The Intangibles: Michael Young

This is a tough one for me to write, and probably tougher for those of you that share the press’ love for Michael Young and his so called “sacrifice”. I’ve been wanting someone besides Mike Hindman over at BBTIA and myself to write something about this, so that some new opinions can be shared. We will start with something else though.

If Mike Napoli hadn’t flown over from the planet Krypton and shown us all how real men play baseball, this year would have probably been the year of Michael Young for Rangers fans. This year we saw him perform amazing acts such as:

-Collected his 2,000th hit, all wearing a Rangers uniform, on August 7th, 2011.
-Tied for the AL lead in hits with 213
-3rd in AL in average, .338
-5th in AL in RBIs with 106
-8th in OBP with .380
-Voted to his 7th All-Star Game
-Finalist for the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award
-Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award winner for the 2nd time.
-Many other things that should be on this lis

His leadership in the clubhouse is almost awe-inspiring and is obviouse to anyone who has ever seen the Rangers play ball. His length of service for the Rangers alone is worth a tip of the cap. His triple slash line of .338/.380/.474 with 11 home runs helped lead his team to back-to-back AL Pennants. He had a bit of a rough postseason, but we wont go there during this post.

Where we will go is back in time, all the way back to this time last year. When poor Mikey was told he had to change positions, and threw a hissy fit. His feeling of self-entitlement is almost sickening to anyone who is capable of looking at his defensive play and realize that there are better options on the team, AKA Elvis Andrus(2009) or Adrian Beltre(2011). Part of this is obviously Michael Young’s fault for being so egotistical in the first place, but it can also fall on the FO. Firstly for allowing it to happen and to allow him to act like that, and secondly for encouraging the situation by issuing as many statements about it. When Michael Young “felt disrespected” and didn’t like where he was going to play, instead of bottling the situation and moving on, the media and everyone else decided to make Jon Daniels’ business as public as possible. Which leads me to bring up another point of frustration, Ron Washington is the only person that gets to decide the way the lineup card is set, all you need to do is perform and you will be somewhere on it. You shouldn’t get to bitch and get what you want, no matter how much you “sacrificed” or whatever. Now, don’t take this the wrong way and think that I am anti-Michael Young, that isn’t the case, but I am pro-Rangers, which is what Michael Young should have been and not brought bad press to such an amazing organization.

I would really like to hear some other thoughts on the subject. I know it’s a year later, but still an interesting topic. Until next time, Go Rangers.