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SI.com has just posted a rating of all 30 teams based on their off season activity. The Rangers got a B+ from them. Here’s what they had to say:

A winter that started with Carlos Lee bolting cross-state and Matthews going west (for $100 million and $50 million, respectively) steadily grew much more promising. Eric Gagne potentially gives them one of the best back-end bullpen duos. Frank Catalanotto is underrated. Kenny Lofton is still going pretty strong after all these years. Vicente Padilla showed he can win in a hitters’ park and Brandon McCarthy is a better bet than John Danks in that he’s major-league ready. Nice comeback. Grade: B+.

You can check out the full report on all 30 teams here.

Almost immediately after I posted that long story below about recent happenings, I saw the news story that we signed Brad Wilkerson, Akinori Otsuka, & Rick Bauer to one year contracts for 2007. That avoids arbitration for all three. Right now the only numbers I saw were were for Otsuka, whose contract is for 3 Million. The others aren’t announced. What I always find amusing is the teams never announce these things, but they end up coming out as news within 24 hours anyway, so why don’t the teams just announce it from the start?
That takes care of all of our arbitration eligibles. I’m sure we’ll hear Lee Stevens’ name again shortly in this news story. :)
UPDATE: Wilkerson will get $4.35 Mil in 2007 (plus incentives). Not a bad raise from the $3.9 he made in 2006 for a guy who was ineffective and hurt for most of 2006. Bauer’s deal is for $730,000 plus incentives.

1) Rangers sign Joaquin Benoit: The deal is a one year deal worth $1.05 Million. It’s quite interesting to see how he’s worked himself into a good bullpen job. It wasn’t long ago that quite a lot of Ranger fans (myself included) just wanted to run him out of town, but he’s managed to stick around, and if I’m not mistaken, he holds the current active record for continuous service as a Ranger. As long as the Rangers don’t do something stupid like try and put him back in the rotation this is probably a good move. This technically avoids arbitration with Jack, although we still have three candidates for that (Otsuka, Wilkerson, & Bauer).
2) Minor League Invites: Thomas Diamond was invited back to 2007 major league camp, along with Eric Hurley, Kevin Richardson (C), & Nate Gold (1B). Diamond has been here before, the others haven’t. I don’t think any of these guys will actually break camp with the Rangers unless they have an incredibly good spring. The other NRI’s are: RHPs Willie Eyre, Franklyn German and Mike Wood; LHP Scott Rice; C Salomon Manriquez; INF Ramon Vazquez; and INF/OFs Jerry Hairston Jr. and Matt Kata. Of that group, I’d say Hairston probably has the best shot to make the club.
3) Drew Meyer DFA’ed: Drew Meyer was designated for assignment to make room on the roster for catching prospect Chris Stewart who we got from the White Sox for Johnny Lujan. I admit to not knowing much about either, although I saw a few decent summaries of them at other Ranger sites (like this one). Meyer though was the guy that raised a lot of eyebrows when he was drafted #1 by Grady Fuson a few years back. I always hoped he’d make the majors for a completely selfish reason – I won an autographed ball of his as a door prize at a Newberg Report event I think two years ago. :)
4) Samuel Peralta Sosa: The Rangers had Sammy Sosa in for a “kick the tires” session. You know, work out in the indoor cages, talk with Ron Washington & Rudy Jaramillo. Dinner with the owner, that kind of stuff. There’s always been the talk that we need a righthand hitter (Jason Botts) who could also play some DH (Jason Botts), so we’re bringing in Sammy for a look. We all know he started his career with us. Never quite thought he’d end it here. Now I don’t think he’s signed or anything like that, but the articles I read today about it seem to imply we’re seriously thinking about it. So long as we sign him to a minor league incentive deal, I’m OK with taking a look in spring – no way does he deserve guaranteed money.
5) Speaking of old school Rangers, it appears that the Mets are trying to have a Julio Franco & Ruben Sierra reunion – they’re talking about signing Sierra to a minor league deal. Franco will be going into the second year of a two year deal he got in Dec 2005.