Well, Siri on my iPhone finally knows about the 2014 season. I asked it tonight what the next Rangers game was, and it said this.

Well, the season is over.  We got eliminated in Game 163, the tie-breaker.

I’ll probably write something about all this shortly.   Today’s news however, is that Bench coach Jackie Moore and coach Dave Anderson will not be back in 2014.  That was announced today (Oct 2nd).  [ Link ]

There was some noise today that the team wanted to get rid of Moore after the 2012 season, but Wash talked them into keeping him.  Not sure what the deal with Dave Anderson was at all.    If you ask me, and you haven’t, I’d bring up Steve Buchele to be bench coach.    If they do bring up Buuuuuuchele, it might set up some sort of situation like Philly had where Charlie Manuel had Ryne Sandberg hanging around.  Charlie had been there for awhile, and the team was struggling, so it kind of seemed to me as a Phillies fan that Sandberg was hanging around waiting for Manuel to get fired.   If the Rangers make Buchele Wash’s bench coach, there will probably be a lot of talk about “How long will Wash keep that job until they replace him with Steve Buchele?”

I am NOT in the camp that says we need to get rid of Washington at all.  I like him.   But he probably needs to show some sort of improvement in 2014, or he probably will be suspect.  I believe his contract is up after 2014.

Most importantly, who will Ron Washington hug after wins next year?  :)

Well, the Rangers went and traded for Alex Rios.   This strikes me as a move that was made more out of necessity due to Nelson Cruz being suspended.  I think they probably would have tried to move forward with kids from here, but when we could get Rios, we did.   This strikes me as more of a “best player available”, kind of thing.   It’s not like Rios is bad.  He’s decent enough.  Not going to light the world on fire, but a good, solid player at a time when we could use one of those.

We were trying to get him before the deadline, and the Sox apparently wanted some big major league ready guys, so we backed off.  In the end, they took merely a PTBNL or cash.   The rumours are that they wanted Leury Garcia in return .  Garcia is a guy I’d like to hang onto, so as with the Garza trade, we’re sending decent, if young/unproven pieces back for a veteran.   At some point we’re gonna run out of pieces like that to send.  But I guess it depends on how Rios does here.

The White Sox also sent $1M in cash too, this covers two clauses Rios had in his contract that escalated the value of his 2015 buyout, and his 2014 contract by $500k each.  So basically the White Sox covered the increases in his salary due to the trade.

I’m looking forward to see how the Rios bat affects our lineup, which has been surprisingly potent the last couple of weeks.  Speedy as well.  After the Cruz suspension, it seemed like the “need to steal more bases” light went off.

Hahahahaha

An event in last night’s game made me think INSTANTLY of Nolan Ryan.  So I screen grabbed a shot of them together from the TV, and slapped it on here.  Made me laugh.   Click it for a larger version.

I’ll get straight to the point.  After much consideration, I’ve decided to stop doing the daily updates here.

Since I dropped cable TV, my ability to keep up with Rangers games has been really impacted.  Those who have followed my site would have heard me rant about that.  However, one thing that also has changed a lot since last season is the fact that I am working again.    That has taken up more of my time than I anticipated.  I tend to work strange hours, and my need to timeshift the games is even more of an issue than it was before.  Before, I could get away with it, because I wasn’t working, and could devote more time to the games, especially since I had to listen to them when they happened due to radio.  Work has impacted that more than I thought it would.

I tried this season to keep it going, but about 3 times, I’ve fallen behind on updates of like 10 games.  When the team has played only 64 – that’s a lot.  When I fell behind most recently, I started thinking of doing the catch up work and quite frankly, I just didn’t want to.  Most of the games during the week I just miss totally anymore.   What time I get in the evenings that I’m not working is now spent with my kids and wife.  That’s NO complaint, just a reality.  They deserve my time more than the baseball games do.   By the time I’m done with them, the games are over.  There’s been a game or two in the last few weeks that I got notified via email it was over, and I didn’t even realize they were playing.   I also realized that I never updated my roster page once the team broke camp back at the end of Spring Training.  That’s fallen way behind, and right now I don’t have really have the desire (much less the time) to go through all that and update it.

Due to all this, I’ve decided this is the time to stop trying to force myself to do daily updates.   The above is why.  However, I’m not stopping cold turkey.  I’m not taking the site down.  I will leave it here, I’ve put a lot of work into this since I started in December 1998.  Going forward, I will still maintain these parts:

• “How Many in 201x”.  I’ve rather enjoying keeping track of that the last few seasons.  It ties in mostly to transactions, but I’ve had some nice compliments on that, so I’ll keep doing it.
• Uniform Number History – that’s been a thing I’ve REALLY enjoyed more than any other on the site.  I’ve gotten personal communications from Victor Rojas (when he was here), and Eric Nadel about the usefulness of that, so with those in mind, I will make sure that gets updated going forward.

Plus, when the mood strikes, I’ll say something.   But it’s obvious to anyone that I’ve pulled back, but in my mind I still saw it as something that needed to be updated every day.  By releasing myself from that, I think I can enjoy the thing a bit more, and perhaps not stress out so much about missing bits.  I’m still going to follow the team, I’m still going to be paying attention where I can (given the boundaries I set out above).  I’m still going to be a Rangers fan, and I’m keeping up, just not as visibly on these pages.

Thanks to all who have visited me over the years, and as I said – not going away, just changing focus.  Go visit me and a lot of other great Rangers fans on our Facebook Texas Rangers Fan Page.

Thanks, and God Bless You!

Joe

Hey, I’ve fallen behind in game updates again.   I’m now down 11 games, and I’m not feeling particularly interested in writing about the Rangers.  Last week I had a death in the family, and then there’s the tornadoes we had in the DFW area a week ago, and then tonight the mess in Oklahoma.  I think I’m just going to skip writing about those games, as I’m really NOT in the mood to write about baseball at the moment.

I am however, going to go through the transactions and bring that up to speed, and I already brought my “How Many in 2013” up to speed.   I did see that the move they made today to get Josh Lindblom up will be negated before tomorrow, as he’s going back down.  Odd move, as it effectively jettisons Derek Lowe.   I’ll have more to say about that in the actual transaction.

I know from my traffic logs, I don’t have a ton of high level traffic, and that’s OK.  I used to care about that, I don’t as much anymore.   But still, for those that do follow me, I don’t like getting that far behind.   Sorry about that.  :)

I also realized I never updated my roster page for the start of the season.   Part of that is because I haven’t been to a game this year, and haven’t been able to pick up a media guide, which is what I usually use for that.  I’ll get to that when I get a copy of the media guide.  Anyone who goes to the game be interested in picking me up one and sending it my way?  Let me know.