Making plans for the unplanned: Part 2.
Who to trade and whether to trade them — with a hope that none of this becomes necessary.
Let me start by saying this. Actually, allow me to just lift something I wrote a few weeks ago:
No, the Rangers can never truly hurt me again, short of something borderline impossible. But that doesn’t mean my foot is off the gas as a fan. The forever-floor on my baseball emotions has been raised, I suppose, without the ceiling lowering any.
Getting sports-hurt is not the same as getting very sports-sad, though.
The Mavs got out of the way very early this year, and the Stars, once and for all and not in great-looking fashion, have had their own plug pulled. Now, the Rangers have all eyes. An annual two-month opportunity to dominate the local talk shows.
All the way through Thursday, the hockey team still had me firing up dual screens and coming to grips with multiple emotional extremes. Maybe not quite like the first five games of the 2023 ALCS did, but the Western Conference Finals delivered a somewhat recognizable story arc, just without enough cushion early to force a sixth and maybe even seventh game.
A couple things in Bob Sturm’s gamer after Edmonton 4, Dallas 1 on Tuesday night threw my brain right back into baseball mode.
The offensive famine is what is so difficult to explain.
That sounds familiar.
They have the pieces and they invested in goal-scoring at a very high level.
Mm-hmm.
And yet, again, it just isn’t yielding results.
Nope.
They loaded up on offense and yet the Stars can’t get to two goals.
Stop.
They appear stuck.
Dang.
So now, yes, all eyes can turn without distraction to the Rangers.
But what are we going to be watching — not so much on the field as from the front office?
After two months of daily lessons, the scantrons will soon be passed out to Chris Young, Ross Fenstermaker, and their group. “Pencils down” is just another two months away.
I’ve been hanging onto a column that Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News wrote in late March. You know, the time when all those national experts were calling the Rangers the best bet to win the American League pennant. I hadn’t yet found the right time to refer back to it — and certainly didn’t think I would be doing it under present circumstances.
It’s almost like winning is a relief more than it is a joy, so to speak.
I almost felt bad that that was CY’s mindset.
Now it resonates in a big way.
I think right now in the industry, there aren’t that many guys that are willing to go for it, and I think that’s what every player deserves.
That’s the mode this team has earned ever since Young assumed the lead post after the 2022 trade deadline. I greatly appreciate that he thinks that way, and executes on it.
Give me a personnel guy unafraid to make a move.
Yes, Kevin. Me, too.
Chris Young has just never had to make the kind that it appears might be called for in the coming weeks.
Let’s look at what some of those could look like. Whether or not you’d be unafraid to pull the trigger yourself on a shakeup deal or more, you might find yourself relieved that Young and Fenstermaker will be the ones who have to make the call.