What’s with all the Rangers / Phillies connections the last 12 months? Are there any other teams out there? Did someone forget to tell me the other 28 teams were contracted or something?
According to ESPN, Adam Eaton signed a 3 year deal today with the Phillies reportedly worth $24 million, with a fourth year team option which is supposed to bring the contract value up to $33 million.
Given 2006… Amazing. Just amazing.

A couple of weeks ago, the Rangers hired former A’s manager Art Howe as bench coach. He had already been hired by the Phillies to be their first base coach. With former Rangers bench coach Don Wakamatsu accepting a “demotion” to third base coach, that pushed out former third base coach Steve Smith.
Steve Smith was hired today by the Phillies to be their third base coach, which was vacated by Art Howe’s departure for Texas.
So it’s not a real trade, but a “sorta” trade. :)

From the “no surprise there” department, Carlos Lee has signed a deal with the Houston Astros. Supposedly a six year deal, depending on which story you read, it’s either $73 million, $85 million, or $100 million. I guess we’ll find out soon enough, the contract is supposed to be signed later tonight.
This will make Jamey Newberg very happy. :) I’m also for it as I also like following the Astros. Plus it will bring Lee back each year to let a few balls drop in front of him for hits in Arlington.
The draft impact for us is now we get the Astros #17 pick, which effectively is a wash against the #16 pick we gave up for signing Frank Catalanotto. Assuming the Astros or Angels don’t sign a higher rated free agent, we’ll have #17 & #24 in the first round of the 2007 draft, as well as three sandwich picks.
{Homer}Mmmmm.. Sandwich… Awhhhhhhhhhh {/Homer}
UPDATE: Here is an amusing story over at a Cardinals fan’s website on the Lee signing. I particularly enjoyed this line: Throwing $100 mil at a corpulent left fielder who has the range of a narcoleptic cow and a career OPS of .835 doesn’t quite add up to me..

Well, the shoe has finally fallen. Gary Matthews Jr has gotten a 5 year, $50 million deal from the Anaheim California Angels of Los Angeles of California. I wanted to see Matthews stay as much as the next Ranger fan – but yikes. Not THAT much.
This is another of those off seasons where contracts are way out of whack. Soriano? Pierre? Jeez.
I wonder if Matthews will stay productive that long – 5 years is a long time for a career journeyman until 2006. Good luck, GMJ.
UPDATE: Dave over at USS Mariner has a great look at GMJ’s career to date. Check it out.

Apparently Alfonso Soriano signed with the Cubs tonight, a reported 8 year $136 million dollar deal. That’s a lot of dough. The Cubs are throwing a lot of money around. I wonder if the curse will cancel all that out. :)
Eek. I was hoping my hometown Phillies would sign him. Oh well.

Well, we don’t get to keep Mark DeRosa. That’s a shame, I really liked him during his time here, but after last year, I can’t blame him for going where a guaranteed starting job is. Unless we traded Blalock (unlikely given Washington’s comments about him), I can’t see where DeRosa would get regular starting time here. The story is 3 years $13 million. Not bad for the year he had last year. I wonder if his old team (the Braves) made a run at him at all.
UPDATE: I guess it’s official now, there’s a story about it over on the Cubs website.

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Today Jim Bowden of the Washington Nationals signed a ton of players. Twenty one minor league free agents in all. There’s several former Rangers on that list:
Pitchers Colby Lewis, Mike Bacsik, & Chris Michalak. In addition, they also signed catcher Danny Ardoin. None of these guys were world beaters when here, although I think most Ranger fans will remember Colby Lewis as a promising pitcher who was taken down by injury and then lost on a roster squeeze to a waiver claim. Colby came up for a cup of coffee with the Tigers this season; makes me wonder if he’ll get an AL championship ring. :)
The guys over at USS Mariner had this to say about Lewis in a larger article on the big signing spree by the Nats:

Remember Colby Lewis? He was a big prospect once. He disappeared after rotator cuff surgery, missed almost all of 2004 and then didn’t pitch in 2005. And yet early returns were shockingly good last year. In Toledo, he was a little homer-prone but struck out 111 and walked 38. Next year he’ll be 27, so he’s like… a better Gil Meche? The really interesting twist here is that the Nationals got someone else to pick up the tab on his rehab, saw that he might be one of the few to return to any kind of effectiveness after shoulder surgery, and then they picked him up.

Makes you think Bowden is going for the quantity theory on the basis of you bring in a boatload of players, you might get someone decent out of the lot; fully expecting most of them not to amount to anything. I do admit to some surprise that Chris Michalak is still hanging around.

Nice piece of news from TR Sullivan’s blog over at MLBlogs. Former Ranger starter Chris Young is on the All Star tour of Japan. To that end, he is running a blog about the travels.
Check it out here.

So far I haven’t watched many of the playoff games on TV. They’ve either been on during the day, or at night I haven’t had time since my mother has been in town for a visit. Tonight however, I watched from about the fourth inning on of the Tigers / Yankees games.
Wow – that was probably the best pitched game by Kenny Rogers since he made a run at a second perfect game a couple of years ago in an interleague game (against the Reds, I think). He was masterful, and showed way more emotion than I remember him having when in Texas. His curveball was fooling Yankee hitters all night, and he was just brilliant. Congratulations to Kenny Rogers. Was also nice to see the old (not as Pudgy) Pudge out there too with the fists up, and all. Too bad it couldn’t have been in a Ranger uniform, but I’m happy for ’em.
Kenny’s line:
7.2 innings pitched
5 hits
2 walks
8 strikeouts
Nice followup by Joel Zumaya & Todd Jones pitching 1.1 IP of shutout ball in support of Kenny.
Also, what was Gary Matthews Jr doing on Baseball Tonight after the game? I didn’t know he was doing commentary for ESPN. That was a surprise, for sure.

P.S. ” If the Rangers disappeared today, would anyone circulate a petition to bring them back? Would anyone sign it?”….
Unlike some frenchie sounding Taylors around here, we do care about our local team. Some of us are not frontrunning only Cowboys fans. Sigh.