Well, Juan Gonzalez was activated from the Indians’ disabled list today. It cost Ryan Ludwick his spot on the roster, as he was DFA’ed.
And guess what? After his first at bat, Juan hurt himself again, and had to come out of the game. As much as my religion tells me it’s not nice to make fun of others’ misfortune, unfortunately all I can think of to say about this is..

Former Ranger Buddy Bell was named manager of the Royals today. Buddy, as far as I can tell is a good guy, and will probably give the Royals his best shot. However, I don’t see ’em doing much of anything anytime soon.
In fact, during tonight’s telecast, Josh Lewin remarked that in his previous mangerial stops, Buddy was in charge of some teams that were pretty much in the toilet, and that he might be good at getting players through bad times.
Doesn’t say much about his ability to turn it around when folks are talking about how he can keep their spirits up when losing? Yikes. Still, I wish him the best, I hope he can turn it around there.

Read online today where former Rangers pitcher Rick Helling was hurt while pitching for the Milwaukee Brewers’ AAA team. Apparently he was “impaled” by a flying broken bat piece.
While the article I read didn’t give any specifics as to the exact nature of the injury, the word impaled didn’t sound pleasant at all. Haven’t seen anything else on this story other than this article. If I find anything else out about this, I’ll update.
That didn’t take long, found this article which tells some of the details of the injury. Doesn’t sound like it’s terribly bad, but still – ouch!

Just a reminder – two years ago on Mother’s Day, Rafael Palmeiro hit his 500th home run at The Ballpark in Arlington. I was there with my wife, it was quite the cool moment. We had gotten free tickets and were sitting in Section 26, a spectacular view of what happened.
I mention this to commemorate the event, and also that I took a lot of pictures that day, if you want to see my gallery of photos from Raffy’s historic day, you can do so at this location:
https://www.rangerfans.com/gallery/raffy500.

Travis Hughes, who was designated for assignment as part of the gaggle of roster moves to set the 25 man roster isn’t a Ranger anymore. He was claimed on waivers by the Washington Nationals today.
Travis Hughes & Augustin Montero were DFA’ed when we purchased the contracts of Mark DeRosa & Chad Allen on April 2nd.

A couple of days after Juan Gonzalez was named the starting RF of the Indians, he was placed on the disabled list. This is a record for him. He usually plays about 10 games before being “hurt”. This time he played zero!
In reading a story about this move today, I read an interesting fact about his (lack of) durability. It said this: For Juan Gone, this is his 11th trip to the DL in 14 seasons, and he has been limited to just over one season’s worth of games in the last three years.
In fact, looking back at his career stats, Juan hasn’t played what can be called a “full season” of games since 1999, when he was in 144 games. The next closest would be 2001 with 140. He had 115 in his year with the Tigers, and 70/82 in his two years back with the Rangers, and a paltry 33 last year with Kansas City.
It all can be traced back to his baggy pants in the Hall of Fame Game. :)

After trying to catch on this spring with the New York Mets (why a NL team, wouldn’t it have been easier in the AL), Andres Galarraga announced his retirement this afternoon.
His time in Texas wasn’t the best period in the team’s history, but I always liked him. With his cancer issues over the years, and from what I can tell his general likability, he was someone I wanted to see succeed, even when he was playing for the hated Braves.
This spring, Galarraga hit .235 in 17 games, with a double, three home runs and seven RBI. Over his entire career, he was a .288 hitter, playing in 2,257 games. He had 1425 RBI’s, and 399 home runs, just one short of the 400 club.
There’s more details in a press release by the Mets here.
You can also view my old roster page for Andres here.

Our old buddy, Mr. Baggy Butt himself, Juan Gonzalez was named the starting RF for the 2005 Cleveland Indians. I found this surprising, as Juan doesn’t seem to fit into what the Indians are doing personnel wise. They seem to be doing mostly what we are, which is a close knit group of young players who are growing together. Close knit is not something that Juando is really known for. He’s known to be moody, selfish, and not a big “team player”.
I liked him when he was here, but after he left the first time, and even during his second tenure with the Rangers, he just didn’t seem like the same player he was before. I wish him well, but along with most other Ranger fans, I have to wonder how long he will go before being placed on the disabled list with some small injury that he doesn’t want to play through.
Here’s a wire story about this issue:

[Read more…]

Former Rangers outfielder Doug Glanville was released by the Yankees today. He was trying to hook up with them to back up Bernie Williams (who has a great jazz cd), but the Yankees decided his offense wasn’t up to par (we saw that in Texas).
I do like the guy, I followed him during his years in Philly. I just don’t see him hooking on with someone else. Kind of reminds me of Tom Goodwin, who is still floating around out there. Light hitter, good defender, great clubhouse guy.

Former Ranger pitcher Todd Van Poppel retired this morning. He had been in camp with the Mets, but today decided to walk away and hang up the cleats.
Todd had two stints with the Rangers, neither particularly sucessful. The first time was a brief time in 1998, and then again in 2002 & 2003. He was one of those guys I think folks wanted to do well, since he’s a local boy. But it never worked out with the Rangers.
View my Todd Van Poppel page here.