Restraint -Thy Names are Ryan and Daniels

First things first, by the time this posts up something altogether different could have happened because I am posting this at the beginning of getaway day in Nashville. Most reporters are reporting this one of the most uneventful Winter Meetings in recent memory. But for Rangers fans, we had tons of things going on. The biggest of which was a possible four team trade. By the end of the day on Wednesday, most reports had the boys from Arlington responsible for holding every other team in the league. The four team trade appeared to be the Rangers, Diamondbacks, Tampa Bay and Cleveland Indians. The way the rumor mill went, a shortstop was headed from Cleveland to the Diamondbacks and Justin Upton would be in Arlington. But so could have James Shields. You can find this info all over the internet and that trade, or our lack of movement on Zack Grienke and Josh Hamilton, supposedly killed all of the possible action.

For all of that, I am impressed. I don’t know if it’s true we held up everybody else, but I do know that we had a ton of things we could have done (in the name of getting something done) but did not. It appeared Nolan Ryan and Jon Daniels wanted everything just so.

photo credit: Dallas Morning News

If you check my mini-bio to the upper right, you know I have seen every general manager the Rangers have employed.  I do not remember any of them having this much restraint in not moving Elvis Andrus or giving Hamilton or Greinke a ridiculous payday.  That’s not to say we won’t, but for once, we are letting the market come to us.

We won’t be able to tell (until the off-season is over) if these actions are leading us to the Promised Land. But the one thing that it tells me after all of these years is that we are finally and once and for all, in this for the long haul. Every move is calculated as to whether it fits the big picture.

If you are a Ranger fan, you have to only look back to John Hart and Tom Hicks to see the definition of the opposite of this strategy.  Even though nothing happened (as I write this) we should all celebrate the Rangers for dictating what is happening in the off-season.