on and off the field and in the community. But the bottom line is we have not had a winning record since 2016 and for much of that time, have not been competitive in the AL West division,” team owner Ray Davis said. 

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The firings come as the Rangers are on the verge of missing post-season for the sixth consecutive year. To make the cut, the Texas will have to win at least 29 of its last 46 games.

The team has started cleaning house less than nine months after they committed more than a half-billion dollars to sign free agent infielders Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, and starting pitcher Jon Gray.

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The Texas Rangers are now looking for a new manager and have also changed front-office leadership.

What the Rangers really hope to do over these final seven weeks is to build momentum going into 2023, which general manager Chris Young said is still when they expect to be a playoff-caliber team again.

“We want to continue to create a competitive, energetic team that takes the field night in, night out prepared to win,” Young said. “And I think that we want to see improvement in our fundamentals, just the basic fundamentals. It’s something that we haven’t executed those at the level we need to to become a championship team.”

Texas will get more looks at youngsters like speedy outfielders Leody Taveras and Bubba Thompson, infielders Josh Smith and Ezequiel Duran, and left-handed starter Cole Ragans, who are all already in the big leagues.

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The next full-time manager will be the fourth for Texas since Daniels became the team’s general manager in October 2005.

The Rangers won American League championships in 2010 and 2011 under Ron Washington, the first manager hired by Daniels after Buck Showalter was fired at the end of the 2006 season. Washington resigned late in the 2014 season for personal reasons.

Jeff Banister won AL West titles the next two seasons but was gone less than two years after that. The Rangers then hired Woodward, who was coming off back-to-back National League championship seasons as third base coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“I take a lot of responsibility for our performance over the last six years, and we haven’t been good enough,” Daniels said earlier this week. “But ultimately, this is a team effort. … When we were good, it wasn’t about me. It’s always been a team effort. We have a ways to go. We have a lot of good people here. As far as my personal accountability or situation, that’s something we’ll address down the line.”

The Rangers are clearly better than they were last season, when they lost 102 games before adding All-Star shortstop Corey Seager ($325 million, 10 years), Gold Glove second baseman Marcus Semien ($175 million, seven years) and starting pitcher Jon Gray ($56 million, four years).

While those big-dollar signings last December didn’t immediately alter the team’s timetable for being a playoff contender, there was at least the expectation for more positive progress this season.

Interim manager Tony Beasley, the third base coach since 2015 and longest-tenured member of the coaching staff, will be given consideration for the full-time job. Young said the team’s win-loss record the rest of the season won’t necessarily reflect the level to which Beasley is a candidate.