The suggestion that I've simply had a change of heart and asked for a trade is a manipulation of the truth. I want to be traded because I've been misled and manipulated and I'm sick of it.
Michael Young's words, according to Evan Grant.
This is becoming a messy divorce, and I don't think most of us wanted that. Not that the drama is altogether boring, of course.
I don't know if the front office did or did not deceive Michael Young, and I do not know how. He is, however, being paid a lot of money to play baseball, not to play a specific position. What should be important to him is that he gets his money and that the team is as good as it can possibly be. And the team being as good as it can possibly be probably does not include giving Michael Young a lot of at bats short of an injury situation or dramatic under-performance by someone named Napoli, Moreland or Murphy.
That said, Young is also human, and asking someone to accept a lesser role is a tough proposition. If Jon Daniels and the front office did mislead Young, that reflects badly on them as employers. If that's the case, it's also led Young to forcing this trade demand to become public, which limits the team's leverage, a situation Daniels et. al. doesn't want simply from a business standpoint.
There's no real way to know who to blame from our standpoint. Whether this is entirely Young being a brat, or entirely the front office lying and deceiving. My guess is it's somewhere in the middle. However, the front office needs to do what it needs to do to assemble the best team possible, and that may mean breaking a few eggs to make the proverbial omelet, and this front office is far more important to the Rangers' future success than Michael Young is.
Limiting Michael Young's role, and trading him if you can, makes sense. I just wish it hadn't gone down this way.
UPDATE: Ken Rosenthal has a full story following a Q&A with Young. Some more quotes and responses after the jump.
I’ll be the first to admit that I was not particularly keen on the idea of being a DH. But I did agree to do it. I wanted to put the team first. I wanted to be a Ranger. But in light of events that happened in the process, I got pushed into a corner one too many times. I couldn’t take it any more.
Okay. I'm not absolving the front office of misdoings if they blatantly misled Young, but this is sounding more like Young's role got reduced by the Rangers getting better players, like Mike Napoli, for the roster as constructed. If Young was truly team first as he claims to be, then it should be whatever makes the team better, and that's likely giving up a job as an every day player for the time being.
I don't discredit the man for having pride, most people do, but he's not painting himself in the good light he probably thinks he is right now. When your neighbor complains about how the Rangers treated Michael Young, point them to these quotes. Again, I don't know if the Rangers are innocent of wrong doing, and I suspect they are not, but this is clearly at least partly on Young.
As far as whether or not a trade is coming:
Yeah, I do [think a trade will happen]. It’s disappointing that it came to this. I would have preferred for this thing to have been hammered out behind closed doors. But in light of today’s events, it wasn’t going to happen.
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