Daniels, 28, to replace Hart as Rangers GM

[#1MavsFan]

ARLINGTON, Texas -- John Hart stepped down Tuesday as general manager of the Texas Rangers after a four-year stint in which he couldn't duplicate the success he had in Cleveland.

Hart's resignation came two days after the Rangers finished 79-83, their third losing season in four years under Hart and their fifth since winning their last AL West title in 1999.

Hart, whose teams won six division titles in his last seven years in Cleveland ending in 2001, will be replaced by assistant general manager Jon Daniels, who will become the youngest general manager in baseball at 28. Hart will remain a team consultant, the team said in a news release.

"John has brought a new level of professionalism to the Texas Rangers over the last four years," owner Tom Hicks said in a statement. "During his tenure the organization has improved on the field at the major-league level while enhancing the minor league system."

The Rangers contended just once during Hart's Texas tenure, finishing 89-73, third in the AL West but just three games out of first in 2004.

Hart's stint with the Rangers started slowly. Less than two months into the job, he signed free agent pitcher Chan Ho Park to a five-year, $65 million contract, and Park became one of the biggest busts in franchise history. Park was traded to San Diego this season after making just 68 starts over 3½ injury-plagued seasons.

The Park signing symbolized the difficulty Hart had building a pitching staff in Texas. Although the Rangers rode a surprising bullpen to their best team ERA in more than a decade last year, the pitching staff struggled again in 2005.

One of Hart's last official acts as GM was notifying Kenny Rogers that the team would not bring the 40-year-old left-hander back next season.

Hart's biggest move was the trade of Alex Rodriguez to the New York Yankees for Alfonso Soriano just before the start of spring training in 2004. Without Rodriguez, the Rangers' offense surged behind the new core of the team -- young infielders Michael Young, Hank Blalock and Mark Teixeira. All were acquired before Hart's arrival.

Hart also brought in manager Buck Showalter, the AL manager of the year last season.

Daniels joined the Rangers operations department in 2002 and was promoted to assistant general manager two years later.

"I'm confident in his abilities and for the continued growth of the organization," Hicks said.



http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2181048

[capitalcity]

Great.

Can he pitch?

[ames7]

Is great news. Of course, listening to the press conference just raised new annoying questions. Don't think Orel will be with us much longer, for instance. As always, it sure is nice not being able to trust one word that comes out of Tom Hicks' mouth.

[Drbio]

This confirms that Orel is on his way to Los Angeles.

Daniels is an exceptional choice for GM.

[sike]

double yawn...

[dirno2000]

Talk about being on the career fast track...this guy is the GM of a major league team at 28 and I'm wearing shorts.

[chumdawg]

Genius reference.

Now, if he would only take Showalter with him, I'd be a happy cat.

[dalmations202]

Didn't they just get rid of Grady Fuson last year so they could keep Hart, instead of promoting Fuson GM? WTF? ?

Will this Daniels actually be able to sign some pitching? ?

Hopefully this is the right way to go.... who knows when it comes to baseball anymore.

[Drbio]

From the genius of Jamey Newberg.....

THE NEWBERG REPORT

Jon Daniels's college degree is in applied economics and management.
"Applied economics" is what you think it is -- the utilization of economic
theories in real-world business.

Get set, go.

Educated in the ways of implementing economic models and trained on the job
to build baseball teams, Daniels is now charged with doing both. John Hart
resigned as Rangers general manager on Tuesday, moving into the advisory
role that had been reserved for him when he signed his last contract, and
Tom Hicks hired Daniels, Hart's top assistant, to become the eighth GM in
the franchise's 34-year history.

The Rangers were playing their sixth season when Daniels was born.

At age 28 and 41 days, Daniels became the youngest general manager in big
league history, and obviously that's going to be the headline nationally and
here in town, at least until he makes his first aggressive move. Not only
did Daniels not play the game, he's only been in baseball for five years.
His lack of experience is notable.

But so is his reputation in baseball circles. Every list of the game's top
"general managers prospects" the last couple years has included Daniels on
it, and the recent success of GMs like Theo Epstein, Brian Cashman, Mark
Shapiro, and (less so at this point) Paul DePodesta has made youth less of a
stigma, though it remains a focus for the media.

Daniels got his degree from Cornell in 1999. He didn't get into baseball
until 2001, when O'Dowd -- a Hart protégé -- hired him as a baseball
operations intern in Colorado. Hart hired Daniels away the following year,
making Daniels an assistant to Dan O'Brien, then the Rangers' assistant GM
overseeing baseball operations. After filling that role for two seasons, he
was promoted to director of baseball operations in October of 2003, charged
with assisting Hart and Grady Fuson in contract negotiations, personnel
evaluations, scouting coordination, and waivers and other procedural
matters. Daniels played a large role in negotiating multi-year contracts in
the first part of 2004 for Michael Young, Hank Blalock, and Francisco
Cordero.

In late July of 2004, Daniels was promoted to assistant GM, shortly after
the series of events that emasculated Fuson's power. He'd increased his
responsibilities to the point the past season and a half that he was
handling a great deal of the club's contract negotiations, engaging in trade
discussions with other clubs, and overseeing the organization's professional
and international scouting efforts, and he was in on every strategic
decision. Daniels developed a presence with the local media this season --
greater than Hart's -- and in multiple opportunities to engage Ranger fans
that I was able to observe, Daniels not only embraced the role but
consistently gave the fans more time than he'd committed to. He comes
across as honest and genuinely interested in what the fans think. Nobody's
going to doubt his integrity or his passion for the job. He'll be
accessible, and accountable.

But those things aren't going to make Daniels a good GM. They might make
him a relatively popular one with the media, which in turn could make the
press slower to torch him, but ultimately what matters is whether he can
make the Rangers legitimate contenders. And we don't have any data to
predict whether he can do that.

But there was no such data on Shapiro, for that matter, and the best GMs all
have to get their start somewhere. These days, they come from a far more
varied set of backgrounds than they once did.

Hicks has historically tended to hire big names in high-profile positions,
but he recognized what Shapiro had done in fairly short order with Cleveland
and obviously felt comfortable promoting from within and making sure Daniels
didn't get his first shot at the top job with another organization. Maybe
Hicks's promotion of Doug Armstrong to Stars GM in 2002 should have given us
an idea that he wasn't necessarily going to replace Hart with a bigger name,
especially one less administratively experienced than Daniels (such as Orel
Hershiser), or less attuned to what Texas is building (such as Gerry
Hunsicker).

Hicks made it clear that just as president Jeff Cogen is in charge of the
business side of the organization, Daniels is in charge of the baseball
side, and each reports directly to Hicks. Stated another way, Hicks insists
on a chain of command, and everyone on the baseball side, including Buck
Showalter, will answer to Daniels.

And if not the first to acknowledge the accessibility issue, Hicks certainly
addressed it most directly. On a radio appearance this morning, Hicks said
that there's been too much of a spotlight on Showalter and himself --
because that's who the press was able to talk to -- and that Daniels will
absolutely be more accessible to the media and fans and more "out front"
than Hart was.

Hicks pointed out at yesterday's press conference that Daniels hasn't always
agreed with Hart on personnel matters, or with Showalter. It wasn't meant
as an indictment. The point was that Daniels has ideas of his own and will
move forward based on them. Wonder how he sees the situations at second
base and catcher, and what his stance will be this winter on Mark Teixeira,
with whom the club has said it plans to discuss a long-term contract
extension.

As far as Hershiser is concerned, Hicks said that his highest value to the
Rangers is as a pitching coach and that he lacked the experience at this
point to be anything else. Hershiser told T.R. Sullivan of the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram that he'd "certainly be interested" in the Dodgers' vacated
managerial job if that club asked him to interview.

Fascinating note from Evan Grant in today's Dallas Morning News: Young and
Teixeira acknowledged having had no relationship with Hart. Teixeira went
so far as to say he's "never even talked to" Hart. Can't imagine that will
be the case with Daniels.

Promoting Daniels ensures a measure of stability not only at GM but
elsewhere in the front office as well. Keeping the job in-house should mean
that Dom Chiti and Ron Hopkins and John Lombardo and A.J. Preller and others
stay put, and with Hart also in place in an advisory role, it allows Daniels
to settle into his role with plenty of support. On top of that, making the
move now gives Daniels and his team a full winter to implement his blueprint
to make the 2006 product better than it was in 2005.

What should we expect Daniels's blueprint to look like? Don't try to
pigeon-hole his approach to player acquisition. As he said in his press
conference remarks, "We'll look at everything. Statistical data, scouting
reports, makeup, character. Finances will also be included in it. We want
to build on the core we have here."

He explained his scouting vs. stats philosophy in a December 2003 Newberg
Report chat: "Personally, I believe there's a blend between scouting and
analytical perspectives. If you ignored scouting completely, you'd miss on
players like Torii Hunter, among others. Ignore statistical trends, and you
miss on Paul LoDuca. There's nothing absolute about it -- we believe in a
blend of the two." Daniels espouses creativity and the power of the open
mind.

You can read the transcript of the Daniels chat at
http://www.dickiethon.com/newberg/jon_daniels.htm.

You should also check out an excellent February 2005 interview that Daniels
did with Jonah Keri of Baseball Prospectus, at
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...articleid=3771.

Daniels, by some accounts, has a better working relationship with Scott
Boras than Hart did. That doesn't mean Texas will rush to sign Boras
clients haphazardly; it just means the odds of the Rangers avoiding Boras
clients might be lessened.

One effect of the Rangers making this change a day after announcing they
won't offer Kenny Rogers a 2006 contract, rather than doing so a day or week
or month beforehand, is that any potential second-guess will less likely be
aimed at Daniels, even though the Rogers decision was announced as unanimous
among the franchise's decision makers.

While Hart said he's looking forward to moving into this new phase of his
life, he declined to slam the door shut on potentially general managing
again in the future.

Who will Daniels's top assistant be? Will he have the power to make that
hire on his own? Is Preller (a fellow Cornell grad) ready for the role, and
even if so, does Daniels instead need a veteran executive as his "bench
coach"?

More another time on a very bad day for Carlos Almanzar and a good one for
the four Ranger prospects who appeared yesterday in the Grand Canyon
Rafters' opener in Arizona Fall League play.

Obviously, I come into this with a significant bias. I've gotten to know
Jon Daniels over the last few years and I know how smart and how wise he is
(two different things), how self-assured and how energetic he is. But if I
didn't think he could make my team better by serving as its general manager,
I wouldn't want him to be its general manager. Given the lack of a track
record to rely on, I'm optimistic about this move, to the extent that I can
be.

I don't go into this with blind faith, however. Daniels needs to
demonstrate that the fresh ideas he wants to bring in are good ones and that
he has the fortitude to stand up for them even if there's some resistance
from those he must work with. If he fails in that area, no amount of
intelligence, honesty, or integrity will help the Rangers win.

I hope Daniels makes a couple bold moves before his club gets to host the
Winter Meetings in December.

I hope that he can offer a measure of continuity in the areas where it makes
sense, and that he'll step up and make improvements in other areas.

I hope the Rangers don't play a meaningless game in September for a long,
long time.

The promotion of Jon Daniels is, unmistakably, all about hope.

[Smiles]

This business is so unpredictable. You just never know what an internship or entry level job will get you.

I don't know whether to be hopeful or bitter. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

*fingers crossed*

[Five-ofan]

He cant exactly screw up much worse than hart did.