Something that’s not getting a lot of discussion is the fact that the collective barganing agreement expires after this season (December 19th to be specific). The last one was really painless, with no work stoppage. After the ugliness of the 80’s and the horror of 1994/1995, that was pretty good. But the word comes now that the new agreement has already been reached, months ahead of time. Here’s what I read over on the website “The Biz of Baseball“..

Bill Madden of the New York Daily News reports that we may be on the verge of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in MLB, months in advance of the Dec. 19th deadline.
As Madden reports: According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the owners and players have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor deal which will be announced by Selig at the World Series next week.

This is quite good news. Now there are several bullet points in this negotiation that I’ll be curious to see the particulars of. One is the substance abuse program, it was changed several times under the old one, I wonder if the new one will be changed even further. The situation regarding compensation regarding departing free agents and arbitration is another. One lesser talked about one is the tying of home field advantage to the All Star game. There’s plenty more, so I will definitely be interested in seeing the particulars of this; especially for HOW LONG. :)

I haven’t said much on Barry Bonds, because quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing about him. Balco & Steroids aside, I think he’s a talented baseball player. Even before recently, he had a boatload of home runs without the cloud of steroids. He won a ton of gold gloves, and has a ton of stolen bases. He’s a talent – there’s no doubt about it.
Today I ran across a cool article by Ben Kabak on how he thinks that Aaron’s HR record is safe from Bonds, due to the two years Aaron spent as a DH at the end of his career in Milwaukee for the Brewers. It talks about how Bonds is not the player or even the hitter he was recently, and that he might have a hard time playing that much to get enough hits for HR to get to Aaron. Course, I think if he’s close, he can just go to some AL team and DH for as long as he needs to get the home runs. It’ll probably be the Yankees, unfortunately. :(
I enjoyed this article a lot, go check it out.

The 30 man US roster for the World Baseball Classic was released this afternoon. There’s a couple of Rangers on there. They are 1B Mark Teixeira, and SS Mike Young. Former Ranger Alex Rodriguez is also on the roster. Some other current and former Rangers on the various rosters are:
Japan: Akinori Otsuka
Korea: Chan Ho Park
Canada: Aaron Myette
Mexico: Esteban Loaiza, Dennys Reyes, Ismael Valdez, Benji Gil, Adrian Gonzalez
Panama: Einar Diaz, Roberto Kelly (as the manager)
Puerto Rico: Pudge Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Ricky Ledee, Ruben Sierra, Andres Torres, Pedro Valdes
Dominican Republic: Francisco Cordero, Julio Franco, Alfonso Soriano, Sammy Sosa
Italy: Dan Miceli, Mark DeRosa, Vince Sinisi, Frank Catalanotto, David Dellucci
Venezuela: Richard Hidalgo
Some of these are provisional rosters, and not the final 30, because as of this afternoon, not all the 30 man rosters are in, and aren’t due till March 2nd. It will be nice to see Roberto Kelly pop up again, I liked him when he played for the Rangers for a couple of seasons. I believe Mark DeRosa has already declined. I seem to remember there being more than that who have declined, but I can’t find that at the moment. Also, some of these guys (Juan Gonzalez, Richard Hidalgo, Ismael Valdez) are without major league teams, I believe. Be interesting to see them turn up.
The more I think about the WBC, the more exciting I think it could be, if the flavor of this in last year’s Home Run Derby is any indicator. It’s one thing where I feel the latin countries have us beat hands down in is excitement at the park. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – I wish Chan Ho Park had worked here. Because when he first got here, all the Koreans would turn up at the park, take over a whole section, and did a lot of hooting and hollering any time Chan Ho did anything good. When he tanked, that went away, and I missed it. It was a LOT of fun.

Thank you Chicago Cubs. You took Juan Pierre. I did not want him here. We’ve been down that road before with Tom Goodwin, Darryl Hamilton, & Damon Buford, and much more recently with Doug Glanville. I don’t think our outfield is the most stellar in existance, but I didn’t see the addition of Pierre as anything significantly better than what we already have.
This of course doesn’t say anything about our existing outfield (Matthews, Nix), although we could use a rightfielder – anyone think we might take a stab at Sammy Sosa? Not sure how I’d feel aout Manny Ramirez coming here. Would certainly help offensively, but we have had a power hitting headcase in right field before, and the moment Manny’s pants are too baggy, off will come the wheels. :)

Did any Ranger fan seriously believe he would pick Texas over Steinbrenner?
I mean, really.

Esteban Loaiza – 3 years, $21 Million
BJ Ryan – 4 years, $47 Million
Billy Wagner – 4 years, $43 Million with a 5th yr team option for $10 Mil
The cost of signing pitching in Texas has gotten even higher, as if it wasn’t bad enough already.

In about half an hour from now, Pat Gillick will be named the new GM of the Philadelphia Phillies. I know this is a Rangers blog, but I wanted to say something about it.
I see it as a “status quo” move. I personally would have preferred Hunsinger (sp?) be the new GM, but it’s not like Gillick will be _BAD_. I just see it as a “OK, let’s set up Amaro to be GM in four years”. I don’t think you could do that if you brought in Hunsinger.
I suppose the thing we’ll see a bunch in the press covering the Gillick hiring is the Joe Carter clip that ended the 1993 World Seris. That’s the one baseball clip that drives a stake through my heart every time. Can’t watch it.
I have a friend who lives in Seattle, and I’ve asked him for some insight into Gillick, which is where he gets his “stand pat” nickname to see how true that really was. I’ll update when I hear back.

I have several baseball blogs on my daily reading list, and one of them is a Phillies blog called “Beerleaguer”. They did an interview with a guy who runs a Yankees blog about the Yankees season.
The story covers a vareity of issues about the Yankees. I know this is a Rangers blog, but I thought it was a good article and worth your time to read.
Check it out here.

Saw on Baseball Tonight last night that some doofus jumped out of the stands in the upper deck at Yankee Stadium onto the net that’s behind home plate. At first when I saw it, the news reports said he fell out accidentally, but this morning, it turns out he jumped. What a mental zero. People like that need to fall on their heads so we can’t get offspring from such twits.
The video of this looked like he was obviously disoriented and hurt when he landed, and was roughly pulled up – again, I felt bad for him at first, but after hearing what happened, good. The thing that bothers me most about this is he “wanted to test and see if the net would hold his weight”. What did he think would happen if it didn’t? He’d fall through to the ground, real smart. Worse yet, injure the people below the net. Real smart, you genius. If it wouldn’t have hurt the people below, I would have wished you would have fell through to the ground and really hurt yourself.
Anyone know why that net is there in the first place like that? I know why the vertical net is there, but the part that this doofus fell to I’m not sure why it’s there.
The most amusing thing to me in the full story about this is the quote by Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the White Sox. Guillen said this.. “I think that’s New York, you know, anything can happen.”. I don’t think Ozzie has much room to talk, as the folks in his stadium run out of the stands and attack people.

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I don’t know how many of you read the Newberg Report, but Jamey’s site is something you should be checking out. In his newsletter, he has a co-writer who mostly handles minor league game updates. That’s Mike Hindman. Recently, Mike wrote (what I consider to be) a brilliant essay on the state of the Rangers’ payroll. It’s most excellent, I suggest reading it.
It’s rather long, so you’ll need to click on the “Read More” link below to check it out. Again, I wanted to point out this is not my writing, it’s by Mike Hindman. He was kind enough to give me permission to copy it here. I wanted to make sure my site visitors read this, too.
I think it’s a great stance against the Ranger fan who only thinks “SPEND MORE MONEY YOU CHEAP BASTARD OF AN OWNER”. Quite honestly, I detest fans like that, there’s a lot more to the issue than just throwing money at things.

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