Last September, we were told about an upcoming conversation between Jon Daniels and Adrian Beltre in which the latter—just two years the junior of his employer—would seek assurance from the former that the Rangers would, in fact, not be going into “rebuild mode”. Such a conversation probably isn’t out of the norm. But for him to tell us about the conversation in advance raised some eyebrows.
Given three-and-a-half months of perspective, I wanted to revisit what we heard from Beltre on September 27th, 2017.
“In the next week or so, I’m probably going to have a conversation with JD, just to see what the mindset is for next year, but it’s too early now… I can’t sit here and say ‘You know what: you need to put a team together in two weeks,’ because that’s not fair for anybody. It doesn’t work like that… sometimes even if you pursue the free agent you want to sign, the free agent isn’t always going to accept that offer (Editor’s note: That’s a fairly prescient assessment of the upcoming Ohtani proceedings, Adrian). But I just want to know the idea that they have, to have a competitive team to win, that’s all I can ask for. It’s not even—we could have the best offensive team, the best pitching staff in the league, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win.”
“You just want to hear ‘We’re not rebuilding,’ Evan Grant of the DMN clarified “Exactly.” Beltre confirmed.
I had to consult the tape to get the quote right. But from Tuesday from behind a podium at Globe Life Park, Jon Daniels made it clear that he remembered the context pretty clearly, either from September or from a more recent conversation.
“It hasn’t changed,” Daniels said. “I spoke to Adrian a week or two ago. (He) is a competitor. Whether he was 25 years old or 45 years old, he cares about this year, this club; that’s what you want, that mindset. I think that helps focus and drive the rest of the guys in the clubhouse. Adrian and I had a candid conversation at the end of last year, and he understood: we’re not going to be at the top of the free-agent market. What he said was ‘Hey, I want to know we’ve got a chance going into Spring Training.'”
“I think if he was GM, he probably would have made some different moves this offseason,” Daniels smiled. “He probably would have addressed some different things on the club. I respect that, but I don’t feel any different than I did at the end of the year: we’re going to go into Spring Training with a chance. We’ve got challenges. We’re going to need some guys to step up and develop.”
Is that enough for Beltre?
Back to the tape from September, it sounds like the two aren’t too far apart on what it means to be competitive, at least not from a lineup standpoint. “We’ll get a bounce-back year from Odor-even though he hit 30 home runs—he knows that he can improve. We’re gonna have Elvis back; he’s been the best hitter the last 2-3 years, so we– we have what it takes here to win. The question is: how much are we going to improve with the pitching.”
Here’s the scary part of the conversation: what happens if it gets to be January, and they haven’t improved the pitching? Would Beltre demand a trade?
“It’s hard to say right now,” the future Hall-of-Famer hedged. “As easy as it sounds, it’s not easy to assemble a really good team just because you want to. I don’t want to sit here and start saying ‘this is what I want’ because this isn’t about me. Yes, I want to win, yes, I want to have a team to compete, but there’s a lot of things that go into consideration. We’ll see how it goes (…) we have the offseason to think about what the next step is for me, for the team… we’ll see how it goes.”
“If it’s my choice, I don’t want to go anywhere.”
But you want to win.
“100%.”
And you’re not afraid to ask for a trade if you think that’s not going to happen here?
“It’s like I said before: even if I go to a team like Cleveland, there’s no guarantee. So when the season comes, I’ll sit around with my family and think about what I want to do. I don’t want to leave a team where I’m pretty comfortable and believe in my teammates to go to a team that is not guaranteed. So it’s something I have to sit around and think about with my family again, and search for something I really want. But without guarantees. But it’s a decision I can’t make now (September) because obviously, it’s too early. So we’ll see how that decision goes.”
January 17th is probably still too early. In 2016, the Rangers didn’t sign Ian Desmond until February 29th. Desmond became their starting center fielder, and an important part of the AL West Division Champions.
But 2018’s AL West isn’t the same as the one the Rangers took two years ago. The Astros just won a World Series and then brought in Gerrit Cole to bolster their rotation. The Angels won the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, then traded for Ian Kinsler and signed Zack Cozart to play alongside Mike Trout. The Rangers? They’ve signed Mike Minor, Doug Fister, and Chris Martin, and traded for Matt Moore. Notably departed in the last 12 months: Yu Darvish, Carlos Gomez, Andrew Cashner, A.J. Griffin, Mike Napoli, Jonathan Lucroy, Tyson Ross, Jeremy Jeffress, and Sam Dyson.
Is Adrian Beltre next?
Kolby Kerr says
This is going to be a midseason call. I believe Daniels is putting together a team that can compete, provided you get a lot more happy surprises than sad. They could probably survive one more round of being a buyer at the trade deadline if they had one of those 2016 lucky break years.
More likely, they have enough to stay in the middle of the pack, show good faith to the fans, then they move some short-term guys (including a sweetheart deal for Beltre) at the deadline and make sure to say ‘reload’ instead of ‘rebuild’ in every press release. They’ll say, “SOME teams gut their franchise and alienate fans for half a decade while they hoard profits. That’s not the Texas Rangers’ way.” Someone will ask who won the World Series last year and a sweating John Blake will immediately end the press conference.
Levi Weaver says
*points solemnly to nose*