Imagine my surprise when I have heard multiple callers saying Rangers skipper Ron Washington should be on the hot seat this season. Now the hot seat, for those that don’t know, is one long losing streak, or losing season away from termination. Nothing should be farther from the truth when it comes to Wash.

Ranger skipper Ron Washington Shouldn’t be on Any Hot Seat
(photo credit: New York Post)

When you dial-up the Dallas Morning news message boards it’s funny to see Wash being called into question on aggressive base running or staying with a reliever too long. That’s normal manager stuff and that is cool. We all like to second guess. But to say the front office needs him on a short leash when he has taken this team to the Series twice in the last three years and fall just short of another post season run (that one game play-in SO doesn’t count- I HATE that thing) is ludicrous.  If it were one call, I would write that off as a wing nut. But I heard five callers over the course of three days.

After the 2009 season I started a ‘Fire Ron Washington Now’ Facebook page. The Rangers weren’t great and he tested positive for cocaine. Not real good. In less than a year, I turned that into an ‘Extend Ron Washington Now’ page. My loyalty to Wash hasn’t wavered. Sure there have been plenty of times I haven’t agreed with his platooning certain players and putting guys into the game who were struggling out of the pen. Like I said, perfectly normal. His fierce loyalty and ability to make the team a family is unmatched. Bruce Bochy in San Francisco can get the guys on the same page but because of his front office he has to do it with rag tag guys a lot.

There was a lot of talk about not getting it done after we collapsed in 2012. Some guys kind of owned up. A ton of us knew that Wash’s loyalty to a fault was particularly bad this past season because Profar and Olt saw little to no playing time. Guess what he did at season’s end? He fell on the sword. He took full blame. How can you not love that?  Especially when it really wasn’t all his fault. He knows our kids and he knows our veterans. He knows how to work with upper management. A move to a new manager would set us back two to three years.

So many managers now want a ton of control. Two of the worst were actually managers here (Valentine and Showalter). As a fan, I have only seen two real players’ managers. One is Wash, the other was Johnny Oates. These guys have one more thing in common. That would be October baseball.

Right now Ron Washington is happy in his corner of the dugout.  So dial it back haters, that is exactly where we need him him to stay.

Edwin Rodriguez (Photo Courtesy of Yardbarker.com)

It has been crazy week for the Florida Marlins organization, it started with manager Fredi Gonzalez being dismissed a few days after a sweep by the Rangers.  The Marlins immediately promoted Edwin Rodriguez from their Triple-A club where he served as the manager to the manager of the big league club.  Upon Rogriquez’s promotion, I found this somewhat interesting that he is the first Puerto Rican manager in the big leagues. 

The Marlins then said that Rodriquez’s position as the manager was interim.  The Marlins then began to look outside of their organization for a possible replacement.  Two names originally mentioned were former Ranger’s managers Buck Showalter and Bobby Valentine with Valentine seemingly having the edge.

The Marlins are owned by Jeffrey Loria who used to own the Rangers Triple-A team when Valentine was at the helm of the Rangers, so they seem to have a pretty good relationship.  It was announced that the Valentine-Marlins marriage was almost a done deal and it was looking bleak for Rodriguez to manage the Marlins for very long, especially since the Marlins were about to head to Puerto Rico to play a three game series against the Mets.  That is somewhat ironic that the first Puerto Rican manager  would end up managing one of his first series’s in his native land.  MLB games are played in Puerto Rico about every four years it seems like. 

Before tonight’s game against the Met’s, Marlin’s owner Jeffrey Loria informed Rodriguez that he would manage the Marlins for the rest of the season and then his position would be evaluated once the season is complete.  I agree with this process because I think that if you dismiss your manager, hire an interim manager and then replace the interim with a permanent manager all in the middle of the season it is too much stress on a team and can be counter-productive. 

In this case the Marlin’s can take their time deciding who will be the next permanent manager and Rodriguez will have time to prove his worth to the Marlins.  In some ways I feel the Marlins kind of let Fredi Gonzalez down, but like any job, no matter the talent you are provided, if they don’t perform and you are managing them, the people above you come down on you, not the team.

This could actually be a great move for Gonzalez though, he was with the Braves organization before coming over to manage the Marlins after Joe Giradi was dismissed.  Alanta Brave’s manager Bobby Cox is ending his Hall of Fame Career after this season and Gonzalez looks like he has a pretty good chance to replace him.  So although Cox will be leaving on different terms than Joe Torre did when he left the Yankees in 2008 both Gonzalez and Girardi could end up using their short tenures in Florida as a stepping stone to greater things.