G106: Rangers pitch well, beat Indians 3-1
After the disaster that was the last game in Kansas City, one wonders how many Ranger fans were more looking forward to the trade news of the day than the team actually playing a game and losing. Especially against Cleveland starter Fausto Carmona. Mr. Carmona has been lights out this year, going 13-5 (after this game), and just generally being an awesome young starting pitcher.
McCarthy has been unstable at best, and I don’t think 2007 Rangers fans know what they’re getting each time he goes out there. So it was some surprise to most I’d wager that Brandon pitched as well as he did. His overall line was 6.2 innings pitched, four hits, three walks, and one earned run. The earned run was a solo home run to Ryan Garko in the seventh. Josh Lewin had just made a point that McCarthy hadn’t pitched this far in a game this season so far. Don’t blame him, but McCarthy seemed to be running out of gas in the seventh, and couldn’t seal the deal. Frank Francisco came in and put out that small fire. Heck, CJ Wilson, who got the save tonight was also lights out. 1.2 IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 2K. A great night for Rangers pitchers. McCarthy even got into things in the fourth on a wild pitch that he was able to get back to the plate on and tag out the runner trying to score – which at that point preserved his shutout.
Carmona didn’t do too bad himself. He went 7 innings, giving up five hits and one walk. He allowed three runs (two earned on a call that should have been a hit all the way). He probably would have gotten the win most nights with that line, but tonight he was beat by Brandon McCarthy.
Nice to see Saltalamacchia turn up in the dugout during the game. The bit about him and Hank Blalock and their kids’ names tattoos was fun to watch. Salt is probably playing tomorrow’s game. That’ll be worth looking out for.
Bottom line, an extremely well pitched game, on a day when we took inbound several good pitching prospects via trade. Makes you wonder just what the heck in the world we were doing in Kansas City?!?
25 Man Roster Changes Today
A lot of moves on the 25 man roster today, not all of which have come down yet. Here’s my summary of what happened:
Taken off the 25:
1B Mark Teixeira
P Ron Mahay
P Eric Gagne
Put on the 25:
1B/C Jarrod Saltamacchia (according to the Rangers press notes, he’s wearing uniform number 16)
But that leaves two open spots. We’re at 23 by my count, since they haven’t said who else is coming up. If I had to guess, one of them is Jason Gabbard. No idea about the other.
Of course what happens to Adam Melhuse? In what I could hear from the press conference, Daniels said they planed on splitting time at catcher between Salt & Laird. Where’s that leave Melhuse? Unless we’re sending him to the minors, or just DFA’ing him. Don’t know how it will work out at catcher.
Daniels did say that Sosa wasn’t going anywhere.
UPDATE @ 5:45PM: Ron Washington said on the pre-game show that Jason Gabbard will go into our rotation when he arrives tomorrow, although in what position is not known yet. My guess is he doesn’t actually get added to the 25 man roster until tomorrow.
Further moves were posted on the Rangers site a few minutes ago. Here are the further transactions:
- Activated Ian Kinsler from the DL
- Recalled AJ Murray from AAA
- Designated Desi Relaford for assignment.
Tex & Gagne Trades
- 1B Mark Teixeira & P Ron Mahay traded to Atlanta Braves for C/1B Jarrod Saltalamacchia and nonroster SS Elvis Andrus, LHP Matt Harrison, LHP Beau Jones and RHP Neftali Feliz [ Link ]
- P Eric Gagne traded to Boston Red Sox for P Kason Gabbard, OF David Murphy, & OF Engel Beltre [ Link ]
- 2B Ian Kinsler activated from DL
- P AJ Murray recalled from AAA
- IF Desi Relaford designated for assignment [ Link ]
Mark Teixeira: Show me the Money!
As the trade was made official, a story popped up on the Dallas Morning News site that said that before Tex was traded to the Braves, the Rangers offered him a contract extension of eight years, $140 Million. That comes out to $17.5 Million a year. He turned it down.
That makes me think that when he hits free agency after the 2008 season, Scott Boras will start – START with a value of $20 million a year, and won’t take less.
NOW I think this picture is how a lot of fans will see Mark Teixeira, especially given his choice of agent, and the turning down of this kind of money. That’s similar to what Juan Gonzalez turned down with Detroit. Better hope that lightning bolt doesn’t hit again.
Gagne to Sox
The word is out on Eric Gagne going to Boston. Apparently Gagne waived his no trade clause to go there and will be a setup man. Additionally, the $2.5m in performance bonuses were guaranteed by the Red Sox with Texas paying $400,000 of that, Boston the other 2.1 Mil.
The three names coming back are P Kason Gabbard, OF David Murphy, & OF Engle Beltre. Here is a news story on the Rangers site about this.
With Otsuka on the DL, I wonder who is our closer now? Not only that how the 25 man roster will shake out for tonight’s game in Cleveland.
Mark Teixeira Trade Finalized
Well, it’s done. The trade is official. It’s quite the haul – we got more than had been reported. While I can’t say I’m thrilled at losing a player like Teixeira, I have to say that the haul was far more impressive than was expecting.
Leaving the Rangers:
1B Mark Teixeira
RP Ron Mahay
Returning to Rangers:
C/1B Jarrod Saltamacchia
SS Elvis Andrus (18 yr old A ball, compared to Derek Jeter)
P Netfali Feliz
P Matt Harrison
P Beau Jones
The pitchers are all minor leagues, but are all considered to be really good prospects, not throwaways. As I said before in my other comments, I’m not the best at breaking down individual players. I strongly suggest you check out Jamey Newberg’s report from this morning where he breaks down the players that are inbound. Except for Beau Jones, who was just announced as part of the deal.
I have a poll on the main page of my site about this, where you can weigh in on your opinion.
Gagne to Red Sox?
Ken Rosenthal says that Eric Gagne is going to be traded to the Sox. That’s a tad of a eyebrow raiser – the Sox have a great closer. Gagne has to waive his no trade to go there. Would they put Papelbon as a setup guy? I can’t see Gagne waiving unless he’s the full time closer.
Then there’s that talk about Gagne re-signing here again in the offseason. I wonder if that will happen.
UPDATE @ 2:10PM: TR Sullivan has something up about it now here. Also read where the rumoured players coming back total three. They are 17 year-old five-tool outfielder Engel Beltre (Buster Olney report), as well as Kason Gabbard (Ken Rosenthal), as well as possibly David Murphy (also Rosenthal).
New look for the site
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.
Reactions to Tex Trade
Been reading around the net for reactions to the Tex trade. As expected, they’re all over the place, depending on whom you ask. One of my favorites was over at USS Mariner, who had this to say about the trade:
A total home run for the Rangers here. Teixeira is a good but not great player, and in return for a year and a half of his services at not-bargain rates, they extracted one of the best young catchers in baseball, a very high upside middle infielder, and reportedly got a couple other players of value. A+ for Jon Daniels. Teixeira won’t help the Braves as much as they think he will, and the upgrade from Salty to T-Rex isn’t worth the price they paid. But John Schuerholz is pretty close to being beyond reproach, so that’s all I’ll say about that.
USSM also had something nice to say about the Lofton trade, too.
Tim McMahon over at the Rangers DMN blog called the trade “OK”, saying
This trade doesn’t make you say “Wow!” like a James Loney-Clayton Kershaw-Andre Ethier deal. But I trust it was the best deal available, and it accomplished the goal of getting at least two (maybe three) players who can be part of the Rangers’ core when they’re ready to contend a few years from now.
David O’Brien of the Atlanta Constitution seems to think this is the best trade since sliced bread, really going head over heels about it with:
It’s the most significant midseason trade for the Braves in 14 years, since they got first baseman Fred McGriff from San Diego on July 18, 1993.
Beerleaguer.com (a Philles blog) called the trade a good move for the Braves, and even had something nice to say about Ron Mahay. They did take a knee jerk reaction regarding return of pitching in this move, though.
Not one, but two, significant acquisitions for the Braves’ playoff run. Everyone knows what Teixeira will bring, but Mahay is a nice veteran complimentary part and typical of the kind of move John Schuerholz has made in the past in that he gets some pitching as a throw-in.
Will Schaffer at Chop-n-Change (a Braves fan blog) called the trade “a horrible deal” with this:
it was a horrible deal because the Braves did not land CJ Wilson or Eric Gagne and as more details have come back I have started questioning this deal even more.
….this is one of those deals that we are going to look back on six years down the road and second-guess everything about it.
Good call on his part wanting CJ Wilson, but he wasn’t going anywhere, and I can’t recall Gagne being part of a trade package anywhere.
More to come from elsewhere I’m sure, but I’m still surprised we haven’t seen an announcement of a press conference from the Rangers about this move. The trade is still not announced on the Rangers or Braves sites in their official press release areas. (It’s 4:40PM CST on Monday as I write this).
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