Thing is I drove from Dallas to Philadelphia, and wanted to surprise them, so to make sure my cover wasn't blown, I didn't post here ahead of time why I was going to be away from the site for a week. :)

UPDATE: League 1 drafts on Saturday night, and I need one more person to join the league, otherwise we'll have to reschedule the draft. League 2 is full. I'll probably open a third league when the existing two are full. I'm going with just eight team leagues this year, as it makes for much stronger teams, I think.

I've opened up the Rangerfans Yahoo Fantasy Baseball Leagues (as they just opened for business tonight). I've found these leagues have better and nicer drafts than the public ones where you get a lot of asshats making nuisances out of themselves in drafts. I've opened up more than one at a time this time around.

Signup URL: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1/register/joinprivateleague_league_select

League #1 ID: 152957
Password: greenberg
Live Online Draft: Sat Feb 27 @ 6:30pm CST
Unique URL: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/rangerfans (After you've signed up).

League #2 ID: 153002
Password: nolanryan
Live Online Draft: Sat Mar 20 @ 6:30pm CST
Unique URL: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/rangerfans2 (After you've signed up).

League #3 ID: 421540
Password: 2010vlad50hr
Live Online Draft: Sat Mar 27 @ 8:00pm
Unique URL: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/rangerfans_3 (After you've signed up).

On another note, I will say what I always say. PLEASE DO NOT SIGN UP IF YOU DO NOT INTEND ON PLAYING THE ENTIRE YEAR OUT! If there's one thing I hate, it's people who sign up and then never play. I just care about having people that don't quit.

Hope to see the regulars back out there again.

Game won't be made up - not officially in the standings, although there will be a B game tomorrow where today's guys will get their work in.

Read somewhere that this is the first rainout since 2007 in the spring. I could have sworn that wasn't the case, but I can't recall offhand.

Anyway, this was another well pitched game on both sides. Tommy Hunter started for Texas, and looked good. Two innings, just one hit, and a couple of strikeouts. The first run was scored on his watch, but it was an unearned run. That was due to the rather sloppy play the Rangers had at points through the game. The other run KC got was later on when Willie Eyre was on the mound. That too was unearned, and was the direct result of 18 year old Leury Garcia.

Leury Garcia had quite the busy day, and was responsible for both runs scored in the top and bottom halves of the seventh inning. In the top of the inning, he threw a ball away from short, allowing a runner to reach, then just a batter or two later, he committed another error attempting to field a caught stealing throw. However, he made up for it in the bottom part of the frame by grounding in the only Rangers run. He was unusually busy for a guy who wore the number 98 on his back.

Overall, not much offense. Rangers had just five scattered hits - one was a double. The Royals too also had seven scattered hits. Of the 12 total, nobody had more than one.

However, the coolest thing to come out of today's game was that the Rangers pitchers did not walk anyone. Early on in camp, that's a fantastic thing to see. There's a million reasons you can bring up to explain that. But despite all of them, it's still QUITE cool to see a column of zeroes under BB in the box score. What's even better than this is the fact that Ranger pitchers have walked just two batters ALL SPRING so far. Neftali Feliz walked one in Game 2, and Rich Harden walked one in the opener. All told, that's 18 pitchers tossing a total of 26 innings over three games. Just two walks. Wow.

Offensively, this was a different beast than yesterday's game. Yesterday's had 16 runs and 28 hits between the teams. Today's game had just 6 runs and 13 hits. Yesterday there was just 3 or 4 Rangers used that didn't have a hit. Today, it's the opposite. Just six had hits - nobody had more than one. Of those hits, just two were doubles (Nelson Cruz, Max Ramirez). Not a lot of power here at all.

The other side wasn't much better. They had seven hits, and two of 'em were extra bases (2B - Billy Butler, 3B - Rick Ankiel), the rest were singles. They just pushed more across.

Zack Greinke started the game for the Royals, and from what I've read and see in the box score, he was as advertised. Three scoreless innings, with just one hit given up. Other than the single he gave up, the other nine batters he faced were outs. In the three innings of work, he faced just ten batters. No idea how dominant that was, as the box scores in spring don't list pitch counts, but one over the minimum is always a cool thing to see.

Rangers pitchers counted four today. Each of them pitched two innings. The best was Dustin Nippert (third). He gave up no hits in his two innings. Feldman gave up 3, CJ Wilson 2, and Neftali Feliz gave up two. Overall, a decent pitching performance, if not too far leaning towards the great side. Eight innings of work, seven hits, four earned runs. Just a lone walk, though (Feliz), so there wasn't a ton of wildness.

After game one, I had that pipe dream where I was going to see constant spring scores of double digits every day, and a winning percentage of like .850 for the spring or something. Ah, the innocence of Spring Game 1 comes crashing back to earth with Game 2. I shouldn't be surprised by that.

Saturday we're back on the radio again.

Anyway, Vlad is in the game with a totally tarred batting helmet which I found amusing. Check out this screen capture below (he doesn't stand that way in the box, I caught it in mid practice swing). One thing about the uniform, though. It's an older one, but it had a "4" on the armband. So whoever put the uniform together for the game for the Rangers team copied it from the year they wore a "4". Anyone know offhand who that "4" was for, and what year that was? Thanks. You can click on the thumbnail below for a larger version.

My wife and kids were out at the Dallas Arboretum today, so I had the house to myself - for most of the game. I sat down with my battery operated portable radio (cool that game 1 was on the radio), and was playing "MLB 10: The Show" on my Playstation 3 at the same time, so it was baseball overload. The Rangers were the visiting team here, and as such batted first. The first inning was fairly uneventful, except for an unearned run that Rich Harden gave up.

The unearned run was helped along by Jarrod Saltamacchia, who hit a runner trying to steal second. It then allowed the guy to go to third, who scored not long after that. Dave Barnett commented that he hoped that was just "first spring game" issues, and not a larger problem, as the throw was way off the bag, apparently. But Salty made up for that in the next inning when he walloped a three run home run.

Later on in the game, Matt Brown (our Rule 5 guy) hit another three run home run. That wasn't the only way we scored. Julio Borbon got on, stole second, was pushed to third by a Michael Young groundout, and then scored. We also had run scoring doubles (Vlad Guerrero plating Mike Young). That hit by Guerrero was his first hit and RBI in a Ranger uniform. That STILL seems weird to me, as I've been following Guerrero since he was in Montreal.

Colby Lewis came in and handed me a big bottle of "shut up juice" by pitching a perfect inning. Yeah, it's just spring game 1, but it sounded impressive on the radio for sure.

Another notable was the appearance of Alexi Ogando, who if you're reading this site know has been trapped in legal immigration hell for the last few years and couldn't pitch. This was his first appearance as a Ranger since he was drafted I think 5-6 years ago. He struck out his first batter, and went on to pitch a scoreless inning.

All told, our pitchers (seven of them) tossed a great game. Of the three runs the Royals scored, two of them were unearned, and all told, the Rangers pitching gave up just seven hits in nine innings. Not bad, not bad at all. Colby Lewis was perfect, and Tanner Scheppers was as well. Doug Mathis had the worst performance, giving up three hits and the lone earned run in his two innings of work. Everyone else gave up just one hit (Harden, Snyder, Ogando, Strop). It was a really well pitched outing by our staff.

Can't say the same for the Royals. The Royals threw five pitchers out there, and none of them escaped unscathed. Kyle Davies started (5H, 4ER), and he was followed by former Ranger Robinson Tejeda (4H, 2ER), Philip Humber (4H, 1ER), Anthony Lerew (5H, 2ER), & Matt Herges (3H, 4R, 3ER). Of course when the Rangers have 13 runs on 21 hits, you're going to see numbers like that.

Take a look at the linked box score, you can see all the carnage. It was really nice to have a baseball game to listen to. Had I been outside, I would have had a beer, but I enjoyed the hot dogs and the pink lemonade I had while the game was on.

Oh, and finally.. Victor Rojas has left MLB Network to go back to play by play calling. I wish Vic had stayed here. No offense to Dave Barnett, but I really REALLY liked Victor Rojas. In time, I'll probably like Dave too, but I liked Vic's way of saying what he felt. Plus Vic remains a friend, and I'll never forget how he contacted me years ago when he first got the Rangers job. So good luck to you personally Vic. But your new employers? The heck with 'em. :)

Speaking of Radio.. I see Victor Rojas has left MLB Network to be the play by play guy for the Angels? Oh Vic. If you were just going back to play by play, you should have stayed here. Oh, you just don't love Texas. I see how it goes. :) j/k.

Hope it goes well for you personally, just not your new employer as such.

The Texas Rangers today announced that the team will honor the memory of Bobby Bragan by wearing a uniform patch during all games in spring training.

Bragan, who spent over 70 years involved with professional baseball, passed away on January 21 at the age of 92 in Fort Worth. The former major league player, coach, manager, and executive was a long-time front office employee for the Rangers, serving in public relations and community capacities.

The oval patch contains the red and blue lettering, "BOBBY BRAGAN, 1917-2010" with a white background and red border. It is located on the right sleeve of the Rangers' blue jersey tops, which the club will wear for all spring training games in 2010.

Following spring training, the jerseys will be available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation. The team also plans to donate a number of the jerseys to the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation, which has provided over 500 scholarships to Dallas-Fort Worth area students since its inception in 1992.

The Rangers will wear the Bragan patches for the first time on Tuesday.

I have to confess. When I saw the story, I didn't remember who he was. :(

Anyway, last year there were 120 games in HD, covering Fox Sports Southwest, Fox 4, and KDFI Ch 27. In 2010, almost all of them are Fox Sports Southwest. Here's my count of what channels have how many games for the Rangers in 2010:

Fox Sports Southwest: 131
TXA-21: 25
Fox 4: 5
ESPN: 1

That's a total of just 30 out of 162 to be on free over the air TV (which I believe is a first for the home opener not being on free OTA TV), 132 are pay cable. That's quite a percentage shift. If you're just over the air TV, you're getting screwed. But you should get cable or satellite anyway if just for MLB Network - they are awesome.

Anyway, of the games produced, I would think the bulk of them would be in HD. ESPN is guaranteed HD, and The Fox 4 games are national, so that's a guaranteed 6. I'm not sure about TXA21, as they're new in 2010.

But what follows is why I posted this. Saw this news story about the Brewers games on Fox Sports Wisconsin being 100% in HD for 2010. Makes me think if the Brewers can do it, we can too. If it comes out we can't, I'll want to know why.

Washington, D.C. (February 24, 2010) -- For the first time, all Milwaukee Brewer baseball games will be in high-def this season on Fox Sports Wisconsin.

That's according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The regional sports channel will broadcast 136 Brewer games in high-def this season.

Of the remaining Brewer games on TV, six will be televised nationally on Fox or ESPN, which will also cover them in HD, and 15 will be broadcast by the local station WMLW, according to the newspaper. (Apparently five games will not be televised this year; there are 162 regular season games.)

Fox Sports Wisconsin's coverage of the regular season will start on Monday, April 5, when it airs the Brewers-Rockies game at 1:10 p.m.

First off, Jamey Newberg's quote from this past week is something I want to answer. Jamey asked this.

"Does it mean anything when Bobby Valentine says on ESPN on February 18 that Ron Washington is on the hottest seat of any manager in the league?"

Perhaps it's just my sarcastic nature, but it could be viewed as he's doing a passive aggressive thing to perhaps get his old job back? He was there when Nolan Ryan signed on to Texas back in 1989. Now that Nolan's running the show, perhaps Bobby V is looking to play the same card only backwards? :)

C.J. Wilson's mouth: CJ took some heat right as camp was opening when he said this..

"It's no secret I don't think I should be limited to the set-up role. I have too many weapons," Wilson said. "Here is the reality. It is real simple. There are not very many guys that have the stuff that I do that would be willing to sign here if they were free agents. There is no experienced pitcher that has my stuff that would sign here, historically."

It's an interesting scenario, as one feels he lost the closer's job much the same way that happened between Rod Barajas & Gerald Laird a few years ago. Got hurt, someone else stepped in, didn't get it back. On one hand, I can understand his frustration. On the other hand, you don't go mouthing off about your employer and why nobody else would want to sign here. Yikes. Nolan Ryan handled it well, but I wonder if that stuff will factor into the subconscious of those making decisions around here. I don't have any desire to see CJ out of here, but think for a minute if he was paired with Ozzie Guillen. hahaha. :)

The Catching Situation:

What happened? We were stocked with catchers, who were backlogged behind Laird. We move Laird to Detroit and now we find ourselves looking for bottom of the barrel free agent catchers to shore things up? Saltamacchia hasn't worked out, Teagarden hasn't shown he can be a #1, and Max Ramirez? Dunno. Where'd our big glut go? A bit scary there.

Endy Chavez signed:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. See Joey M's commentary for more on that.

Rangers miss payment:

It was announced that the Rangers missed a close to $40 million payment into an MLB fund that helps fund - I don't remember exactly what, but references to deferred money to Arod, Juan Gonzalez, and Rafael Palmeiro came up. It was said that the payment could be something the union could file a grievance over, but have decided not to, leaving it to new management to figure out. Apparently it was factored into the price of the sale of the club, so it's probably a non issue. Amusing how well Tom Hicks is trying to screw the pooch on the way out the door.

Josh Hamilton predicts 96 wins: That's a lot. When you realize it's just 9 more games over last year it doesn't seem like a lot, but 96? I'd love for that to happen, as it pretty much means we'd be in the playoffs. Come on Rangers!

Brad Wilkerson: Brad Wilkerson signed a minor league deal with the Phillies today, which does NOT include an invite to camp . He supposedly retired last spring after being released by the Red Sox. This isn't a big deal, but I just wanted an excuse to post this picture again:

For the last few years, the Rangers deal has been with Fox TV. Certain really high profile games (like opening day) were on Fox 4. The majority of the games are on Fox Sports Southwest, as the team makes more money with them on cable. Since the deal was with Fox, the free OTA games were on KDFI Channel 27. That is not a surprise, since they're all Fox.

However, today when I went to look at the schedule I noticed that the OTA games were on KTXA-21. It's not a huge deal, but that's a CBS station. Did something change with the TV deal that I'm not aware of? There wasn't any sort of announcement that I recall.

Does anyone have any information on this? I wonder if there was some unannounced deal where the TV contract was renegotiated in order to help Hicks get some more coin.

Additionally, while it hasn't been said, I'm hoping we can get a "100% of the games in HD" this year. Last year there was a huge deal made out of the fact that they had a rather large percentage of the games in HD. I'd love for all the games to be in HD. It's so much sweeter that way.

A few observations.. The Rangers have had for awhile Zack Minasian as the home clubhouse manager for the last 16 years. After the 2009 season, he was let go (we never really heard much about that story, actually). One of Zack's "things" from the past was that if there was some "important" Ranger who was with the club, and then was not, their number was not given out for a year after that. Some examples from the past were when Pudge left after 2002, nobody wore #7 in 2003 (until Eric Young got it in 04). Same goes for Juando's departure after 1999. Nobody had #19 in 2000, but Gabe Kapler had it in 2001. Also Rafael Palmeiro. He had #25 in 2003, then nobody in 2004, until Marshall McDougall had it in 2005.

We have several numbers for departed Rangers that are unassigned in 2010. Now I don't know who the new equipment manager is, but he appears to be holding up that tradition too. Anyway, the numbers are 8 (Rudy Jaramillo), 9 (Hank Blalock), 33 (Kevin Millwood), & 53 (Joaquin Benoit).

One other amusing thing to me (perhaps only to me, as I don't think anyone else cares to this level) is the number 21. 2010 will be the first year in a row that the same player has worn number 21 since 2001. That is the most inconsistent number. Check this out:

2000: Ruben Mateo
2001: Ruben Mateo, Craig Monroe
2002: Pat Borders, Reynoldo Garcia, & Todd Hollandsworth
2003: Ruben Sierra, Jason Jones
2004: Jason Jones (only in camp, was released before opening day)
2005: Esteban German, Steve Karsay
2006: Adam Eaton
2007: Sammy Sosa
2008: Milton Bradley
2009: Jarrod Saltamacchia
2010: Jarrod Saltamacchia

The last player who wore #21 for two complete full seasons in a row was Warren Newson, who carried that number in 96, 97, & 98.

Oh, and Johnny Narron (Josh Hamilton's "life coach") switched from 73 to 23. :)

There is one thing I was hoping fans could help me by contributing. If you've ever looked at my uniform number history page, I've gathered over the years pictures of the various numbers being worn on players. I've posted some of them on the bottom of each number's page as an "example" of that number. The Ruben Mateo picture above is one of those. But check out the pages, and look at the bottom. I think it makes for a nice little archive of pictures.

The part you can help with is with pictures. Take a look. If you have pictures of any of the players who I do not have a picture of, I'd love it if you could send me the picture for inclusion on these pages. I'm specifically looking for ones that show the player's name along with the number. Not just the front where the number is, I really want one with the player's name and number from the back being shown. I know a ton of you have picture archives (I've seen 'em on Facebook & Picasa Web Albums), but I'm sure there's a ton more I haven't seen.

Please take a look at what you have, and if you have something useful for this project, let me know, I'd love to get it online. Danke. Here's some of the ones I've collected. It's the guys who are only up for 2-3 games in a season and then never to return are the hardest to get shots of. :)

Now that Scott Feldman came to terms last night, all of our arbitration eligible players are under contract, continuing a streak the team has in avoiding things like this. Here are the currently under contract players for 2010, and the values of their salaries.

• Michael Young - $16,000,000
• Rich Harden - $6,500,000
• Vladimir Guerrero - $6,500,000
• Ian Kinsler - $4,000,000
• Frank Francisco - $3,265,000
• Josh Hamilton - $3,250,000
• C.J. Wilson - $3,100,000
• Darren Oliver - $3,000,000
• Scott Feldman - $2,425,000
• Colby Lewis - $1,750,000
• Brandon McCarthy - $1,300,000
• Chris Ray - $975,000
• Khalil Greene - $750,000
• Dustin Nippert - $650,000
• Esteban German - $600,000

That's a total of $54,065,000 for 15 players. 15 players does, of course, not make a full team, so there's more to come. Six more are insufficient service time players, meaning we can renew them if no agreement is reached. Those guys are:

• David Murphy - $414,820
• Jarrod Saltalamacchia - $410,890
• Brandon Boggs - $408,540
• Nelson Cruz - $408,070
• Chris Davis - $406,620
• Luis Mendoza - $406,210

Those numbers are their 2009 salaries. While their 2010 salaries are unknown, Maury theorizes that giving the players a 6.5% pay increase would make the overall salary demand for these six players a total of $2,614,735.

Add that to the previous total, and the salary is now at $52,614,735. We still have four roster spots to fill, so the actual number will be a bit higher. Actually the "four spots" remark comes from Maury. He uses all these players listed above as players to be on the 25 man roster, and as a Rangers fan, I know they won't all be. Putting all those names above in "slots", here's what I come up with:

C Jarrod Saltamacchia
1B Chris Davis
2B Ian Kinsler
3B Michael Young
SS
LF Josh Hamilton
CF
RF Nelson Cruz
DH Vlad Guerrero

BN David Murphy
BN Khalil Greene
BN Esteban German
BN Brandon Boggs

SP Rich Harden
SP Scott Feldman
SP Colby Lewis
SP Brandon McCarthy
SP Dustin Nippert
CL Frank Francisco
RP CJ Wilson
RP Darren Oliver
RP Chris Ray
RP Luis Mendoza
RP
RP
RP

This shows five "slots", but.. We know who our starting shortstop will be (Elvis Andrus), and we are expecting Julio Borbon to be the starting centerfielder. Neither of these guys were on Maury's list. On top of that, there's no backup catcher in this mix (Teagarden, Ramirez, Toby Hall?) either, so that will bump one of the guys on this list to AAA.

Elvis made $400,000 in 2009, and Julio Borbon has a major league salary too. He signed a 4 year major league deal that started in 2007. 2010 is the final year of that. The total value of that contract is $1.3 Million, but the breakdown of that is unknown to me. A straight breakdown of Borbon's contract is a $325,000 payment, but I find it hard to believe that would be his 2010 salary, as it's under minimum.

I also find it unlikely that Brandon Boggs & Esteban German will start the year with the big club, and probably Luis Mendoza, too, so the "holes to fill" is probably larger than that. I know their salary counts towards the total club salary obligations, but I believe Maury's article talks totally about 25 man opening day roster, not total obligations.

As long as we're talking about obligations, we do have some dead money on the books this year. Most of it is for actual players playing elsewhere that we owe money to somewhat. They are:

• Kevin Millwood - The Rangers are picking up $3 Million of his 2010 salary in Baltimore.
• Frank Catalanotto - Who just today signed with the Mets, we owe $2 million for a buyout of his contract.
• Vicente Padilla - $1.75 Million for his contract buyout

And then there's Alex Rodriguez. Lest you think his optout from a couple of years ago removed our obligation to him, think again. All that relieved us from was the money we'd have to send to the Yankees for the opted out years of the contract (of which 2010 would have been the final year had it still be in play). No, there's a still a messy (and it's messy to figure out) issue of deferred money.

The best I can figure, we owe Alex Rodriguez $3 Million in 2010 as part of deferred money. I know a lot of the Rangers' obligation went away when he voided the last year of his original contract (which would have been THIS season), but at the time there was some noise made about us still owing some small amount from the voided years (not the years that had happened in TX & NYY). There is still the deferred money from the original years which we're on the hook for. The original payout plan for that was for it to not be over until 2025, but in looking at it now, I think that deferred money came due earlier, and I think - but am not 100% positive that 2010 is the last year we have to pay for Arod. It's confusing, because Texas owed deferred money from the original years of the voided contract. When he was traded to NY, the terms were rejiggered a bit to reduce the load on deferred money TX owes. When the contract was voided, I'm a little unclear as to whether the years we owed deferred money was changed (to us being done in 2010), or if there are two separate piles of deferred money Texas is paying on. I think, but am not sure, that the voided years also had deferred money that were attached to them that are owed, despite the base salary not being owed.

Having said ALL of this, our salary looks to be right about what it was last year on opening day, which was $68,178,798. Maury's article says our 2010 opening day payroll will be $3.25 million less than 2009, but if you add the dead money for Alex Rodriguez into the mix, it's pretty much a wash.

We'll find out before opening day how it all plays out, obviously. But it's still confusing somewhat. :)

Wow, they weren't even interested in Blalock? What's he doing, asking for $13 million a season or something? I'm really surprised nobody is even talking about him. The only time you hear Blalock's name mentioned nationally is when someone goes "Man, why is Blalock not being picked up?"

I had heard a rumor about a month ago or so about him maybe going to the Pirates. A quick check online as I write this shows that Baltimore might take a sniff on him, but even that seems odd.

He didn't fall off THAT much at the back end of his time here. So why seemingly no nibbles at all?

Hank's Homies can't be happy about any of this.