Testing again.
The final release version of this software came out this morning. It’s installed now, just wanted to test it, make sure things didn’t explode. :)

A really good site to read regularly is “The Biz of Baseball”. It talks about well.. business related issues to baseball. Anyway, this morning I noticed an article about the Rangers, specifically about the “You could use some baseball” ad campaign.
I wrote about this some time ago – the ads are generally funny, and reflect little “moments” we have when we realize that our entertainment choices aren’t great. The only one that’s a little bit of an eyebrow raiser is the one I talked about back in February about “First base has nothing to do with kissing”. Explaining that to a small kid could be odd, but nothing to really get bent out of shape over. ;)
And unlike some people who take any opportunity to bitch about Tom Hicks, I wanted to say I liked the article a lot, and the ad campaign made me laugh, so yes. It worked. Although I don’t think it would make me attend any more games, no advertising would work on me in that regard. :)
Go read the article at bizofbaseball – it’s an enjoyable read.

Does anyone else have the same reaction on TV when Josh Lewin says “We go to Jim Knox”? For me that means hitting the fast forward button on the TiVo. I’d rather watch the staff clean up the ballpark after everyone’s gone home.
I actually switched over to watch a minute or two of women’s basketball. Actually was waiting for the Giants/Nats game to start on ESPN2, but some women’s basketball game is in double overtime. Surprised they’re sticking with that, and not showing Bonds.

Is there anyone else secretly wishing that Vicente Padilla doesn’t come back from his injury at all? As a human being you don’t want to see someone hurt, but as a baseball fan… I kind of like what we have now.
Anyone else feel the same way?

Just in case you didn’t know about the bridge accident in Minneapolis, go read this.

If you are seeing this message, then you are seeing the new look for my site. The look that I used to have was not one I was terribly happy with from the moment I launched it. A few weeks back, Six Apart, the folks who make the software that drives this site (Movable Type) launched a new v4 beta. It’s got a boatload of new features that would make the way I do this site an awful lot easier.
One of the things in the new software package was a bunch of new themes, and I took the opportunity to use that as a key to redesign the site. This is mostly stock software actually – the theme has some customizations (the header graphic, the baseballs), but is mostly “out of the box”. Their “out of the box” is a lot better than it used to be. :) Big thanks to Thijs Leenders for his help with the graphics.
One of the larger more updated sections is my seat selector section. It’s something I started on my own in 1999 on this site, years before the Rangers did it themselves. But this new version lets me cut a lot of waste out of the site. You see in the old version I had three editions of the seat selector (regular, large, extra large). There was an HTML page for each version, because I used to show the images as a pop-up. There are 177 sections in the ballpark, with another 25 or so hidden areas, so there’s roughly 600 HTML pages. This new version does it very differently, so I could drop the popups, saving myself conversdion of 600 HTML pages. Plus the new version of the site just looks a lot cooler.
I’ve cleaned up text formatting, just done a lot of cool stuff to make everything look nicer. I hope you think the same.
One change though – if you were reading the site’s updates via an RSS reader, you may need to resubscribe, as the rss feed url has changed depending on which format you were using in the past. Additionally, if you want to leave comments, you will have to log in and create an account. For some reason Typekey isn’t working, that could be a bug, as this is still technically beta software. If you have any questions about using the new software, let me know via email.
I’ll also be looking at the forums and the gallery to see if I can style them the same and make ’em look more like the “main site”. I also need to fix the captcha issue in the forums, as well as here. Edit: Nevermind – fixed it on the forums. Now I need to fix it in MT.
Thanks again for visiting. Glad you took the time to come.

OK, Teixeira has been traded. I can’t say that surprises me in the least. Even with the Boras factor ignored, I don’t think many Ranger fans thought he was going to stay here. Those comments he made a couple of weeks ago regarding “fun conversations with Baltimore in a year and a half” were pretty damning. I can’t speak to his “happiness” here, as I’m sure we’d get the Bull Durham lines about wanting to help the team win, etc… But I think most everybody seems to think it was inevitable that he would be moved.

So OK, that leaves a few possibilities. First, we keep him through his final arb year of 2008 and let him walk at the end for draft picks. That was so seriously not likely to happen, I can’t even fathom it being thought about. Second, we trade him. If you trade him, that gives you three realistic options. Trade deadline now. Trade deadline in 2008, and the off season between 07 & 08. If you are going to trade a player like Mark Teixeira, you want to maximize the value you get for him. That’s actually what you generally want to do in any trade, but especially for something like this.

So OK, we’re trading him. You go out and see who wants to take a player who will likely get $12 million in arbitration next year, the final year of his contract, where it’s widely expected he will go out on the market and not just automatically resign. That kind of rules out trading at the deadline in 2008, since it would be for just two months, and you’re not going to get a ton of value if you trade him 12 months from now. I also don’t think the offseason is the best time, the best time to trade him if you’re trading him at all is now. At least this way we can have a handle on what other pieces we might need in 2008 when we go into the offseason in October.

OK, we’ve arrived at now being the optimum time to trade him being now. So you go out there and see who wants him? While he is under control for next season, as I said he’s arb eligible, which means he’s likely making $12 million next year. That fact alone limits some of the teams. Plus not everyone will need the player as they have others there already. So that narrows it down. The widely talked about teams in this trade scenario were the Braves, the Angels, and the Dodgers. Heard the Diamondbacks in the last couple of days, but my gut says that wasn’t a realistic option.

So OK. You then look down what each team offers. I know most people will scream “pitching please” as a return. As would I, but one has to be realistic about it. Are these teams going to send us their best pitcher or pitching prospect for Tex? No, they’re not. So you look at the best option for all of them. For the Angels, the best option for pitching I saw was Ervin Santana. Eh. For the Dodgers, the word was that the Rangers wanted Clayton Kershaw. By all accounts, that would have been a spectacular move. But LA didn’t want to give him up. I probably wouldn’t have, either. That left the Braves and their package.

There’s also the issue of trading Tex inside our own division to the Angels, something that I would have a hard time dealing with. It’s always annoying when you trade a fan favorite and a good player away, but it’s worse inside your own division. We would have to have been absolutely bowled over with an offer from the Angels to trade him there. That didn’t happen, so I’m glad about that.

So Teixeira is traded away with Ron Mahay for four players. One major leaguer, and three prospects. By all accounts the two named ones are great prospects (not marginal ones), and the fourth is unknown yet, rumored to be another pitcher. First, let me say breaking down individual players is not my strength. That is a strength of Jamey Newberg, so I’ll defer to him on the actual playing abilities of each of the guys we get. But I do have a few words.

Inbound we get a switch hitting catcher Jarrod Saltamacchia. I kept hearing that he can play some first base. In trading away a player of Mark Teixeira’s caliber for a player who is primarily a catcher, the immediate first thought is What about Gerald Laird?. There was some talk a day or two ago that we were looking at trading Laird & Mahay to the Cubs for Felix Pie. I find that hard to believe – while Pie is supposed to be a stud, I can’t see where that trade makes much sense from the Cubs standpoint. Anyway the question will be where will Salt play in Texas? Laird is our front line catcher, and we did just bring in Adam Melhuse, so we don’t really need another catcher, although Salt is a switch hitter with a lot of power. Do we play Salt at first base? Does that bump Wilkkkkkkerson back to part time duties in the OF? We’ll see.

The others are infielder Elvis Andrews, who is supposed to be a very good infielder, but he’s at A ball, so he’s awhile away from making a big impact. There’s also pitching prospect Neftali Feliz, who has some decent numbers, he is in rookie ball. Even further away. The fourth player is unknown, but supposedly pitcher Matt Harrison, but there’s some injury concerns, which is why he’s likely to be a PTBNL in this deal.

As for Ron Mahay, while he’s pitched OK for us, I can’t see him being here super long term, either – and he’s what 37 I think? Nice guy, but I don’t think will be seriously missed.

Is this a blockbuster trade? No, probably not. However, all things considered, we probably got the best we could get. Yeah, there’s some question marks about the minor leaguers, but when isn’t there about minor leaguers – honestly? You’re not getting a team to give up a front line starting pitcher here, so this is probably the best you can do. My overall opinion is probably “eh”, but I think that’s more based off of the fact that you knew Tex was going to go anyway, not the players back. Once those remarks about “fun conversations” came out a few weeks back, you kind of knew this day was coming, and that’s where my feelings come from. I’m OK with the players in return, just annoyed we had to trade him in the first place.

Why did I write all this? I’m just tired of knee-jerk reactions of people in call in shows who say things like “No major league pitching? This automatically sucks”. I detest sports call in shows, because most of the people who call in generally have no friggin clue about the larger picture. This post won’t change that behaviour, but at least will get some steam out of me. I wish Steve Busby was back on the KRLD post game call in. I loved how he would mock people calling in with that kind of attitude. I miss that. Busby had some balls on the post game show.

I do have to admit to being curious what Michael Young’s remarks about the trade will be.

In addition to the photos I took of the Ballpark out at the doubleheader on Tuesday, I also took some photos of Jerryland, which is being built next door. The panoramic shot posted above was actually four jpgs I stitched together to make what you see. I took them standing at the back of the Dr Pepper Youth Ballpark which was right on the other side of Mark Holtz lake. For those of you who had any doubt, this definitely qualifies as a “next door” neighbor. If you’ve ever been to Baltimore or Pittsburgh and seen games there, then this will feel the same. If you stand in Oriole Park, and look out the upper concourse across the parking lot, you can see the Ravens stadium. Same in Pittsburgh. Stand at PNC Park, and you can see the Steelers’ home (Heinz Field) on the far side of the parking lot.

Jerryland and The Ballpark in Arlington are separated by more than just a parking lot – but not much more. I hope that when it’s all done, they won’t put things inbetween like buildings that will block the view. My guess is Jerry won’t want people to not be able to see Jerryland from the Ballpark anyway, and that’s unlikely to happen. :)

The shot below was taken where my seat was, which was the last row in Section 326 behind home plate. I did zoom in a bit, but not much – the place is pretty darned close.