Fisher among suspect AL West owners

The owner who allowed his president to fire his manager fired his president. If that’s not necessarily easy to follow, let it be known it perfectly sums up the inefficiencies of the Texas Rangers’ ownership in particular and American League West ownerships in general.

The Rangers’ owner is Ray Davis, who had the gall to sit in the room at Monday’s news conference as team president Jon Daniels took questions on the firing of manager Chris Woodward. For Davis, that was a cheap way to conduct business, especially because he knew he’d be canning Daniels. That firing came Wednesday, a disrespectful way of treating a trusted employee who ran the team for 17 years. Welcome to the AL West, where the standard isn’t high for ownership groups, who have questionable knowledge of baseball, how to run a baseball franchise and/or how to manage people who run a baseball franchise.

John Fisher is not alone. Fisher, owner of the Oakland Athletics, is in the division’s second-largest market — behind Davis’ Rangers — and spends the least. He also tries the least. You’ve heard it all: slashing payroll, forcing trades of core players, increasing ticket prices and alienating fans by threatening to relocate to Las Vegas.

MLB has plenty of owners with suspect track records, including Peter Angelos (Orioles), Bob Nutting (Pirates), Bob Castellini (Reds), Bruce Sherman (Marlins), Ken Kendrick (Diamondbacks), Dick Monfort (Rockies) and, of course, Charles Johnson (Giants), but the AL West is full of them.

A closer look:

John Stanton, Mariners: Stanton runs the team with the longest playoff drought in the majors, not to mention the longest in North American major professional sports, though not all the 20 postseason-less years were on his watch. What was on his watch? The promotion of president Kevin Mather to CEO, which came after complaints from female employees over inappropriate workplace conduct.

Mather eventually resigned after his embarrassing words last year to a local Rotary Club ridiculing a Japanese player and a Dominican player for not learning English (for the record, Julio Rodriguez speaks the language perfectly fine), admitting to service-time manipulation and making several other anti-player remarks that humiliated the organization.

Arte Moreno, Angels: Moreno was a fan favorite at the beginning of his ownership when he slashed beer prices, but then he started signing off on baseball-related decisions and bad contracts for Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols and a string of others. Despite the presence of MLB’s best player, Mike Trout, the Angels have zero playoff wins in 11 years, the last four with Shohei Ohtani aboard.

Moreno is also to blame for the worst team name in the majors: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, with plans to drop the “of Anaheim” — where they play baseball — in some sort of administrative limbo. Either way, Moreno’s decision to link the team with L.A. ticked off Anaheim officials and Orange County residents who prefer to be independent of the City of Angels.

Finally, Moreno’s bid to buy Angel Stadium and the surrounding property for $320 million imploded this spring in the wake of Anaheim’s mayor resigning amid allegations of corruption and bribery and an FBI investigation in which unnamed Angels officials have been implicated.

Jim Crane, Astros: Crane oversaw one of the game’s biggest cheating scandals in history and the tainted 2017 World Series championship, which cost GM Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch their jobs. Crane tried to explain it away by saying his team wasn’t the only one illegally stealing signs, which was true, but a weak admission of guilt nonetheless. He also said the scandal didn’t impact the game, a ridiculous assumption. Like his players, Crane wasn’t punished except for a $5 million fine and the loss of draft picks.

Issues concerning the Astros’ culture under Crane also ranged from the 2018 acquisition of closer Roberto Osuna while he was serving a 75-game suspension for domestic abuse to the 2019 actions of assistant GM Brandon Taubman, who was fired after his insulting comments toward a group of female reporters in the clubhouse covering the Astros’ 2019 ALCS clincher.

Davis, Rangers: Davis signed off on committing half a billion dollars to two free agents, Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, but the issues run deeper than a couple of middle infielders. The Rangers had been all-in on a rebuild plan under Daniels and GM Chris Young, but Davis evidently had more faith in Young, hired before the 2021 season, than Daniels to carry it out even though Daniels built the 2010 and 2011 World Series teams and got to the postseason five times. Before Daniels arrived, the Rangers’ entire history included just three playoff appearances and a 1-9 postseason record.

It was unrealistic for Davis to believe Semien and Seager, along with pitcher Jon Gray (another $56 million), would turn the Rangers into an instant contender. All along, the goal was for 2023 at the earliest. While Daniels’ firing of Woodward wasn’t a surprise, Davis’ firing of Daniels was. And it made fans wonder whether there actually is a long-term plan.