You needn't have looked any further than this thread over at Lone Star Ball to see just how badly Ranger fans were looking forward to this day. Myself, included, as I opined that one team was down, but there were two more to go.
Obviously, I realize Hicks is going to hold onto Liverpool FC until he can get a new stadium built for England's most storied football club of all time (sorry, Mancs). And the last time Hicks put the Stars up for sale, all he could fetch was a couple of chirps from his neighborhood crickets. So let's throw that pipe dream out the window.
As the days have passed, however, I am forced to admit to a certain degree that Hicks wasn't as bad an owner as some are making him out to be. Part of this partial turnabout is due to Jamey Newberg's latest article, where he points out...
Hicks gets far too much criticism from the mainstream media, who choose not to recognize the guts and foresight it took to make Jon Daniels, who at the time had less than five years in baseball, his general manager, and the patience and lack of ego it took to authorize the plan that Daniels presented to him in May 2007 to trade Mark Teixeira and shift focus and resources to scouting and player development and a wholesale effort to load up on young talent through the draft and international market and trades, a philosophy that’s a lot less flashy and far more gradual than many owners would have signed off on.
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The Herschel Walker trade wasn’t the Herschel Walker Trade until the Cowboys turned the Minnesota draft picks into Emmitt Smith and Darren Woodson and Russell Maryland and Kevin Smith and three Lombardi Trophies. The Teixeira trade is no Herschel Walker Trade – yet. But there’s no question that without it, this franchise wouldn’t be in nearly as good a position as everyone agrees that it is. Hicks should get some credit for believing in, and consenting to, the plan that Jon Daniels and his crew proposed and have now been executing for two very good years.
Don’t count on the general columnists recognizing Hicks’s role in that, however.
Or acknowledging in print the millions of Hicks dollars that may not have gone to player payroll (a favorite topic of the media, rarely mentioning Ben Sheets or Torii Hunter or Daisuke Matsuzaka or Barry Zito or Carlos Delgado as free agent acquisitions he has consistently greenlighted even though they’d have busted the budget) but did go to annual decisions to pay out of slot to pave the way for the drafting and signing of the right high school and college players (Teixeira, Derek Holland, Justin Smoak, Taylor Teagarden, Julio Borbon, Jake Brigham, Neil Ramirez, Marcus Lemon, Robbie Ross, Clark Murphy, Johnny Whittleman, Kyle Ocampo, Matt Thompson, and others), to outspend the competition in Latin America (examples: Martin Perez, Fabio Castillo, Cristian Santana, and Richard Alvarez, plus the aggregate of a Preller/Welke/Batista class like 2006’s Wilmer Font/Wilfredo Boscan/Kennil Gomez/Carlos Pimentel/Geuris Grullon/Macumba haul), to pay top dollar to make sure we had the hitting coach and pitching coach we’d zeroed in on, and to hire Nolan Ryan.
Hicks also authorized Jon Daniels, on many an occasion, to go above slot when it came to signing draft picks to help stock what Baseball America termed last year, the top farm system in the Majors. Not to mention, he actually stuck with a Daniels-approved plan instead of trying to emulate the flavor of the month, be it Florida, Tampa Bay, or the White Sox.
That all having been said, the club was about to hit a glass ceiling that I'm not sure they would have been able to break. And that's all due to Hicks' financial struggles.
That's not to say that Greenburg and Ryan should start trying to compete with the Yankees, Red Sox, or even the Anaheim Angels in terms of free agent spending. Afterall, I still hold true to the belief that the best way to build a winner is to fill holes first by looking from within your own farm system. Any holes that need to be filled after that, you fill through free agency.
And as Hicks found out in the 90's and early 00's, it's extremely difficult to financially compete with the Yankees. My other favorite team, the Red Sox, has a hard enough time, themselves, keeping up. And they've got a payroll approaching the $130 million.
Fortunately, the bar for Greenburg and Ryan won't be nearly that high. I'd settle for a payroll in the $80 million to $90 million range. And a commitment to a consistent approach.
Fortunately for Ranger fans, Hicks had the decency to at least hold up that end of the bargain. And the Rangers will be all the better for it in the long haul.
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