Lots of characters have been spent over the recent move of Michael Young from 2nd to 6th in the Rangers lineup. We all know lineups don't mean much, blah, blah, blah. But, I'm wondering, if this was a decision made by Ron Washington or the front office?

I have a hard time convincing myself that our veteran-lover - play the game the right way - pay your dues manager was having a cup of coffee and a cigarette in his home in January and said to himself "I think I should move Michael down to the sixth spot." Seems much more likely that JD and Co. made this decision. This may have been brought up in some comments before, but I haven't seen Adam, GoET or any local writers suggest this. Is this the straw that broke the camel's back for Young? Hey Michael, "we're moving you to DH/1B". Hey Michael, "We just acquired Napoli, you might not be playing so much 1B." Oh yeah, "You're also going to be batting 6th in the lineup."

I think JD ordering Young's move to the 6th spot may have been a huge part of Young's offseason temper tantrum. I'm thinking that JD sees two players headed in opposite directions, performance wise (Young and Andrus), and wanted to be proactive about this change. If Young was sucking it up in June, it may have been harder and more dramatic to make this change. All this being said, it's not that big of a deal to us but I think it is a big deal to the players. When was the last time Michael Young didn't bat in the 1st inning of a game he started?

We know what Kevin Millwood is - a solid innings eater - nothing that's going to get anyone excited, but a guy who could really help a team that has playoff aspirations. What a horse! He's started fewer than 29 games only twice (25GS in '04 and 21GS in '01) since his debut season in 1997. With Millwood as the fifth starter the Rangers could go with Lewis/Wilson/Hunter/Holland as the other four. Feliz is the closer, Feldman could be the long man and Harrison and his Speedy Gonzalez unrepeatable delivery could go wherever.

What would it take, $5 million plus incentives? Would ya?

Since the "experts" are doing it, I thought we should pick all the division winners and major award winners on the eve of Rangers opening day. I'll put mine in the comment section.

AL East - XXXXX

AL Central - XXXXX

AL West - XXXXX

AL WC - XXXXX

AL Champ - XXXXX

AL MVP - XXXXX

AL Cy Young - XXXXX

AL ROY - XXXXX

Repeat for NL and put your WS Champ at the end.

"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky." - Montaigne

On an entirely unrelated note, NBC Sports's baseball blog excerpts a subscription-only piece from Sports Business Journal that says Tom Hicks's sale of Your Texas Rangers to Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan may not be a done deal come Opening Day after all:

The sale of the Texas Rangers stalled last week, sources said, after MLB informed the team's creditors that there would be delays in responding to the lenders' concerns about the deal. The developments serve as a challenge to would-be buyer Chuck Greenberg's stated goal of having the transaction closed by Opening Day, if it can close at all, the sources said ...

MLB, acting as intermediary between the creditors and HSG, was scheduled to respond by Feb. 26 to their demand for more cash. On March 1, MLB informed the lenders that there were delays but did not offer details for why the delays were happening, the sources said.

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We've had a lot of discussion about this lately, so why not more? I vote for Gentry, he can backup Borbon in CF, pinch run for Vlad late in games, and he has options remaining. The main issue I have with Baldelli is that if you add him, you have three of thirteen position players with chronic injury issues (Baldelli, Hamilton, and Vlad - I guess you could also throw Salty into this category if you wanted to). This would mean Greene and Murphy as backups at 1B, which isn't ideal, but then again no roster is going to be perfect.

Using Adam's projected opening day roster.

Young (13 million - assuming 3 mil/yr is deferred), Harden (6.5), Vlad (5.5), Kinsler (4), Hamilton (3.25), CJ (3.1), Oliver (3), Lewis (1.75), McCarthy (1.3), Ray (.975), Greene (.75), Nippert (.65)

Cruz, Salty, Teagarden, Murphy, O'Day, Hunter, Feliz, Borbon, Davis, Andrus, Gentry - just assuming all of these guys @ 425,000. Some will be a little more, some a little less. This is probably too low an estimate, some of these guys might make closer to 600,000.

Two guesstimates: Francisco (3 million) and Feldman (1.5)

Former players: Millwood (3), Cat (2), Padilla (1.75)

That's about 59.7 million. The Rangers had been hovering around 68 million each of the last four years. This would be the lowest payroll since 2005. Although this number is moderately higher than most of us would have imagined at the beginning of the offseason.

Cot's Baseball Contracts

It's interesting how we can overlook something when the Rangers win. I almost fell of my couch last night when, after O'Day walked the first two batters in the 9th (as if that wasn't bad enough), Kris Benson started throwing in the bullpen. The Rangers started yesterdays game with four relievers available - O'Day, Guardado, Benson, and Mathis. That's awful. For a team with playoff aspirations, that's just not gonna cut it.

The problem is that the Rangers are going to be very careful with Francisco and Jennings. This sometimes leads to O'Day being the only righty late inning guy available. Seems to me that a logical solution to this situation would be sliding Jennings to the long relief role. The Rangers often stretch him out in outtings anyway and how often does a team use its long reliever in back-to-back games? Once this is done, you get rid of Benson and send Mathis back to OKC. The missing piece is then a high K righty set-up guy. Maybe Feliz is the answer (personally, I'd like to see him stay in OKC with a late August call up) or maybe the Rangers should pursue a trade. On that note, JD needs to shit or get off the pot with the catching surplus.

The Dallas Cowboys have decided on a name for the team’s new stadium, but that’s being kept secret for now.

Officials however are willing to concede that they won’t have a corporate naming rights sponsor in time for the June 6 grand opening concert featuring George Strait. A month ago, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said he wouldn’t speculate about whether a naming rights deal would be secured by the stadium’s opening. On Thursday, the uncertainty was gone.

Any ideas/suggestions for the name?

MLB Network had a feature last night about all the empty seats at Yankee Stadium. We should see something similar with the Cowboys this year as they'll try their best not to aggressively discount tickets. We could see our first local blackout in recent memory.

DMN link

From the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park:

At some point, no doubt, we'll get an official statement. Till then, well, here's what the Wall Street Journal (subscription-only, sorry) has to add to the story of Tom Hicks's refusal to pay off Hicks Sports Group's debt:

Creditors to Texas financier Tom Hicks's Hicks Sports Group have declared the company in default, a measure that could eventually dislodge the Texas Rangers baseball club and Dallas Stars hockey franchise from his control.

To which The New York Times adds, for those without Journal access: "The Rangers baseball team and the Stars hockey team are now unable to pay both their operating expenses and their debt service, the newspaper said."

Sorry, in advance for having the two consecutive fanposts. Not much going on tonight. Thought it would be fun if we did our predictions for the 2009 season. I'll do mine in the comments.

More words:

"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky"

- Montaigne

Still not enough - xxxx xx xxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxx  xx x xxx xx xx xxxxx  x x x xxxxx xx xxx x x x xxxx xxxx xxx

As most of you know, baseball-reference.com is an invaluable source of statisical info. The site was already great, but they recently reformatted it and it is now off-the-charts great. It's much more visually appealing and user friendly. Check out the Rangers '08 page. For, the pitchers, they now put the h/9, bb/9, so/9, so/bb, and hr/9 in the main statistical entry - here's Matt Harrison, sponsored by baseballismyboyfriend. And here's Kinsler's page, brought to you by LSB. Kudos to baseball-reference for a great upgrade.

Those of you who live in Dallas might already be aware of the recent attendance records set by the Fort Worth Zoo and Six Flags during Spring Break. Seems that, in this economy, families are traveling less, but they don't necessarily hole up in their homes either. Could this be a sign of attendance growth for the 2009 season? Possibly so, although season tickets, suites, and the new premium seats will almost certainly see slow sales.

It would also help if the team played some meaningful summer games. As Adam has noted, the organization has probably had more than one internal discussion about the importance of not tanking to start the year as they have the past two seasons.

      With contract offers being so depressed this offseason, it got me to thinking about how many players currently have over present market value contracts. I made a rough list. I only looked at players with guaranteed money of $2 million per year or more. My main criteria was "Would this player clear waivers?" - if the answer was "yes", then they are on the list. Some of these players are bad and some of them are very good - I'm in no way suggesting that all of these players will be put on waivers with the intention of giving them away. I'm sure you'll find glaring omissions and some guys are a stretch for this list - it's just a rough list.  Also, superstars with huge salaries who are still performing were given a pass and injured players who are in the final year of their contract were ignored.

      My thought is that, as teams start falling out of contention, they'll place these guys on waivers, not with the intention of working out a trade, but just as a plain salary dump. We could also see some trades with substantial money involved. It just seems that teams with financial wherewithal for 2009 and forward could be in a great position to take on some expensive, but good players for the price of the contract only. We could also see more players simply released, like Andruw Jones and Adam Kennedy, as teams just want to move on. It is difficult to gauge both the current financial position and future commitment of all ownership groups - I guess we'll find out more as this season plays out.

     Also, some of the players in the last year of their contract might clear waivers now, but would have positive trade value later in the season when the financial obligation is lower. All the contract info is from Cot's Baseball Contracts.

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ESPN says:

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones hasn't changed his mind about firing coach Wade Phillips, but Mike Shanahan would be the leading candidate if he ever does make a move, according to team sources.

and . . .

If Garrett should land one of the head coaching jobs available now, it could influence Jones to reconsider his plans and approach Shanahan about joining the Cowboys for the 2009 season because of the offensive void left by Garrett's departure, a source said.

Under the "you learn something new everyday" category (regarding fired coaches taking a season or two off) -

However, as profootballtalk.com also reported Saturday, most standard NFL head coaching contracts contain a clause that the coach must "use his very best effort to seek other employment."

I never knew that.

 

Mariotti told the Chicago Tribune he decided to quit after covering the Olympics in Beijing because newspapers are in serious trouble, and he did not want to go down with the ship.

"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," he said in the Tribune story. "Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers.

"To see what has happened in this business. … I don't want to go down with it."

Mariotti can be a complete jackass, but it is a dying business and newspapers are simply refusing to radically adapt to the internet.

http://cbs2chicago.com/sports/jay.mariotti.quits.2.803995.html

I stay away from the game threads these days, but was curious about thoughts on tonight's victory . . .

Was tonight the end for CJ as the closer? If so, who next? Closer by committee?

Did Guardado impress enough with those Ks of Ichiro and Ibanez to convince a GM to make JD an offer he can't turn down?

If you take the bunt off on a 1-0 count, why do you put it back on for a 2-0 count?

Note to Vazquez: In the last two games you made 3 errors, couldn't get down a sac bunt, and got picked off 3rd in a 1 run game with two of the league's best hitters at bat and on deck. Congrats on redeeming yourself, but you earned any booing you got.

Z linked the DMN article this morning about Ranger attendance in the main thread. I dug a little deeper because the piece just struck me as being overblown.

Gary Jacobson writes that the Rangers are experiencing a 20% drop in attendance so far this year. He mentions four culprits: 1) The Rangers had already played 9 home games against the Yankees and Red Sox by this time last year (they've yet to host either team in '08), 2) a 15% drop in season ticket sales for '08, 3) the hot weather, and 4) the economy.

Attendance is down, no doubt, and by any measure.

Yet, Jacobson overlooked the fact that, last year, the Rangers hosted the Cubs, baseball's other big road draw in a Tuesday through Thursday series for a 3 game average of 38,087.

The Rangers also had their home opener last year during the 1st weekend - hosting over 120,000 fans while playing against Boston in abnormally cold April weather. This year's home opener was on the second Tuesday of the season against Baltimore and due to a rainout and subsequent doubleheader, the Rangers hosted 64,368 for the first three games.

The Rangers also hosted a Memorial Day weekend series in '07 (which have typically been big draws, although the holiday itself isn't). This year they were in Cleveland for that series. In '07 the Rangers hosted the Angels in front of 46,105 for a Wednesday 4th of July game. This year - on the road.

The scheduling gods went against the Rangers this year. I could even throw in that the Rangers had to play 9 on the road after an All-Star Break in which Josh Hamilton was the national sports headline story.

Just some thoughts. Attendance is down, but it's not the apocalypse.

Beavan - 5IP 1H 0R 0BB 3K, Nolan's gonna be pissed, just kidding. Beavan hasn't pitched more than 6 innings in any of his 5 starts. The Clinton box scores don't have pitch counts, I'm guessing his limit is somewhere between 70 and 90.

Gac -  4-4, 3 doubles, promote him

Diamond (welcome back) 4.2IP 4H 6R 4BB 5K

Elvis 2-5

Max Ramirez 4-5, HR, 2B --- 23XBH in 151 ABs this year, crazy good

Davis 3-5, 2B

OKC is off today.

Bakersfield goes for the organizational sweep tonight.

Be careful what you wish for.

From Richie Whitt at the Dallas Observer blog Sportatorium.

I'm having trouble with the link feature, or else I'd insert it.

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According to foxsports.com

Miguel Cabrera's tenure as the Detroit Tigers' third baseman lasted three weeks.

A month after signing Cabrera to a $152.3 million, eight-year contract, the Tigers announced Tuesday night that he would be moving to first base. Carlos Guillen, an All-Star shortstop last season, will move from first base to third.

"We think, at this particular time, this gives us a better team," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said after a 10-2 win over Texas.

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Countless times this offseason, JD said that the way the team started 2007 “was embarrassing” and even invoked the Bad News Bears. We were persuaded that a cleaner product would be put on the field from game one.  Unfortunately, aside from solid starting pitching, this has been an awful rerun of the start of 2007.

                Right now, something needs to happen. I believe the time has come for JD or Nolan Ryan to publicly call out this team, manager, and coaching staff. Something along the lines of: “This team is playing terrible baseball. The level of play is unacceptable and honestly embarrassing. Rangers fans and this organization deserve better. We have set a high standard for this organization and everyone will be accountable to that standard.”

                The Rangers organization has constantly said that defense and walks allowed need to improve. But, here we are 14 games into the season, and the Rangers defense, especially the mental lapses, have been nothing short of pathetic and the pitchers have given up the third most walks in the AL.  Bottom line – there has been a lot of talk, but nothing has changed.