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Rangers get B+ in offseason rating

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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.

Sammy Sosa

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While I don’t have much to say about Sosa (yet), I wwant to take a minute to point out Jamey Newberg’s latest update. Now I know anyone who reads my site will be checking out Jamey’s stuff (as well you should), but he has some non histrionic things to say about Sosa’s possibly return to the Rangers this spring.
He raises an interesting point. A lot of the hysteria I’ve seen has been of the ilk of “He’ll take away at bats from Botts, Cruz, etc”. I love his response:

So from that standpoint, giving playing time to Sosa might cost Victor Diaz and Marlon Byrd some at-bats, but there have historically been two or three outfielders on the Rangers’ non-roster invite list each spring, and there were none on the list announced by the organization last week: no Adrian Brown’s or Adam Hyzdu’s or Chad Allen’s or Jason Conti’s or Andres Torres’s or other non-roster 4-A’s this year.

Rather enjoyed reading this one – has a bit of a more grounded response to the dance we’re doing with Sosa than some other online writers I’ve seen. Including some of the pro writers I’ve seen, too.

Wilkerson, Otsuka, & Bauer re-signed

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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.

Bauer, Otsuka, & Wilkerson

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  • OF Brad Wilkerson, P Rick Bauer, & P Akinori Otsuka signed to 1 year contracts, avoiding arbitration [ Link ]

Several recent happenings

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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.

Benoit

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  • P Joaquin Benoit signed to a 1 year contract ($1.05 Mil) [ Link ]

Phillies sign six fingers Alfonseca

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In reading some other teams’ blogs tonight, it would seem that the Phillies have signed Antonio Alfonseca to a one year deal on Sunday. Antonio got a bum rap from fans when he was here, but I rather enjoyed his short time in a Rangers uniform.
It appears to be an incentive laden deal worth upwards of $1.1 Million.

Meyer DFA

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  • C Chris Stewart acquired via trade from White Sox for P Johnny Lujan
  • IF Drew Meyer designated for assignment [ Link ]

2007 Hall of Fame & Texas Rangers

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With all the talk about Cal Ripken & Tony Gwynn and the HOF vote, it feels like Pete Rose has released another book this week, as all I hear about when I turn on ESPN or XM is folks talking about Mark McGwire. He didn’t get in. Ripken & Gwynn should be all we’re talking about, and AGAIN, we’re talking about the controversy. Sigh.
Anyway, I decided to see how former Ranger players did on the ballot. Here’s a list of all the players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who ever played for the Rangers and what they got in terms of vote support:
Goose Gossage: 532 votes, 71.2% (just missed)
Bert Blyleven: 260 votes, 47.7%
Harold Baines: 29 votes, 5.3%
Orel Hershisher: 24 votes, 4.4%
Jose Canseco: 6 votes, 1.1%
Ken Caminiti: 2 votes, 0.4%
Bobby Witt was also on this ballot, but did not receive any votes at all. The complete list is on this page which talks about Mark McGwire and this year’s vote over at mlb.com.]

Texas Rangers Attendance & History

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In an idea that I admit I completely ripped off from the USS Mariner Site, I went through my attendance history page, and entered the data into Excel. I produced a graph that shows how the attendance records and the winning percentage go over time. I went from 1972-2006. I do have the records from the Washington Senators, years, but I did not include them.
Whenever we hear from the Rangers that there’s too many empty seats, someone will almost invariably follow that up with a statement saying “Well, if you win, people will come”. Yes, that’s true, but it’s also true this is Cowboy land. Some people are loathe to deal with the Rangers. Newy Scruggs over at NBC5 for one. You can almost see the pain on his face when he has to talk baseball. But that’s a rant for another time. I decided to look at the numbers and see how this all breaks down. Take a look below. I have a few larger size images for you to check out besides this thumbnail here. You can also download my Excel spreadsheet if you’re so inclined to look at it that way. I’d be curious to see what you think of this – please leave some comments below. Thanks.