The Rangers have released their Spring Training Schedule for 2005, and I’ve updated my schedule pages with that information. Highlights include 12 radio games and 3 (maybe more) TV games (although the TV games haven’t been announced yet).

The best off season move we could make was made yesterday. Rudy Jaramillo was signed to a three year contract as hitting coach. Additionally, all of our other coaches will be back for 2005.
There’s an article over at the Dallas Morning News website about this.
This is a long overdue move. While I didn’t like the uncertainty, I don’t begrudge him the opportunity he had to interview for the Mets’ GM position. Likewise, if another GM post comes up before his contract is over, I’ll be sad that he left, but I wouldn’t mind it for that reason. Now, if he went somewhere else to be a hitting coach, that I’d have a problem with.

Buck Showalter has won the AL Manager of the Year award! Congratulations to Buck!! I can’t think of a manager more deserving. Granted, he’s my home team manager, so I tend to be biased towards that, but for a manager that took a team that was expected to lose 100+ games and have them up for division lead with less than 10 games to go in the season – that’s a MAJOR accomplishment. Here’s a few news stories about this:

• mlb.com
• Dallas Morning News
• Texas Rangers site

The Gold Glove Awards were announced today. Texas pitcher Kenny Rogers won the Gold Glove for pitcher, but Mike Young lost to Jeter. :(
That’s Kenny’s second as a Ranger. Here’s a couple of links about it:
Link 1
Link 2

• I noticed a couple of season previews online
  today.   Here’s some links:
• 
  
  Yahoo
• 
  
  MLB.com
• 
  MSNBC.com
• If you know of any more good ones,
  let me know, and I’ll add ’em here.

• We lost both split squad games today.  The
  first (first game on radio) we lost to the Royals
  10-7, and the second to
  the Brewers 8-3.

• Game two goes to the Rangers with a
  10-5 win over the Royals.
• If you’re in my Fantasy Baseball League, remember
  that the draft is tomorrow evening at 5PM.

• The Rangers win the first spring training game by
  a score of 9-5 over the
  Royals.
• And so it begins again.  Today’s the first
  spring training games, so I’ll have a game update page later in the afternoon,
  once I can find details.  Some of the spring games aren’t the easiest to
  find things on.  :)
• Yesterday was an intrasquad game.  The Red
  team (no red uniforms unfortunately) beat the blue team
  4-3.  Bring back the
  red uniforms – see, red wins!

• There’s going to be a mini series of sorts on the
  best Ballparks in baseball, and The Ballpark in Arlington is listed as
  one of the top 5 in the AL. 
  
  Details on the show are available here.

• There’s a couple of decent articles on ESPN.com
  today about Soriano coming here.  Read ’em
  
  here and
  
  here.