Rangerfans.com

German & Vazquez

Posted by on at

  • RHP Franklyn German signed to a 1 year minor league contract w/invite to spring training
  • INF Ramon Vazquez signed to a 1 year minor league contract w/invite to spring training
  • LHP Matt Merricks signed to a 1 year minor league contract
  • IF David Matranga signed to a 1 year minor league contract [ link ]

Miguel Ojeda

Posted by on at

  • C Miguel Ojeda signed to a 1 year contract [ link ]

Matsuzaka

Posted by on at

Wow. $51.1 million. Just for a cup of coffee. Baseball money is so out of whack. It’s a good thing I really love the game, or I would have bailed ages ago. I did enjoy the remark that DMZ had over at USS Mariner…

This is, by the way, approximately 1/4th the value of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays franchise.

ESPN’s site has a link which shows that if you combine the salaries of all these players, it still doesn’t even add up to the posting fee the Red Sox paid. Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Cris Carpenter, Scott Shields, Joel Zumaya, Aaron Heilman, Scott Linebrick, Juan Rincon, & Francisco Rodriguez. And you’d have about $2.5 Million LEFT OVER. Yeesh. And that’s not even the contract!
My own remark… If ever there’s a time for this bible scripture to be used..
…I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24.

Mark DeRosa to sign with the Cubs

Posted by on at

Well, we don’t get to keep Mark DeRosa. That’s a shame, I really liked him during his time here, but after last year, I can’t blame him for going where a guaranteed starting job is. Unless we traded Blalock (unlikely given Washington’s comments about him), I can’t see where DeRosa would get regular starting time here. The story is 3 years $13 million. Not bad for the year he had last year. I wonder if his old team (the Braves) made a run at him at all.
UPDATE: I guess it’s official now, there’s a story about it over on the Cubs website.

[Read more…]

Rangers games in High Def

Posted by on at

Hey, anyone who is reading this in the Dallas area and has HD, I have a question for you. What has the Rangers local game coverage in HD been?
Given we see the bulk of the games on Ch 27 & FSNSW, that’s what I’ll talk about. I’m not talking about national ESPN coverage, for Fox Saturday games, but the local stuff.
I can only remember seeing a handful of games that said “HD” and those were on FSN towards the end of the season. Can someone elaborate on this if you have any knowledge? Hoping to get some feedback on this.

2007 Promotions Schedule

Posted by on at

The Official Rangers site does not have this up yet, but I decided to scan in the 2007 promotions schedule that came in the group info flyer I got in the mail earlier this week. It’s huge, so I’m not going to inline the image here. Click on this link, and you’ll get it.
https://www.rangerfans.com/images/2007promotions.jpg
There’s a couple more scheduled concerts here, including another appearance by Mercy Me. There is another local Christian band I’d like to see out there, The Afters. Anyway, check out the promotions.

Barry Bonds

Posted by on at

There’s a lot of rumours about which free agent will end up where. The movement starts this weekend. One of the more “out there” rumours is one of Barry Bonds coming to Arlington. I think if he didn’t have the roids contoversy, then I think most people would probably be OK with that move. Offensively he can still bring it, but he’s a total liability in the field.
However, I don’t think it can completely be ruled out. From a purely baseball side, I’m sure he could help in the lineup, and we all know about left hander power hitters and our home run porch. From a complete “blinders on” mentality, that probably would be good. But as we all know this instant headline media obsessed culture we live in wouldn’t allow that. There’s a boatload of baggage with Bonds.
That brings me to the reason for writing this. The last few years, you go outside of San Francisco, and Bonds gets almost universally booed. Heck, the fans in Philly had some rather imaginitive sings when he was there.
It makes me wonder. If Barry Bonds signed here and was a Texas Ranger in 2007, do you think he’d get booed at his own home games? I’d love to hear what some people think about that issue.
This seems like a good time to bring up the story again of how my wife met Barry Bonds some years ago, and he refused to pay $2 for a couple of cookies and milk from a mall stand she was working at.

Rangers and Daisuke Matsuzaka

Posted by on at

I do my news browsing via an RSS feed reader (Google Reader specifically). This has the advantage of putting all my stuff in one place, makes things a lit more readable. It also has the advantage of sometimes seeing things that were removed. You see, not everyone properly updates their RSS xml file all the time, and a story gets removed from the website, it’s not always immediately removed from the rss feed.
Such is the case with mlbtraderumors, who posted a story earlier this evening about the Rangers and Matsuzaka. The story has since been removed, but it was still in the rss feed. This is what it said:

Early reports appear to indicate that the Rangers may have submitted the highest bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka. An emailer just wrote in to tell me that 1310 Sports Radio in Dallas reported that Texas posted the highest bid, estimated to be around $25MM. In addition, I’m hearing that Bruce Levine of ESPN 1000 reported that the Cubs did not win the bidding. We’ll see if we can get a few more sources to confirm this preliminary info.

Did anyone here who listens to the Ticket hear that story? Would like to know if that was really said on the Ticket or not.

Barry Zito?

Posted by on at

Barry Zito? Barry Zito? I knew Ron Washington might change the perception of free agents wanting to come here, but yikes. This was a surprise when it popped up in my RSS reader this afternoon.
Zito told Washington on Tuesday that the Rangers would be among the teams he would consider signing with this offseason.
Somehow given our history with things like this, you have to wonder if we wouldn’t be used to drive up the price for some other team. But then I never thought we’d sign Arod, either. :)
If he did sign here, he would be the first non spring training player to wear #75 in Rangers history. :)