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ESPN Season Preview

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I’m not sure when this was posted, but I just noticed this morning that ESPN has their Rangers Season preview posted. It’s available here.
Of their 10 writers, 9 of the 10 picked the Rangers third. Only one picked them anywhere else, that was Steve Phillips, who picked ’em second. They consider the front office a weakness, specifically pointing out Jon Daniels this way:

A constantly rotating front office can’t be good for business, and Jon Daniels is the latest to give it a whirl, the Rangers’ third GM of the 2000s.

I don’t think I agree with that. Melvin to Empty Golf Shirt to Daniels. That’s a bit harsh on Daniels to blame him when he hasn’t had a full season, and has what most people consider to be a very good first off season.

Roster Moves

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  • P Juan Dominguez optioned to AAA
  • P Edinson Volquez optioned to AAA
  • P Jose Silva assigned to minor league camp [ Link ]
  • P John Wasdin released [ Link ]

2006 Starting Rotation

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Well, this afternoon it was announced that R.A. Dickey had won the battle for the fifth starter spot. That means our 2006 starting rotation is now..
Kevin Milwood
Adam Eaton
Vicente Padilla
Kameron Loe
R.A. Dickey
That’s not too bad given the way our rotation has looked the last few years. Hopefully they all stay healthy. Forget that. In Wednesday afternoon’s game, Adam Eaton had to leave due to injury, and will be going for an MRI. From the initial response, it looks like he’ll be on the DL to start the season. Sigh.
I wonder if Atlanta will send us John Thompson for some bullpen help? That would be fine with me. :)

Thank Philly for the charity

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First Philly gives the Dallas area Terrell Owens. Today they gave us Vicente Padilla, as Philly released Ricardo Rodriguez, so that leaves them with nothing from the trade for Padilla. Thanks guys. :)

ST25: Rangers lose to A’s on Tueday, 8-3

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Juan Dominguez has probably pitched himself out of the starting rotation with his performance today. He went 4 innings, gave up four earned runs on 5 hits with three walks. Not the stuff a guy looking to earn a spot needs to put up. If you’ve been following the Rangers recently, you’ll know that Dominguez is one of those “lots of talent, can’t put it together for long” type of guys. The team from what I can gather was hoping he’d step up and win a job. Doesn’t look like it will happen, he continues to fail to grab a hold of the opportunities in front of him.
Scott Feldman, who is a dark horse to make the club, but did well in his 05 appearances, threw a shutout frame. R.A. Dickey, who is likely to be the #5 guy went 2IP, and gave up a couple of runs. Not lights out either, but he’s been way more consistant than Dominguez has been. Antonio Alfonseca also gave up a run in his inning, but I don’t think he’s a serious candidate to make the club, anyway.
Read a story tonight where the Rangers lead all spring training clubs in home runs. What a shock that is. That’s all we do, really. :) We had two more in this game, one by Mark DeRosa, and another by Phil Nevin. In fact, we only had 6 hits in the whole game, and outside of the home runs, Adam Hyzdu had two of the remaining four hits. Not a lot there.
We’re getting closer, I’d expect to see some big moves made in the next day or so, as we break camp on Thursday, I believe.

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Some thoughts on baseball videogames

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Here’s something I submitted several times to 2K Games. They had an “Ask the developer” series where you could submit questions, and the devs would address them. I sent this several times, and never got a reply, so I’m posting it here. It’s about uniform number issues in baseball videgames.
One thing that always bothers me about every baseball game is the callous attention paid to uniform number control. I see two issues here:
1) Retired Numbers
2) Number collision
With the first one, I think it would be cool to have each team have their real numbers as blocked off and then in franchise mode, you could retire other players’ numbers, too.
With the second, there’s nothing to stop me from having an entire team with the same number if I wanted to edit the players. If you play enough franchise mode, players get moved around alot, and you end up with more than one guy on the same team with the same uniform number. I wish it would be possible for the game to recognize that the team alraedy has a #27 (random number picked for this example), and then if you create a new player, sign a FA, or trade for someone who has #27, you get asked what you want to do about it.
Or failing that, at least let us be able to edit uniform numbers. I can understand not wanting to edit players in franchise mode, but for those of us who care about editing our own rosters to be as accurate as possible, the inability to edit uniform numbers is fairly annoying. Course all this could be turned off, or better yet have to be turned on as an option for those who want this kind of micromanaging.

Mark Teixeira on videogames

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I found this when it was first posted, but forgot to mention it. IGN had posted an interview with Mark Teixeira back on March 14th where he talks mostly about baseball videogames. It’s a different interview from the usual ones you read about winning, losing, baseball, etc. Here’s a few tidbits from it:

IGN Sports: Who is a better hitter, you or the guy in MLB 2K?
Mark Teixeira: It depends what difficulty I’m playing on. If I’m playing on Easy, then I’m pretty good, but if the pitchers are set to All-Star in the game, I think I do better in real life.
IGN Sports: So I know what kind of hitter you’re going to be in the videogame, but if I’m hitting against you on Xbox Live, what kind of pitcher are you going to be?
Mark Teixeira: I definitely mix it up. I know everyone looks fastball, so I’m going to throw a lot of off-speed pitches, some sliders, and I’m going to get you to swing at some bad pitches.
IGN Sports: Who is a better hitter, you or the guy in MLB 2K?
Mark Teixeira: It depends what difficulty I’m playing on. If I’m playing on Easy, then I’m pretty good, but if the pitchers are set to All-Star in the game, I think I do better in real life.

Go check out the full interview with Mark, it’s a pretty good read.

Roster Moves Begin

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The slew of roster moves this week begins. On Monday night, we released Eurbiel Durazo, and placed John Wasdin on waivers.
Durazo isn’t that much of a shock. He’s not 100% healthy (I think), and there didn’t appear to be a spot for him. On the broadcast tonight, Jon Daniels said that they knew he wasn’t going to make the team, and told him now, so he could have a little extra time to hook up with someone else. His contract stated he had to be told by Wed whether or not he was going to make the club.
Wasdin is a little more of a surprise, although he hasn’t pitched terribly well this spring. I thought he was a servicable, if not great pitcher during his time here, and my intial response was “That was a surprise” until I looked at his numbers.
This probably means that Fabio Castro will likely (IMO) be on the roster when the season starts Monday.

Durazo Released

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  • IF Eurbiel Durazo Released
  • P John Wasdin placed on irrevocable waivers [ Link ]