When Yale-graduate Theo Epstein was named general manager of the Boston Red Sox in November 2002, he held the title of youngest general manager in Major League Baseball history.
Not anymore.
On Wednesday, the Texas Rangers hired 28-year-old Jon Daniels ’99, who is nine months younger than Epstein was when he was hired.
Unlike Epstein, however, Daniels holds no law degree and has largely spent his entire baseball career in one organization.
“He is a truly brilliant mind,” Rangers owner Tom Hicks said of Daniels in an article on Texasrangers.com, the team’s official website. “His youth is an asset to us. He’s a truly exceptional talent.”
Daniels, an applied economics and management major while at Cornell, shot through the Rangers’ front office in only a handful of years.
He takes the helm of the recently-struggling team after John Hart announced his retirement from the position earlier this week.
Daniels joined the Colorado Rockies organization in 2001 as an intern under General Manager Dan O’Dowd, and began his career with the Rangers in 2002 as baseball operations assistant. In October 2003, he was promoted to director of baseball operations.
According to a Dallas Morning News article from Oct. 5, “in [the director of baseball operations] role [he] was responsible for negotiating free agent, arbitration and pre-arbitration contracts as well as payroll, roster and budget management.”
In November 2004 he was again promoted, this time to assistant general manager.
“Jon is young, but he has the qualities that you look for in a leader,” Hart said in the Texasrangers.com article.
“He has the respect of everyone in the organization, the business department, the baseball people, the veteran scouts. He’s going to be a great leader,” Hart added.
“I’m ecstatic about this. This is what I’ve aspired to be for a long time,” Daniels told the website.
Archived article by Sun Staff