Ad Disclosure
Odubel Herrera’s Former GM Wishes He Never Let Him Go
By Jim Adair
Published:
Odubel Herrera is the best hitter on a team on the rise, just one year removed from being a Rule 5 selection. When making the hard roster choices, most GMs allow someone to get picked in the Rule 5 draft without it ever coming back to bite them. Players usually become modest producers (or nothing at all) and the original team is fine doing without them. But Odubel’s old GM with the Texas Rangers is feeling the sting of letting El Torito go.
Talking to Jon Morosi of MLB.com, Rangers GM Jon Daniels talked about the regret of letting someone like Herrera leave:
“Look at the number of homegrown players we have in the big leagues right now. We’re proud of that.
Some of them I’d like to have back: Odubel [Herrera], Kyle Hendricks, Tanner Roark … They’ve all performed better than we anticipated. But that goes back to our people, too. We have a mind-set that we’re trying to win, and we know those stories are going to come up. We’re not afraid to take a risk and know that we’ll probably read about a prospect playing well elsewhere.”
To be fair to Daniels, no one anticipated Herrera playing at the level he played at last year, and even fewer expected him to be putting up the numbers he’s putting up this year. Still, it’s gotta burn watching a guy you considered unimportant lead a young team to unexpected success.
[via Philliedelphia]
When he's not writing about sports here or ranting about them on Twitter, Jim is probably watching X-Files on Netflix or drinking a beer somewhere. Jim has nothing against hockey, it's just not his style. He once met Duce Staley at a Sixers game.