The Texas Rangers' Young GM

In Daniels's third season as GM, you can see ample evidence of how that's happening. He inherited from Hart one of the game's biggest messes -- an overpriced roster and a weak farm system. To clean that up, he transformed the front office, where the mess was made. "I like to think of myself as a collaborative decision maker, not a power-hungry boss," he says. "I want everyone's opinion." By everyone, he means the members of one of MLB's quirkiest front-office staffs -- about 50% wizened baseball vets like Welke and Hart, and 50% pups like Preller, now Texas's scouting director, and assistant GM Thad Levine, 36. "I'm obviously in charge," Daniels says, "but a good leader knows his limitations and doesn't try to hide them. He trusts the people around him."

Last December, when the Rangers considered trading Edinson Volquez, their top pitching prospect, to Cincinnati for outfielder Josh Hamilton, Daniels consulted with no fewer than a dozen staffers. Some thought the idea was crazy (Hamilton is a reformed crack addict). Some thought it was brilliant (Hamilton has five-tool talent). "I liked that no one was afraid to say what they felt. Everything we do depends on open and honest input," says Daniels, who eventually signed off on the trade. At press time, Hamilton was leading MLB in RBIs.

The Mr. Nice Guy routine is an enormous cultural shift for the Rangers, who for years had one of baseball's least employee-friendly operations -- a place where decisions were routinely second-guessed and performance evaluations indefensibly harsh. Though Daniels, characteristically, declines to trash his predecessors, he does say that change was essential. "Things work better when people are happy to be here," he says. "It doesn't take much to show that spirit." And so on Mother's Day, the Rangers now send greeting cards to all female employees and to the wives of male employees. Birthdays are always acknowledged, and before the Rangers broke camp last year, Daniels sent a letter to each person in the organization -- "Please keep up the great work," he wrote -- along with a $20 Starbucks gift card. "That," says one Rangers employee, "meant a lot."

Daniels's team building has extended, necessarily, to the Rangers' player development. Before his arrival, Texas had one of baseball's most barren minor-league systems and most overpaid Major League clubhouses. (Who can forget how the team, in 2000, signed free agent Alex Rodriguez to an unheard-of 10-year, $252 million contract, then finished last in the AL West in the subsequent three seasons?) Last summer, after first baseman Mark Teixeira rejected an eight-year, $140 million offer, Daniels traded him to Atlanta for five prospects. Though the Rangers signed a handful of veterans leading into the '08 season, none was especially high-priced and none got more than a two-year deal. "We want to stockpile our system with youth," Daniels says, "to the point where we no longer have to sign a free agent."

Rangers scouts are encouraged not merely to observe amateurs and file reports but to go way above and beyond. "We tell our scouts to visit the homes of these young men, to get familiar with the parents, girlfriends, coaches," Levine says. "We have scouts who go watch high-school football games, high-school basketball games. Go watch a track meet. Go pick out the best player in a basketball game or the best runner in a track meet. And ask them some questions: 'Have you ever thought of playing baseball?' We try to get guys in unconventional ways." The result: This year, Baseball America ranked the Rangers as having the game's fourth-best farm system, up from 28th in 2007, the biggest jump in the magazine's history. "Say what you want about ranking systems," says Levine, "but we're doing something right."

Part of that equation is international scouting, another area neglected during the Hart era. The Rangers have not only increased their international scouting budget from a laughable $500,000 in 2005 to $2 million-plus this year, but also revamped their strategy on Latin American development. In the Dominican Republic, where the Rangers opened their first academy two years ago, Major League teams tend to comb small towns for players as old as 21 or 22. "No more," Preller says. "We want the most talented 16- and 17-year-olds so we can help mold them and shape them as people and ballplayers. By the time you find a 21-year-old, he's sort of a finished product. We want the kids."

And that, of course, will be what fans, rivals, and employees will be saying if -- and this is a quintessentially big if -- Daniels and his cohort can prove that they know how to do the one thing that matters more than anything else in the game: win.