Read this online tonight.

Update: Mesa has informed the Rangers that he’d be willing to pitch in a setup role for closer Francisco Cordero, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.
Recommendation: Wherever Mesa lands, setup duties could be his eventual role. Those with early deadlines in keeper leagues should take note.

As I also follow the Philles & the Pirates, I have to say this scares me. A lot. It will be Jeff Brantley all over again.

Since I last updated, there was the dalliance with Hank Blalock & Josh Beckett. However, there were a number of smaller (subjectively) news items that occured. I wanted to note them here.
Jon Leicester acquired: On Nov 16, we acquired Jon Leicester from the Chicago Cubs. I don’t know a whole lot about him, but Jamey Newberg called him a “decent prospect” back in August of 2004. That’s about all I know. He was acquired for essentially nothing. The old trade for “cash or a PTBNL” type of trade never seems to work out well. But it’s a low risk move, and if it works out, great!
40 Man Roster additions: We added four players to the 40 man roster last week. They are infielders Ian Kinsler & Joaqun Arias as well as pitchers Wes Littleton & Omar Beltre. With these guys (and Leicester) that brings the total on the 40 man to 36. It’s usually more crowded than that when the Rule 5 protection addtions are made. We did leave a decent number of good players off the list, but are unlikely to be selected. Some of those names are John Hudgins, Nick Masset, Drew Meyer, Vince Sinisi, & Ruddy Yan.
Juggling of Coaches: The Orel Hershisher/Dodgers dance ended with Orel staying here, but not in the way most of us expected. He resigned as pitching coach, and took a job in the front office as “executive director”. Sounds like a no real duties job to me – just training for his next job. Because of that move, Mark Connor was promoted from bullpen coach to pitching coach. Lisewise, Dom Chiti who was previously the ‘directory of player personnel’. Not sure why that qualifies him. I would have thought John Wetteland would make a perfect bullpen coach, myself.
Also, the times for all the regular season games as well as the spring training games were announced. I’ll have that update soon, as I’m still thinking about how I’m going to do 2006 game updates – the format will probably change from what I’ve done since the 1999 season, but I’m not sure how yet.

This afternoon there was a news report by Jayson Stark that said that the Rangers were not the frontrunner in the Beckett trade sweepstakes. Then late this afternoon the word came down that he’s not being traded to Texas at all, that he’s likely going to Boston.
We’ll wait for the final word, but it appears to be done.
Looks like the homies will remain. :)

Several reports today say that a deal is in place to trade Hank Blalock & John Danks to the Florida Marlins for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell. My guess is the Rangers have soured on Blalock given the fact at how badly he slumps in the back end of the season. Lowell I’ve always liked. He had a terrible year in 2005, hopefully that’s not where he is headed career wise. Josh Beckett can certainly help us, that’s for sure (provided he stays healthy). Danks is unproven of course, but you never want to give away stud pitching.
As I write this, it’s the first I’ve heard of it, so I haven’t had time to digest it. Don’t want to give up one of our young players, but if we need pitching, then you have to give up something, it’s just my gut says that Blalock and a stud pitcher is too much. We’ll see what happens. I just hope that we get some cash back as Lowell is owed $18 mil over the next two years. You put that with the money we’re paying the Yankees for Arod ($6 Mil), and the money we owe Phil Nevin in 2006 ($12 Mil), and that means we’d be on the books for $27 million for Nevin, Arod & Lowell. That’s a lot.
It appears that this is supposed to happen “by Monday”. If this goes down, I guess Hank’s Homies are done.
News Stories:
Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News #2 (Monday morning)
Ft Worth Star Telegram (Sat Night)
Ft Worth Star Telegram #2 (Sun Morning)
Texas Rangers Site
Fla Marlins Site
Sportsticker via SI.com
There’s been a few moves the last couple of days, mostly procedural, some coaching – I’ll catch up on Monday most likely.

The AL MVP was announced today. Arod won. Don’t care about that.
Two Ranger players were in the results. Mark Teixeira came in seventh and Mike Young came in 11th. Tex got one vote for third place, which was the highest either of them got. Mike Young’s highest was two votes for sixth place. I expect Tex to place much higher than that over the next couple of years, as would Mike Young.
Here’s a page on mlb.com with the complete tally of votes.

Well, today is the day that free agents can talk money with other clubs, as the “exclusive negotiating” period has ended. That means the following players are now no longer Rangers:
John Wasdin, Kenny Rogers, Sandy Alomar, Steve Karsay, Doug Brocail, Greg Colbrunn, & Richard Hidalgo.
I suppose technically we can still claim some sort of minor hold on them through December 7th, which is the last day to offer a player arbitration, but for all intensive purposes, they’re now “former Rangers”. Kind of surprised to see John Wasdin turn up there, as I thought he wanted to stay, as did Sandy Alomar. The rest don’t bother me in the least, we can take care of their spots in some other way.
I’ve updated my roster page with all these changes (and rather easily too, a nice side benefit of the blog software I’m moving most of the site towards.