The trade deadline looms less than two weeks away, and people are throwing about silly and not so silly suggestions left and right.

Anyway, with a day game behind us and a night game tomorrow, we now have too much free time on our hands.  At LSB, that isn't necessarily a good thing.  So here is a game.  We'll see if people care or think it is silly.

Rules:

1.  Each person gets to pick ONE trade for the Rangers. Please don't make more than one guess

2. 100 points will be assigned for each correctly picked player involved in a trade.  These points will be split among all people who picked that player.  For example, if you predict the Rangers get Betran (and JD did bring him in), and 9 other people picked Beltran, you would get 10 points for guessing Beltran.   Each player is worth a minimum of 5 points

3. You lose 5 points for every wrong player guessed on each side of a trade.  So if you predict Scheppers and Wieland are dealt, and it is Scheppers and Ross, then you lose 5 points for picking Wieland (but gain at least 5 points for Scheppers)

4. You get 2x the total points for getting a trade completely right.

5. You can pick "No trade" which is worth 200 points (both sides of the deal get represented).  Of course, any deal - another Green for Phillips, for example - will void your pick.  As long as one 40 man roster player is included on either side, it counts...

6.  This game will end to new entries on this Sunday evening, allowing the last week for JD's Ninja'ing to happen

7.   I have no prize for the winner, other than my respect.

The bottom line is that it is ideal to predict a trade for someone that no one else is guessing and to be accurate.  Guessing something another person guesses will only diminish your potential score.

Also, maybe it is best to limit discussion below for the sake of seeing people's entries?

Over at FG, Cameron has a post where he outlines the "objective" weightings of 4 different categories of franchise health. 

The four are essentially unchanged from last year, with the apparent added difference that he's going to weight them so that he won't be tempted to put the M's #1 because Jack Z smiled at him at a press conference (no, he didn't actually say this...).  The categories are

1. Financial Strength

2. Baseball Ops

3. Present Talent

4. Future Talent

Now, three things:

a) The Rangers stack up pretty good in all of these; probably top 10 in #1, top 5 in #2, top 5 in #3, and top 15 in #4.  Given that few other teams have the same balance of these, outside of the Red Sox and Yankees, I don't see how we could see Texas below #4 this year.  Philly and Tampa are the two other contenders. I'd predict Boston, NY, Philly, Texas, TB

b) Lest no one get fooled, this is still a completely subjective ranking.  Just because you paint a facade of objectivity doesn't change the fact that #2 is one gigantic fudge factor (to quote: "The organizational philosophy and interest level by the executive level will be included" - read "only one team has a Jack Z!!!!") and that farm system rankings are not parametric in the slightest (you could divided KC's farm in two and both would be far and away better than Seattle's decent system, yet I doubt such a scale of dominance will affect KC's future ranking in the mid 20s and Seattles ranking at ....

c) Where does he* place Seattle?  As I pointed out, the system is only marginally more objective than last year, albeit with a fun way of placating the more shallow of FG's readership (vote on the relative weights of meaningless categories!)  We all know Cameron is stubborn and refuses to admit he was wrong about #6.  And in theory these rankings, if designed well, should be stable across at least a few years (given that he weighs the "philosophy" of GMs and the ages of guys like Rowland-Smith).   But at the same time, he has to know that Seattle isn't even among the top 6 teams in West divisions, much less all of baseball.  So where does he put them?

* Note,  I keep saying "he" because FG is Dave Cameron and a bunch of other people who aren't all that important.  This is his baby, and you know it.

So here is a poll:  Where will he place Seattle?  (note: this is not "where does Seattle belong?", it is where they put Seattle.  They are completely uncorrelated)

So there has been a lot of discussion about what day the Rangers will clinch, specifically whether it will be in Seattle, so philkid can see it (No); Anaheim, so LSJ can see it (Almost certainly not); Oakland, so GoET can see it (Possibly); or at home, for all the rest of you who get to see the Rangers whenever you want anyway...

So this prompted me to run a simple simulation of the next few weeks to see when that Magic Number is likely to drop below zero.  Taking only road and home records and opponents into account (no 3rd order pythag record or pitching matchups or injuries etc), I estimated the probabilities the Rangers and A's win/lose each of their remaining games, and determined from there using a Monte Carlo type simulation the probabilities the Rangers magic number reaches 0 by any given date:

Continue reading this post »

The discussions over the past week or so about the benefit of signing Cliff Lee got me thinking about exactly what the Rangers roster situation for the next couple of years.  Below is my attempt to fairly assess what the short-term payroll situation of the club is going forward, specifically years 2011-2012.  All the data on service time is from Scott Lucas’s site, and money is from there and Cots.

The format is as follows: I’m going to list the players who are under team control and what their salaries will be or should be through arbitration process.  This is obviously a guess, and can be discussed; but I’m going to go roughly off the following equation:  Arb year 1/2/3: 25%/50%/75% free agent value, with a fudge for changed performance (Hammy’s est. FA value went up this year).  Free agent value will be estimated.  All numbers are in millions.  I apologize ahead of time if there are any minor errors, please let me know if so.

Continue reading this post »

I obviously love the guy, giving him a mid 3's ERA and 180 IPs.  I think he has a chance of being one of the two or three most reliable Rangers starters.

That said, most of y'all seem to hate him.  Haters.  You'll regret not being on the bandwagon in a few months.  Right now it is pretty empty when I look back from the drivers seat. 

I guess y'all think he's just another John Koronka or Kason Gabbard.  Wrong.

Okay, so Dustin (or shall I say Black Francis) doesn't care about our fantasy leagues.  But judging off the multiple LSB leagues that I remember popping up pre-season, most of us around here do care.

ESPN keeper league, started by gossamer:  I actually won!  Followed by jetstream jenny's (??) and gossamer. 

That should make you all ashamed, given that I finished 11 out of 15 on Rangers Boardies FBL B and 11 out of 18 on the mammoth 18 player Lonestarball league (both on yahoo).  I just couldn't field a decent offense in either large league.

How did the rest of you do?  Should we post final standings here for people to see and mock us for?

or why JBImaknee is getting off the 2009 bandwagon and learned to love the trade deadline.

The posts in the morning update are somewhat bothersome to me.  Not because the complaints about where Borbon bats or why Byrd is playing are without merit, but because they are minor and just examples of getting outraged because people are just mad and looking for something to scream about. Where Borbon hits is really irrelevant.  Bat him 4th or 9th for all I care.  Bickering about where a guy hits in a lineup in his first week is silly.  Davis vs Blalock (Josey and Adam's favorite argument) is a waste of time - both are awful players right now.  Why Byrd is playing?  Why does Wash hate Boggs?  Why we should believe Chris Davis has finally turned a corner.  Blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, here is my point.  Once you get to a point where arguing where Borbon should hit or which 4th outfielder should play more, or which horrific 1b option should get the honor of striking out 3 times against lefties, you're basically admitting that there is nothing really to do.

This team is sinking right now.  Fast.  I've never looked at the schedule before and hoped that the All Star Break was closer than it is, but I am now.  This team is in a funk that is about to send them into 3rd place and very likely at or below .500 by the All Star Break.  Furthermore, the Angels are not as bad as everyone constantly says they are, and Seattle isn't going to wilt away like we all would have hoped.  The AL West isn't strong this year, but it isn't the NL West from recent years where a mediocre .500ish club like the Rangers would compete.  Is Josh Hamilton alone going to recharge an offense that is fundamentally flawed?  I don't think so.

So I think that Borbon is the first "Play for 2010" move that we're going to see.  The fact that the team is playing badly gives JD & co. a good rationale to bring up kids, just as they would in a pure rebuilding year.  In a month or so, we'll see Feliz, and soon after probably Smoak (maybe even sooner).

I think that in a few weeks, the debates will be how much the Rangers can get for Kevin Millwood (who may well be the best starting pitcher on the market), whether they can get anything for Vizquel (or whether they should) or Byrd or even Murphy, or if any team will take Blalock or Padilla in August when they'd only have to pay a month or so salary.  Whether this team should finally move on from AAAA types like Mathis and Mendoza, or whether we should give them one last shot to earn a spot in the Rangers bright future.  But that future isn't now.

I'm depressed.

There was some interesting discussion over this last series on what do with LSB's favorite first baseman.  We all know the extreme negative stats:  he's on pace to shatter the strike out record, leading all MLB players with 77 Ks; he has a sub-200 batting average (4th lowest in baseball) and an OBP at .253 (2nd lowest).  He nonetheless has 12 HRs already, giving him a pace for nearly 40 on the season despite not being able to do anything else at the plate.  And his defense has not only been better than expected, but actually a big asset to this club right now.

From what I can tell, the arguments are no longer about whether Davis is helping or hurting the team as he is playing now; but really what is best to do with him.  It boils down to three questions: 1) Can Davis emerge from this slump on his own at the big league level?; 2) Developmentally, is there any long-term harm in sending him to AAA or keeping him in the big leagues?; 3) Who would replace him at the bag? 

I don't want it to seem like I'm beating a dead horse, because I think the arguments from both sides are interesting and convincing (my snide signature aside).  So since we have an off day, I thought it'd be a good idea to have a poll and get some heated, but intelligent, discussion going.  After you vote, specify in the comments why you voted that way, and if you send Davis down, what your plan is for first base.