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Assessing the tenure of Jon Daniels with the Texas Rangers

By Bill Felber

ARLINGTON, TEXAS - JULY 01: Texas Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels talks with the media following the announcement that the game between the Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Angels has been postponed at Globe Life Park in Arlington on July 01, 2019 in Arlington, Texas. The game was postponed following an announcement made by the Los Angeles Angels that pitcher Tyler Skaggs had died. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
ARLINGTON, TEXAS - JULY 01: Texas Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels talks with the media following the announcement that the game between the Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Angels has been postponed at Globe Life Park in Arlington on July 01, 2019 in Arlington, Texas. The game was postponed following an announcement made by the Los Angeles Angels that pitcher Tyler Skaggs had died. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /
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The lengthy tenure of Jon Daniels running the Texas Rangers, which ended with his dismissal Thursday, was filled with extreme highs and lows.

Over more than 15 seasons as the lead guy in the Texas Rangers front office, Jon Daniels gave both his supporters and critics plenty of ammunition.

Ironically, that strong imbalance means that the final assessment of his performance ends up in the least likely of places … the indistinguishable middle.

Particularly in his early seasons as Texas Rangers general manager, Daniels was a child genius. Hired as GM following the 2005 season, he built a foundation in Texas that took the Rangers to back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011. They were the first two World Series appearances in franchise history.

Especially in his early seasons, Daniels was by nature a builder, instinctively better at acquiring projectible talent than presiding over quick-fix turnarounds. Notable in that respect was the deal he swung with the Atlanta Braves in July of 2007 that sent star Rangers first baseman Mark Teixeira to the Braves for five prospects.

By 2010, four of those prospects — shortstop Elvis Andrus, pitchers Matt Harrison and Neftali Feliz and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia — would be centerpieces of the Rangers club that lost to the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.

Over their tenures with the Rangers, that quartet produced 54.2 games of value to Daniels’ club as measured by Wins Above Average. That amount of value is the most by any team in any in-season trade since 1976.

In 2011, Daniels’ Rangers returned to the World Series and came within one fateful pitch of winning it before succumbing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Statistically, Daniels’ moves were critical to Texas’ dominance of the AL West between 2010 and 2013. The long-term impact of his various personnel decisions — long-term being the impact in a particular season of moves made during prior seasons — amounted to +16.9 WAA in 2010, +9.7 WAA in 2011, +20.6 WAA in 2012 and +9.6 WAA in 2013.

Not surprisingly, the Rangers topped 90 wins in all four of those seasons and reached postseason play in each of the first three.

Over time, however, Daniels’ success waned sharply. His oversight of the 2014 Rangers provided a stark example of how quickly things could and did go bad.

Prior to or during that season, Daniels signed or extended 17 players in an effort to revitalize a franchise that had slipped out of the playoffs the previous season. Among the names you’d recognize were Shin Soo-Choo and Colby Lewis. The net impact of those 17 signings was a disastrous —7.4 games in the standings as measured by WAA.

The 13 players he acquired in deals with other teams — among them Prince Fielder and Daniel Murphy — cost Texas another 7.2 games. Considering also the rookies he promoted and the players he lost to other teams, Daniels’ net impact on the 2014 Rangers worked out to -18.7 games, largely explaining why Texas fell to 67-95 and last in the AL West.

Daniels ceded day-to-day control over the team to newly appointed GM Chris Young following the 2020 season while continuing until Thursday as team president.

The extreme highs and lows of Daniels’ volatile tenure end up landing him in the vast middle ground of general managers. Among the 196 people in the game’s history who have operated an MLB franchise for at least five seasons, he ranks 93rd — almost dead center — for effectiveness with an average impact of about 1.45 games per season.

dark. Next. A walk on the wild side by a Rangers prospect

That’s barely below the group average of 1.93.

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