Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him to stay. I did. Rather a lot. But I’m most excited about the fact that he’s not going to the Yankees. Even though I’m a known Phillies fan, and I’d be lying again if I said I wasn’t excited about Halladay / Lee / Oswalt / Hamels, I’m truly most excited that the Yankees did not get them.

Thanks to Cliff Lee. Had fun when you were here, rode you to the World Series, which was way cool (even though we lost). Hopefully we see you there in 2011.

Nice that he didn’t just go all Rod Tidwell on baseball when choosing his contract. Also nice that he called Jon Daniels personally to say he was going to Philly.

Finally, I hope this guy didn’t rip holes in his shirt converting it back to a Cliff Lee shirt. :)

I posted an update on various Rangers news on November 15th. It’s now the evening of December 7th, and a few more things have happened, so here go a few more thoughts..
Some Smaller Moves: Right after my last update, there were some roster moves. Nothing that I would call Earth shattering, but they were moves. The Rangers signed Barret Loux, a pitcher who was the sixth overall selection in the 2010 draft by the Diamondbacks. He was available due to a roster technicality. The Rangers also added four players to the 40 man roster (Fabio Castillo, Wilmer Font, Miguel Del Los Santos, & Engel Beltre). Jamey Newberg could tell you more about those guys. :) The Rangers also signed C Kevin Cash, OF Doug Deeds, & IF Esteban German to minor league contracts. All got invites to spring training. Nice to see the inventer of the Claw & Antlers still with us.
Abritration Stuff: The only two players the Rangers offered salary arbitration to were Cliff Lee & Frank Francisco. Lee turned it down to nobody’s surprise. I also think it was no surprise to anyone that we offered it in the first place. Francisco did accept it, so he’ll be back in 2011. That’s probably a good thing. Provided he pitches like he did AFTER April of 2010.
Thad Bosley new Hitting Coach: Sadly, Clint Hurdle left after just one year (quite the counter to Jaramillo’s tenure). Although I’m not TOO sad about it, he left to be a major league manager again. Can’t really fault him for that. So we turn to Thad Bosley, who was the runner up to replace Jaramillo in the first place. I don’t know much about Bosley, so I don’t have a ton of insight into him. Wash knows him from their time in Oakland together where he was a hitting coach awhile ago. Bosley was a former Ranger player at the end of his career (89/90). He becomes the first Rangers player to later become a hitting coach. Something I hoped they would have done with Rusty Greer instead. Oh well.
Speaking of Rudy Jaramillo, since he took the job in Chicago I heard not one peep out of him. Given they changed managers, I wonder how long he’ll be up there. I know Houston is looking again. :)
Josh Hamilton named AL MVP: Well, duh.
Vlad Guerrero named 2010 Outstanding DH: Well duh. Just not as big of a duh.
Yorvit Torrealba signed to be #1 catcher: On Nov 29th, we signed Yorvit Torrealba to be our primary catcher for 2011/12. I can’t say I’m overly thrilled about this signing. It’s not like the guy is bad. He’s passable, which is kind of what Matt Treanor was this past year. But sadly, there isn’t a lot of quality top line catching available out there. I’m a little surprised that we didn’t bring back Molina, who said he wanted to play again. I guess in lieu of having a Joe Mauer being available, I guess this is the best we can do. From what I’ve been reading, he’s expected to catch about 100 games a year, which means the #2 will be way more than the usual backup catcher, as he too will be expected to catch about 60 or so games. Seems like Matt Treanor is a good candidate there, with Teagarden in AAA as a reserve. We also got Mark Lowe signed to a 2011 contract at the same time.
Rangers 2010 Season DVD announced: The Rangers announced a DVD commemorating the World Series season, called “It’s Time”. While I’m a bit bummed it is not a Blu-Ray, and merely a plain DVD, I will probably get this, because it’s Ranger themed. As opposed to the official Major League Baseball annual World Series DVD, which is generally more themed towards the winner of the series. Despite that one being a Blu-Ray, I’ll opt for the plain DVD, due to the more Rangers specific version of the content. :)
Rangers sign Japanese pitcher Yoshinori Tateyama: The Rangers take a dip into the pool of Japanese pitchers again, signing Yoshinori Tateyama. Don’t know anything about this guy, although I read somewhere that the same scouts who recommended we bring over Colby Lewis again said we should get Tateyama. So that’s something. This will be the fourth Japanese player to appear with the Rangers, all four have been pitchers. He will follow Hideki Irabu (meh), Akinori Otsuka (not too bad), and Kazuo Fukumori (awful). I wonder if Rangers Captain will bow to him like he had a habit of doing before to the other Japanese pitchers. :)
2011 Spring Training Schedule Announced: This wouldn’t be a big deal, except the last game of spring training is in Round Rock. The Rangers will play their new AAA affiliate, the Round Rock Express. Hopefully that’s one of the televised spring games.
Non Tender Stuff: Of all the players eligible to be non tendered, only one of them was. Dustin Nippert, who is now a free agent. Have read since then that he might go to Japan. Anyway, all the other players had contracts tendered (Cruz, Hamilton, Murphy, O’Day, & Wilson). No surprises there, really.
Jon Daniels named ML Executive of the Year: Well, Duh – Part 3.
Huge Scoreboard Announcements made: That’s something I care a lot about, and want to write a separate story about the scoreboards. So I’ll not say anything here about it right now.
Radio Station Changes: Big changes to the Rangers radio coverage, just one year after there were already big changes. For the first time since 1995, no Rangers games will be on KRLD. That’s a big change. Last year, they were also on 105.3, which was the FM affiliate for KRLD. In 2011, they’re all going to be on 103.3 The Fan. This is a better arrangement than it was last year where it was on the FM stations on M-Thu, and AM on Fri-Sun. At least they’ll all be in the same place. Unless the Mavericks are playing, who have the upper hand in scheduling. At the moment, there’s only two conflict games, at which point it will be moved to some strange combo of 660 AM and three FM stations. Check the official press release for that. Anyway, a few remarks about this. First, I’m hopeful this will allow Eric Nadel to bring back “A Page from Baseball’s Past”. I missed that, and hopefully the new station will allow that to return. Second, I was talking to a friend about this, and he raised an intersting point. It’s entirely possible the Rangers wanted to do this for the same reason they moved out Josh Lewin. Now that they’re making a bigger deal about branding and wider attention, they probably wanted a scenario where you weren’t guessing where the game will be. Having 160 out of 162 on the same station is probably a good idea. Same thing with Lewin – they wanted a guy who would be there all the time, not disappear for Chargers games. The actual station frequency is not relevant to me, as I don’t have a problem receiving any of the stations mentioned. Plus FM is better sounding than AM anyway.
As a side note, there’s till no word on who the new TV play by play guy will be. At least I’m assuming it will be a guy. I’m just glad it’s not going to be Dave Barnett, who was said to be remaining on the radio side in the radio station news story.
That’s about it for now. I’ll have more to say probably once some actual moves have been made. As I sit here writing this, there’s some Winter Meeting Hot Stove stuff going on big time (Cliff Lee, Davis/Oday to Cubs, Michael Young to Rockies), but those things are so changing by the second, I don’t get into all the particulars. Check out mlb trade rumors for all that stuff. It’s worth it – great site.

Last night I posted this on Chuck Greenberg’s Facebook page:

Chuck, it was said a few weeks ago that you guys would know by Thanksgiving whether the new scoreboard plan for 2011 was doable. Its now past that, any news?

A few hours later, Chuck wrote me back and said this:

Major announcement should be coming by the end of the week :-)

Yay! Looks like something big is happening this week!!

I just saw this posted tonight, so if you see this right after I post it, you might still have time to catch these. If you didn’t see their Josh Hamilton special a few months back, it’s worth seeing. These times are EASTERN TIME.

Tune in at 6pm for Josh Hamilton: Resurrecting the Dream followed by Path to the Pennant AL: A look back at how the 2010 AL World Series bound Rangers advanced to the Fall Classic at 7pmET then, MLB Tonight: World Series Preview breaking down the World Series matchups, previewing the San Francisco Giants and Texas Rangers lineups, rotations and benches.

I am so totally stealing this from USS Mariner. They had the post there under the title of “One way to Describe The Greatness of Cliff Lee“. This is all it said:
Sandy Koufax, career, postseason:
57 innings, 32 hits, 10 runs, 2 home runs, 11 walks, 61 strikeouts
Cliff Lee, career, postseason:
56 1/3 innings, 32 hits, 11 runs, 1 home run, 6 walks, 54 strikeouts

Saw this posted this afternoon..

The Rangers today announced that the club has signed Tom Grieve to a three-year contract extension as the club’s television analyst on Fox Sports Southwest and TXA21. The new agreement carries Grieve, who has been on the team’s telecasts since 1995, through the 2013 season.
It was also announced that television play-by-play announcer Josh Lewin will not return for 2011.
“After several discussions over the last few months, the Texas Rangers and Josh Lewin have agreed to end their relationship and move ahead in different directions,” club president Nolan Ryan said in a news release. “As a result, Josh will not be returning as the Rangers television announcer in 2011. We wish Josh the very best for the future.”
“I would like to thank the Rangers for nine wonderful years,” said Lewin. “I respect the team’s leadership and vision and wish them nothing but the best as well.”
Lewin has been on Rangers’ telecasts since 2002. The club will immediately begin its search for a play-by-play broadcaster to work with Grieve on the Fox Sports Southwest and TXA21 telecasts.

A few thoughts on this..
A couple of years ago when the last round of TV broadcast negotiations happened, there was a stink made about the Rangers not being happy with Lewin being gone so much for his other duties as the Saturday Fox baseball correspondent, as well as his NFL duties. At the time it was negotiated to him not doing Fox anymore (unless it was a Rangers game) and keeping the Chargers games. This time around, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was asked to give up the football stuff too and do 162 with the Rangers, and he declined. I never liked the split duties like that, I preferred the team broadcasters to stay, not shuffle around like that.
While I liked a lot of Josh’s personality, the constant forays into irrelevant stuff bothered me. Josh’s predecessor (Bill Jones) proved that to make Tom Grieve work well, you need a personality that brings stuff out of Tom. Bill didn’t do that. Josh did. However, Josh could go too far, so I’m hoping the innings full of shoutouts to people who send food to the booth will stop. That was getting a bit stupid at the end of the season, I don’t care about who brought you food. I really don’t. Stop that. I don’t lay all that blame at Josh, it’s Tom too, but I’m hoping the irrelevant talk dies down with someone new.
Also, a few years ago when Victor Rojas left, the scuttlebutt was that he wanted to go to the TV side, and they had just extended Lewin at that time, so Rojas left. He spent a year at MLB Network, and then went back in 2010 to do Angels TV stuff. If it were up to me, we’d buy out Rojas’ contract, and bring him back to be the Rangers TV guy! I miss Vic. A lot. Vic had a style of telling you what you thought, and that appealed to me – a lot.
And while I’m going off on the broadcast people, we need to get rid of Jim Knox. I have never liked this guy since Day 1, and it hasn’t gotten any better. Lewin’s call of “We go to Jim Knox” means “hit the fast forward on the TiVo – no matter what is happening on screen”. Promote Emily Jones or something. PLEASE! PLEASE! And take Ric Renner with you. That’s another guy who means an immediate fast forward when he shows up. GAH!
I’m also not a fan of Dave Barnett, either. I don’t actively dislike him, and I can’t give you a concrete reason why, but he never gelled with me. With both Vince Cotroneo & Victor Rojas before him, the radio guy working with Eric Nadel took a year or so to get used to. I liked Vince when we parted ways, I REALLY liked Victor when we parted ways. I still have not gotten used to Dave Barnett. I’m not actively campaigning for his dismissal, but I wouldn’t mind a change there. Just don’t promote Barnett to TV. Egad – that would be a bad move.
The bottom line is I want the Rangers to bring back Victor Rojas for play by play with the Rangers and get rid of Jim Knox. Beyond that I don’t have any concrete answers as to who else. I also like Scott Franzke, we shouldn’t have let him go either, but that was more KRLD’s fault than anything else.

Usually towards the end of the year, we always hear about how many players the Texas Rangers have used overall in any particular season. The Rangers are usually towards the high end of that list. Injuries, callups, usually make for a long list, and you tend to forget the guys who are here so quick that they don’t even have time for the proverbial “cup of coffee”.

I’ve done this for the last two seasons, and it’s worked out pretty well. I’ve also gotten some positive feedback on it, so I’m doing it again in 2010. For the record, if you’d like to see the final tallies for the last two years, you can still see them here: [ 2008 | 2009 ]

Anyway, this post will get bumped whenever there is a player who is making his first appearance for the Texas Rangers in 2010. I am going to count guys who get called up, but don’t play immediately (or sometimes don’t play at all), as they will be part of the 25 man roster officially. So here goes. The most recent additions will be on the top of the list. The original opening day 25 man roster is not in any particular order.

In 2010, the Rangers have nobody in the original opening day 25 that is making his major league debut. We had one in 2009 (Elvis Andrus) and one in 2008 (Kaz Fukumori). We do have, however five guys making their Ranger debuts in 2010: Blanco, Garko, Guerrero, Harden, & Ray.

Total players in 2010: 48
Total pitchers used in 2010: 21
Total position players used in 2010: 27
Total players making major league debut: 5

#48 – Mark Lowe (Sep 29)
#47 – Esteban German (Sep 6)
#46 – Clay Rapada (Sep 3)
#45 – Jeff Franceour (Aug 31)
#44 – Alex Cora (Aug 24)
#43 – Michael Kirkman (Aug 20 – Major League Debut)
#42 – Brandon Boggs (Aug 15)
#41 – Cristian Guzman (Jul 31)
#40 – Jorge Cantu (Jul 30)
#39 – Mitch Moreland (Jul 29 – Major League Debut)
#38 – Cliff Lee (Jul 10)
#37 – Bengie Molina (Jul 2 – acquired on 1st, not active till 2nd)
#36 – Omar Beltre (Jun 30 – Major League Debut)
#35 – Alexi Ogando (Jun 12 – Major League Debut)
#34 – Tommy Hunter (Jun 5)
#33 – Pedro Strop (May 15 – Sent back down May 16, did not appear, came back later)
#32 – Guillermo Moscoso (May 15)
#31 – Derek Holland (May 12)
#30 – Ian Kinsler (Apr 30)
#29 – Max Ramirez (Apr 27)
#28 – Craig Gentry (Apr 27)
#27 – Justin Smoak (Apr 23 – Major League Debut)
#26 – Matt Treanor (Apr 8)
#25 to #1: Scott Feldman, Neftali Feliz, Frankie Francisco, Rich Harden, Matt Harrison, Colby Lewis, Doug Mathis, Dustin Nippert, Darren O’Day, Darren Oliver, Chris Ray, C.J. Wilson, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Taylor Teagarden, Elvis Andrus, Joaquin Arias, Andres Blanco, Chris Davis, Ryan Garko, Michael Young, Julio Borbon, Nelson Cruz, Vladimir Guerrero, Josh Hamilton, David Murphy.

Please note that 1 to 25 are in no particular order.

Wow. It just seems so surreal. Completely, and legally, Tom Hicks is out. The 30 major league owners voted this morning, and it was a 30-0 vote in favor of the GnR ownership group taking over.
The stories this morning talked about how Greenberg had to be excluded from the room and made to wait outside when the actual vote was going on, since he technically was not an owner. I had visions of him sitting in a hallway by himself like any number of teen angst movies you see where he’s twiddling his thumbs, although in this day and age, he’d be texting someone. Or checking in via Foursquare, or anything like that.
Anyways, the vote was unanimous, and by all accounts shortly afterward the GnR group released the funds, and bam. It was over. They are the new Rangers owners. From what I can gather, there’s still some issues that will come up after the season, like the lease, and the grounds around the ballpark. Plus the jet lease that Chase made some noise about at the last second last night. But that can probably be dealt with in due course.
Bring on the new scoreboards guys – I’ll be there tomorrow night. It’s why I bought tickets tomorrow night, figuring it would be the first game under the new regime. I have tickets in the last row of Section 342 – not the greatest, but it was the best I could get – and I bought them LAST friday. :)
Chuck Greenberg should throw out the first pitch. Let’s dance, people!

Commissioner Bud Selig concluded the first day of the quarterly owners meetings in Minneapolis by announcing that the Texas Rangers sale was approved unanimously by the ownership committee and the executive council.
A final vote of the 30 team owners will take place Thursday morning. The investment group headed by Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan must receive 75 percent of the votes for the sale to be approved. That appears to be a formality.
“I’m delighted that we got through the first two steps with unanimity,” Selig said. “Tomorrow we’ll have to meet and tell you how the final vote came, but I guess you can probably guess that.”
Greenberg and the two heavy hitters in Rangers Baseball Express, Ray Davis and Bob Simpson, answered questions and presented the operational plan and philosophy to the ownership committee. Ryan did not attend the meetings.
Greenberg said that he welcomed the process, and it appeared to be well-received one week after his group was locked in an intense courthouse auction with Mark Cuban and Jim Crane to purchase the club.
“It beats the heck out of last Wednesday,” Greenberg said. “I said to Bob Simpson and Ray Davis, ‘What are we doing next Wednesday?’ ”
It appears as though they will be owning a major-league franchise.

This article originally appeared online here. Yeah, I know I just copied the whole thing, but really – what could I add to this? This article says it all.