In going through all the sections of my website during this offseason, I ran across the old “Turn Back the Ranger Clock” section. It was a series of articles written by Jeremy Northrip for my website. There were two sections in it. One being “Ranger Player from the Past”, and the other being “Worst / Best Trades in Team History”.
He did these during the 2000 season, and got into January of 2001, and then disappeared, unfortunately. It was a good series, and I never found out what happened to him. He completed the 5th through 2nd worst trades in history before he stopped. The worst trade (in his opinion) never was published, and he never got the best trades in history. I’ve contemplated picking up the series a few times over the years, but I don’t know enough about the 70’s & 80’s Rangers to make a guess in regards to trades back then – I didn’t start following the Rangers until the early 90’s.
One thing I will add on my own, is that the #1 Worst Free Agent signing in team history has to be Chan Ho Park. I have no idea how anything could be considered any worse than that.
I’ve preserved the articles in here so you can look at them. Check out the menus on the side and click on the “Turn Back the Clock” category to see all of them. Jeremy, if you’re still out there, and see this, I’d love to continue the series, if you’re interested!
Rangers cut ties to six formally, and other random news
Forgot to mention this yesterday, but the Rangers formally cut all ties with six players by not offering them arbitration.
The players are: C Sandy Alomar, Jr., RHP Doug Brocail, INF Greg Colbrunn, OF Richard Hidalgo, RHP Steve Karsay and LHP Kenny Rogers.
No surprises on any of them, although there was some noise the last few days saying the Rangers might offer Rogers arbitration. Boor-ass came out and said that it was in his contract that we can’t do that, so I don’t know what all the speculation was about. I would have liked to have seen us retain Alomar, I thought he did a great job as the backup catcher this year.
Additionally, the following former Rangers were also not offered arbitration by thier respective clubs: Todd Hollandsworth, Jay Powell, Royce Clayton, Juan Gonzalez, Jeff Nelson, Todd Greene, Rafael Palmeiro, Ugueth Urbina, Rudy Seanez, James Baldwin, Carl Everett. Also Danny Kolb was traded back to the Brewers from the Braves for Wes Obermueller.
We avoided a scary situation today when the Colorado Rockies signed Jose Mesa. I really did not want him coming here at all. Having followed him the last 4 years or so in Philly & Pittsburgh… Uh, NO. Thank you Colorado.
Fabio Castro & Rumours
There were some reports this morning that the Rangers have traded Esteban German to the Royals for their first pick in the Rule 5 draft. I thought you can’t trade draft picks? Or is the Rule 5 draft different? I don’t know bout that.
Anyway, if it holds up, we’d have Rule 5 rights to a pitcher named Fabio Castro. Don’t know anything about him, although there’s some stats on him here and here. There’s a news story about it on the Royals site here. As of the writing of this, there hasn’t been any formal announcement, although Castro has been drafted by the Royals.
There’s another one about Kris Benson and his wife coming here for Juan Dominugez & Laynce Nix. Dominguez has kind of soured in the Rangers’ eyes – or so I was reading at the end of the season. Plus with Nix being hurt a lot and never making a big splash with his potential, they may want to move him, too. I can see it happening. Benson doesn’t excite me very much, but he’s not godawful, either. If he does come here, I wonder how fast the Ticket guys will fall all over each other trying to get his wife on their shows.
Mench to Dodgers for Jonathan Broxton?
Blue Jays want Brad Wilkerson now?
Rangers Captain to Philly for the Phanatic?
/me notices his head hurting.
Writer feels Nats fans “ripped off”
Interesting take on the Soriano trade (which I feel more good about this morning than I did last night). The writer of this article says “Washington fans, you got ripped off”, as well as saying that Soriano for Wilkerson straight up would have been a bad deal on it’s own.
Check out the article over at baseballmusings.com. I’m not sure if I agree with the straight up being bad remark, but it does kind of feel like we got away with more than we should have with three guys coming back. Especially as you know Soriano won’t be happy playing the outfield, and he’ll only be a Nat for 2006.
I’ll be curious to see how this move (getting two OF back) changes our own OF situation, as we essentially have Mench in left, Matthews/Nix in center and nobody in right. Don’t think Mark DeRosa is the answer there, although he did play fairly well at the end of the season out there. I really would rather not trade Mench – I’d much rather us trade Matthews, although I don’t really want to do that, either.
There’s also a poll on the ESPN site where you’re asked questions about the trade. Given the nature of some of the questions asked, it appears like it was angled from a Nationals fan standpoint. Check it out.
Soriano traded to Nationals
Alfonso Soriano has been dealt to the Washington Nationals for Brad Wilkerson, Termel Sledge, & minor league pitcher Armando Galarraga. Brad Wilkerson is a good acquisition. Don’t know much about Termel Sledge, other than he has tested positive for steroids. Galarraga (no idea if he’s related to Andreas) was initially reported as a PTBNL, but now appears to be part of the main trade.
Links:
Stats
| G | AB | H | R | BA | OBP | 2B | HR | RBI | SB | SO | BB | |
| Soriano | 156 | 637 | 171 | 102 | .268 | .309 | 43 | 30 | 104 | 30 | 125 | 33 |
| Wilkerson | 148 | 565 | 140 | 76 | .248 | .351 | 42 | 11 | 57 | 8 | 147 | 84 |
| Sledge | 20 | 37 | 9 | 7 | .243 | .348 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 8 | 7 |
Sledge’s stats are inconsequential – 20 games played. Wilkerson has nowhere near the power that Soriano does, but is a good outfielder, and should handle our last couple of year maliase (Jordan, Hidalgo) in RF nicely. He’s listed on the Nats site as a CF, though – I thought he played RF. If he is a CF, do we keep Matthews and put him in right? That still solves our RF problem, I think. I’m not sure how Sledge will fit into this, unless he sits in AAA as insurance against Nix not being able to come back from his surgeries. I am surprised we didn’t get a pitcher like Luis Ayala. Sledge apparently has spent most of 2005 hurt, but had decent numbers in 2004 (his rookie year).
Wilkerson has an OK OBP, but that’s probably because of all the walks he has. Still, it’s someting where he’s better than Soriano. Hopefully Wilkerson won’t have that 0-2 slider down and away swinging strike 3 problerm Soriano & Juan Gone had.
Update: DMN site says that the pitcher in question is supposed to be Armando Galarraga (link). His 2005 minor league stats are 6-8, 3.80 in 27GS for A & AA. Still, he’s not a major league ready pitcher. He’ll be 24 in January. Probably will play in Frisco.
Money Stuff:
Terrmel Sledge
1 year (2005)
* re-signed 2/05
* 1 year/$0.3M (2004) 2/04
* drafted 1999 (8-245), $7,500 signing bonus
* ML service: 1.000
Brad Wilkerson
1 year/$3.05M (2005)
* avoided arbitration 1/05
* 1 year/$0.375M (2004), renewed 3/04
* 1 year/$0.315M (2003)
* 1 year/$0.206M (2002) 3/02
* ML service: 3.081
Alfonso Soriano
1 year/$7.5M (2005)
* avoided arbitration 1/05
* 1 year/$5.4M (2004), avoided arbitration 1/04
* 1 year/$0.8M (2003) 3/03
* 5 years/$3.15M (1998-2002)
* signed as a free agent 3/98
* “retired” 3/98 after 2 years with Hiroshima in order to play in U.S.
* agent: Diego Bentz, SFX (formerly Don Nomura)
* ML service: 4.079
Wilkerson appears to be a salary arbitration player, as he made $3 Mil in 05, he’ll make what 4-5 million this year? Given the 10 that Soriano is likely to get, that gives us about 5-6 million in savings, hopefully to be used for pitching. We’ll see how it shakes out as we go forward.
Also wanted to take a moment and plug Cot’s Baseball Contracts site (link). It’s a great source for contractual information on players.
More Site Changes
In my ongoing quest to get the majority of the content of this site into a blog format so I can more easily maintain it, I finished another section today. The uniform number history section. It’s a place where I track who has worn what uniform numbers in the history of the Rangers.
I cover from 1972 to 2005 (and 2006 when they announce it). Spring training before 3 years ago is spotty, and I know the odd coach has slipped through, but I’m pretty confident it’s all the regular season players. Check it out in the history section in the menu on the left.
You can also get to it here.
Soriano traded
John Wasdin signs on for 2006
The Ticket just reported that John Wasdin has agreed to a one year deal to remain with the Rangers in 2006. The deal is a one year, $600,000 major league deal.
This is probably a good fit for us, provided he’s not one of the opening day rotation guys. I intially didn’t like Wasdin, but he’s been relatively stable in a number of roles, but I still don’t think that a regular rotation guy is one of them.
Edit: There’s a story on the Rangers site about it now. Link.
Thank you, Cubs!
Thank you Chicago Cubs. You took Juan Pierre. I did not want him here. We’ve been down that road before with Tom Goodwin, Darryl Hamilton, & Damon Buford, and much more recently with Doug Glanville. I don’t think our outfield is the most stellar in existance, but I didn’t see the addition of Pierre as anything significantly better than what we already have.
This of course doesn’t say anything about our existing outfield (Matthews, Nix), although we could use a rightfielder – anyone think we might take a stab at Sammy Sosa? Not sure how I’d feel aout Manny Ramirez coming here. Would certainly help offensively, but we have had a power hitting headcase in right field before, and the moment Manny’s pants are too baggy, off will come the wheels. :)
Winter Meeting Scariness
Lots of scariness as the Winter meeting start.
The most likely free agent pitchers to come here are Byung-Hyun Kim and Brett Tomko. No excitement there. Tomko is bigtime flyball pitcher, if I remember right, and that’s death in our ballpark. Kim doesn’t really bother me, although he’s no savior. The scary part with him is that’s about the best we seem to be able to do.
Granted, with a projected rotation of Chris Young & Kameron Loe, we obviously need help. But Tomko & Kim? Bleargh. For some stupid reason, I honestly thought Paul Byrd would come here. I figured that was gonna be our big free agent signing.
I’d love to see Oliver Perez turn up here from Pittsburgh. But the Pirates are the third team I follow (besides the Phillies & Rangers). But I’d be absolutely stunned if the Pirates give up Perez, no matter who they get back.
More scariness would be trading for Adam Eaton of the Padres. Another fly ball guy. He probably benefitted from being in the big park they’re in. Likely wouldn’t translate well here. The rumour I read was Eaton for Adrian Gonzalez AND Gerald Laird. Way too high.
I obviously like the story that’s being talked about where we get Barry Zito, but I’d be surprised if Oakland would want to trade him within the division. He’s too big of a player for that, IMO. Don’t know what they’d want for him, but if he was to go inside the AL West, it’d be a lot, I’m sure. Plus Zito can be a free agent after the 2006 season, so I’m sure we’d want to extend him if we made the trade. And I don’t know if ZIto would want to do that. Maybe we can give him the $50k we didn’t give him when we drafted him originally as an extra bonus. :)
Kerry Wood, Todd Walker, cash & prospects for Kevin Mench & Alfonso Soriano. Do we really need Todd Walker? I’d probably still make that deal minus Walker. Walker has a team option for 06 for $2.5 Million, so one year might not be all that bad.
Another Mench rumour has him going to the BLue Jays straight up for Miguel Batista. I’ll do that one.
Don’t want Juan Pierre. We tried that idea a few years back with Tom Goodwin, Darryl Hamilton, & Damon Buford. Didn’t work offensively (although I really liked Hamilton’s defense).
I also don’t know what to think about the Manny Ramirez rumours.
Oh, and Hugh Hefner should give Anna Benson the million she wants. That’d be a great free agent signing.
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