Former Rangers president Jon Daniels, now senior advisor with the Tampa Bay Rays joined The Musers on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket [KTCK-AM] Monday.
Here are the highlights, edited for clarity.
How surprised are you that Texas is sitting in first place in the AL West?
Daniels: “I’d say surprised. And things certainly have come together. I think (Chris Young) and the group did a group job adding to the pitching staff this offseason and obviously, they’ve had good health on the position player side and that group has kind of matured together. But I think the Will Smith addition has been big and (Nathan Eovaldi) obviously. But it’s been fun to watch that position player group kind of mature together. In the All-Star Game, they were the bulk of the team.”
You had your hands on about 80% of this roster. Does the success make you feel better about the process you had after how everything ended?
Daniels: “Yeah, I appreciate that. I don’t really look at it that way, honestly, because we as a group, not just myself, but the whole baseball operations group, I think we had confidence that what we were doing what going to bear fruit. I certainly would have liked to have made it happen quicker for the fans and the organization, but I think we felt that this was coming together. Certainly, we still needed to add to it and you see they have, especially on the pitching side. But the farm system was in a good spot, we had long-term control over a really good position-player club. We had a lot of options and they have depth. With ownership increasing the payroll the last two seasons, just given the market size and the stadium and all of the things they are capable of, we felt like it was going to come together and you see it.
“So it’s more kind of reassuring that we were looking at it the right way. We saw what was possible but obviously, they are now putting it together. And this is the toughest part. Going from a good team to a great team, I think that’s the toughest piece of a build, and then obviously sustaining it. So certainly looking forward to watching what they do.”
When you look back on your time with the Rangers, is there any one deal you wish you did differently?
Daniels: “Whether it’s deals or just decisions as far as personnel. I still look back and the one thing I wish we had done differently was just in our first year there in 2006. I was 20 years old, I probably wasn’t even really for the job. But if you get offered a GM job, you’re not going to say no, right? So I wish that at that time I had the perspective and the ability to slow down a little bit and put a little bit more of a long-term plan in place. We did about a year and a half later, and obviously, it led to a very successful rebuild and had a lot of fun the next 10 years, but I wish in hindsight that we had to slow down a little bit here, take better inventory of really where we’re at and competitively where we’re at. Tied into that, I wish we had started our push on building up the infrastructure of the organization a little sooner than we did. And so I think that those things would have led to even longer-term success. But with a specific deal, there are a bunch of them I’d like to have back.
“I can rattle off 20 things right now that, in hindsight, you learn to do differently.
A start like your Rays are having can really set the tone for a season, right?
Daniels: “It absolutely can and we’ve played so great. out of the chute, it literally felt like anything that was presented to the team, these guys answered and have really played flawless baseball in a lot of ways for the first two months. And like everybody else, you know, we’ve had some challenges. We’ve had a couple of injuries on the pitching staff. We are still swinging the bats well, but not to the just off-the-charts pace we were early on.
“But it’s a lot of fun just to kind of get around the new group and just learn a little bit about how they’re how they do business. And it’s it’s such a there’s a lot of similarities, obviously, just in terms of like, things that they value in the kind of people that have in place, but also just a different mindset in terms of how they build and just always looking towards the long term. It’s been fun to learn there.”
Was there something about the Rays that you learned that really jumped out at you?
Daniels: “Yeah, so when I went in there at the end of September, I had a really good relationship with Erick Neander, their club president and had been their GM for the last couple of years. And he and I made a bunch of deals and just always talked and kind of shared a lot of thoughts and things and so I went in there and I think going into Tampa, it’s kind of where the shift started. It’s where the opener started. They have a lot of innovation. I think that’s kind of where people focus on and when I went in there, what really stood out was just like the quality of people how they treat their people, how to communicate with their people. And it’s ownership down. (Stuart) Sternberg straight through the organization that really gave a lot of people that have been there for a long time. They really value loyalty and continuity and I don’t think people fully appreciate that from the outside. What a tremendous culture and a people-first organization.”
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