Will the Rangers ever win past July?

[boilermaker]

Well, it's the end of the season and we JUST missed out on both the division and the wild card.

It was a great year, though. Adam Eaton was our winningest pitcher with 17. 1B Mark Teixeira put up 48 bombs. He and SS Michael Young both batted over .300. 2B Alfonso Soriano had 21 steals and CF Gary Gages had 20.

For the league?

DIVISION WINNERS:
Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Angels, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
WILD CARD TEAMS:
Boston Red Sox and the San Diego Padres.

NOTABLE STATISTICAL LEADERS
Avg: .347-Albert Pujols, St. Louis
VORP: 106.8-Albert Pujols, St. Louis
Hits: 224-Derek Jeter, NY Yankees
HRs: 52-Manny Ramirez, Boston
RBIs: 145-Albert Pujols, St. Louis
Stolen Bases: 60-Chone Figgins, LA Angels

I've got to admit it....I put myself in the game and made myself a dominant starting pitcher. Because I live in Las Vegas IRL, I put myself on the 51's of the Pacific Coast League but was immediately called up to LA. I pretty much own all the pitching statistics. For some level of humility, I will refuse to show them.

[boilermaker]

Re-Signed 1B Mark Teixeira. Heck, .312 average, 48 HRs, 111 RBIs should be worth the $10 million for three years I've signed him to. I guess that seems like an absolute bargain in comparison to what I'm paying Michael Young, but I guess it's harder to come up with a good 2B than it is a good 1B......

I still have $12 million to work with. 3B Hank Blalock is going up for arbitration and 2B Alfonso Soriano will be a free agent. With IF Ian Kinsler waiting in the wings, I think I should consider trading Blalock and/or Soriano.

[boilermaker]

The New York Mets blew a 3-games to 1 lead over the Padres to finally win with Pedro on the mound in game 7.

The World Series is between the Mets and the Los Angeles Angels. LA vs. New York, eh?....

[boilermaker]

Well, the first season is in the books. The road team won the first four games of the World Series before the home team would win out, giving the New York Mets a World Series Championship in seven games. Congrats to the Mets.

[No Pepper]

Fun little writeup, boilermaker. I had a few chuckles at the Killers and at adding yourself to the game. Good read. I'm not too familiar with Short Season A, is that on par with regular A level or a step below? Promoting John King straight to AA should be interesting in terms of his development, but your team there sounds like it could use a shot in the ol' pitching arm.

[boilermaker]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

Fun little writeup, boilermaker. I had a few chuckles at the Killers and at adding yourself to the game. Good read. I'm not too familiar with Short Season A, is that on par with regular A level or a step below? Promoting John King straight to AA should be interesting in terms of his development, but your team there sounds like it could use a shot in the ol' pitching arm.

Ah, thanks for the acknowledgment. Yeah, I have the Short Season A as slightly less than that of A-ball. But not much.

NOVEMBER 11, 2006

In an embarassing development, the baseball world collectively and completely forgot where the National Baseball Hall of Fame was located. The country was investigated rigorously and a board of governor's meeting revealed that many big wigs were unaware what state the Baseball Hall of Fame was even located in. Expeditions were sent unsuccessfully to South Dakota, New Mexico, and Nova Scotia and no National Baseball Halls of Fame were uncovered. One expedition sent to Ohio found one, but apparently only football players were allowed to be inducted there.

The sensible resolution, it was decreed, was to create a new one....from scratch! Everyone agreed that this was probably ideal. And so, the inaugural inductee class of the New Baseball Hall of Fame, located at a secret location, includes the following:

CF Bernie Williams - New York Yankees. Spent his entire career with the Yankees and put up 263 career home runs, a career batting average of .301 and had 2097 hits. He did spend the 2006 season in the minors, putting up 36 at bats in Trenton (AA) and 303 in Columbus (AAA).

1B Frank Thomas - Chicago White Sox. Also spent his entire career with one organization and 2006 in AA and AAA. 436 career home runs, .308 average, 2113 hits, OPS of .996.

RF Sammy Sosa - Chicago Cubs. (also Texas, White Sox, and Baltimore). 574 career HRs, .277 average, 2220 hits. Spent 2006 playing in AA and AAA for the Orioles.

No pitchers were inducted.

Some notable retirees: 1B Julio Franco, CF Steve Finley, SS Omar Vizquel, 1B B.J. Surhoff, 1B Jeff Bagwell, RF Ruben Sierra, RF Juan Gonzalez, 1B Jim Thome, CF Marquis Grissom, 2B Tony Womack, P John Franco, P Jose Mesa, P Steve Reed, P Trevor Hoffman, P Al Leiter, P Steve Trachsel, P Scott Erickson, P Kirk Rueter, P Tim Wakefield, P Troy Percival, P Armando Benitez, P Hideo Nomo, P Pedro Astacio, P Terry Mulholland.

[boilermaker]

POST-SEASON AWARDS CEREMONY

We've got some goodies to hand out.

AL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: LF Bob Tuffin, Baltimore
NL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: P Me. My ridiculous self-creation. LA Dodgers.

AL CY YOUNG AWARD: SP Rich Harden, Oakland A's
NL CY YOUNG AWARD: SP Me. Yay. LA Dodgers.

AL BATTING TITLE: 1B David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox
NL BATTING TITLE: 1B Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals

And, the Gold Glove winners:

[boilermaker]

Big trade for us. I send off P Adam Eaton to the New York Yankees in exchange for 2B Robinson Cano. Eaton's contract is about to expire and it's obvious he will not re-sign with us while our current 2B Alfonso Soriano will also be going into free agency. At the end of the day, we were scheduled to come out down, but snagging Cano mitigates a complete loss.

Cano is still in his pre-arbitration years, too, so I do free up some good salary money. The board gave me $22 million extra space for salary before the trade and losing Eaton and Soriano should really open me up to the free agent market or at least re-sign players I'd like to keep for the long term.

[boilermaker]

ARBITRATION DAY

Well, today was arbitration day and I'm satisfied with the rulings I was given.

- CF Gary Gages was given 1-year, $350,000 which is an enormous bargain. He had 20 stolen bases and a 4.1 VORP for a platoon player.

- SP Joaquin Benoit was given a 1-year, $350,000 which is also a good break for us. He won 13 games for us, had a 3.49 ERA, and when you consider how shoddy pitching standards are here in Arlington, this is a great ruling for us.

- P Ryan Drese gets a 1-year, $1.38 million dollar deal. Drese is our spot starter, but came out of the bullpen for the most part last season. A "bleh" player, he can be good, but that 4.68 ERA isn't particularly exciting. He also has a pedestrian 57 K's to 45 walks. Still, with our pitching as shoddy as it is, I think I'd rather go with the devil I know.

- OF Kevin Mench gets $1.08 million. 20 home runs last year, but a .261 average. Considering how uninteresting Gary Matthews was last season and how oft-injured David Dellucci was, Mench's presence was pretty valuable, although I kind of would like to see more out of him.

- 3B Hank Blalock gets $6.67 million. Well, he's the up and coming stud. 27 home runs and 10 points higher average than Mench. His VORP was 20.6. He's a keeper!

Some other notable arbitration cases for other teams:

NY Yankees, LF Hideki Matsui $3.8 million
Baltimore, RF Jay Gibbons $3.4 million
Cleveland, P C.C. Sabathia $3 million
Cleveland, 1B Travis Hafner $7.48 million
Cleveland, SS Jhonny Peralta $5.6 million
Cincinnati, IF Felipe Lopez $6.4 million

There are others. Who cares. I will crush them.

[boilermaker]

FREE AGENCY WORLD

A few things:

-Signed LF Kenjiro Otani who spent the 2006 season with the Orix Buffaloes in Japan. The contract is a minor league one. Statistically, his 2006 was enormously uninteresting. However his attributes are hard to ignore. So he'll start in the minors with hopes of making it to Arlington. For the time being, he'll be in Oklahoma (AAA), but I may push him further down when I examine my organization's depth chart for the upcoming season.

-Speaking of the Orix Buffaloes, they signed octogenarian P Greg Maddux to their rotation. Wahoo.

-The New York Yankees completely received egg on their face in our Eaton/Cano trade as Eaton evidently did not come to terms with the Yanks and filed for free agency.

-With a good salary ceiling, I may consider actively raiding the free agency market. The top 10 most coveted free agents are as follows:

[boilermaker]

FREE AGENCY SIGNINGS

Alright, I have two new players! Welcome to the Texas Rangers organization:

-RF Geoff Jenkins: 4-years at a total value of $15.7 million. Pretty steep, maybe, but the last year is an option year and there's incentives in the deal. On top of that, while collectively I like my outfield, I've been spreading out the playing time so much that it's safe to say that no spot out there is set in stone. Why not bring some pop to the fold?

-P Al Reyes: 4 years, $3.4 million per year. This seems like a steal consider his 2006 season in which he had an ERA of 2.08, a WHIP of 1.21, opponent's average of .219, and 33 saves. A slight upgrade from P Brian Shouse, no?

In other news:
-Florida signs C Michael Barrett for 4-years at $6.7 million.
-Florida also signs 2B Placido Polanco to a 1 year deal worth more than $1 million.




EDIT POST FOR UPDATED LEAGUE SIGNINGS
-Philadelphia signs 2B Luis Castillo, 3 years, $3.7 million
-Arizona signs P Adam Eaton, 4 years, $5.8 million
-St. Louis gets CL Eric Gagne, 1 year, $2 million
-Indy league Sioux City Explorers nab P Jon Garland, 5 years, $200,000! Wow!
-NY Yankees get P Julien Tavarez, 3 years, $1.9 million
-Indy leaguers Camden Riversharks sign 3B Aubrey Huff, $110,000. Wow2.0!
-Philadelphia signs CF Torii Hunter, 3 years worth a total of $17 million.
-Arizona signs LF Barry Bonds, 2 years, $16 million per year.
-Florida signs LF Cliff Floyd, 4 years, $6 million per.
-Tampa Bay signs SS Miguel Tejada, 5 years, $15.86 million per year.
-Philadelphia picks up P Barry Zito, 2 years, $3.3 million.
-Indy leaguers Coastal Bend Aviators sign C Ivan Rodriguez, 4 years at around $200,000 per year. Wow!
-Indy league St. Paul Saints sign RF Trot Nixon! 5 years for a total value of $1 million.

EDIT POST FOR UPDATED RANGER SIGNINGS
-P Kyle Farnsworth comes to Arlington for 1 year, $900,000. Great ratings, not great stats, and not a great impression of him in real life....in anycase, we need bullpen and at less than one million, Farnsworth will have to do.

-3B Russell Branyan, 2 years for $5.8 million. Branyan can play at first and left, so he'll be an awesome guy to fit in where people are tired or cold. He had 29 HRs last year! Although he did bat a miserable .230. But he is another piece to this team strategy I guess I'm developing in which any given player should be able to play any given day and the team's production should be the same.

-P Curt Schilling, 3 years, $7.89 million! Our biggest signing yet! A true Hall of Fame winner! Now our pitching staff can no longer be considered a laughing stock. The biggest pitcher to hit Arlington since Nolan Ryan. Woohoo!

-P Jake Westbrook, 5 years, $9 million! Wow, stop the presses! We now have a rotation that includes Curt Schilling, Jake Westbrook, and Kevin Millwood. I'm afraid to look at our budget now, but I think we can call a halt to the free agency signings. This is a winning team, I believe. (edit...in fact we ARE a whopping $24 million over budget...okay, no more signings....)

[boilermaker]

We've held our draft and picked our players. The one to watch for me is C Art Taylor, who has potential Contact and Gap ratings of 20 and his current ratings are already double digit.

[boilermaker]

ORGANIZATIONAL REVIEW

So I had decided that I would basically construct a depth chart of every position throughout the entire organization so as to help me be sure everyone is playing at the correct level of ball. It took me bungling through the catcher, first base, and second base position before I mastered an efficient and reliable method of doing such a thing.

For better or worse, I heavily relied on VORP as a measuring stick.

A few observations of the state of affairs:

-The arrival of Russell Branyan effectively pushes my somewhat effective utility infielder Kunimatsu Umeta into Triple-A. Which seems like a tough decision to make since Umeta had a VORP of 9.3 at the Major League level.

-At 3B, the name to remember after Umeta is Carlos Soravilla at AAA Oklahoma. He hit .305 with 11 HRs in AAA last year.

-I'm extremely thin at the short stop position. Michael Young is my only full time shorty at the big leagues and the third person on my organization's depth chart was in A-ball last year (now at Oklahoma). Ian Kinsler is number two on the chart.

-At LF, if we decide that being $24 million over budget is unbearable, then the totally awesome but always injured David Dellucci could make good trade bait. Chad Allen did alright last year and we have an emerging superstar in Nataneal Yoncis, who won the Pacific Coast League batting title.

-At CF, the rise and fall of Gary Matthews, Jr. appears complete as I reluctantly decide to send him down to Oklahoma. In his place, the capable Laynce Nix is called up. Gary Gages may now become my full time centerfielder. He's a base stealer and a half. Looking down the entire organization, this is a pretty barren position for us.

-RF Geoff Jenkins will probably take over full time in right, but Kevin Mench will still get his at bats. Senior citizen Richard Hidalgo will begin in Oklahoma. There he will be competing with a rising prospect named Barry Burrough who started well in A and subsequently DESTROYED Double-A when being promoted. He batted .380/.436/.583./1.019 in Frisco with 11 home runs and 25 stolen bases. He was named both to his A and AA All Star teams. At A-Clinton, Ray Snell is to be watched. At Rookie ball Surprise, he put up a .333 average.

-My rotation is a monster. Jake Westbrook, Curt Schilling, Kevin Millwood, Joaquin Benoit, and Chris Young. That sounds like a World Series rotation to me! Kameron Lowe was the odd-man out and is in Oklahoma. My best two pitchers there are Madesio Cantu and Santos Nagilla.

-Al Reyes and Doug Brocail will be the bullpen stars. I'm paying Kyle Farnsworth and Ryan Drese good money, too. Erasmo Ramirez heads back down to Oklahoma. He'll be the first up if we need help. Monster prospect John King will start in Frisco this year.

-Let's win us a World Series....

[boilermaker]

The tentative 2007 Texas Rangers lineup:

[boilermaker]

Four shutouts on Opening Day including a no hitter by P Erik Bedard against the Seattle Mariners for the Baltimore Orioles.

We play the day after the league opened up shop for the 2007 season.

[MikeSlugga]

Great read, I'll be following this closely.

[BadluckinOOTP]

I hate the real rangers.

Your version's okay, I guess.

[boilermaker]

We drop two of the first three games in a series against the Angels. Joaquin Benoit and Chris Young being the losers, but Jake Westbrook pitched a complete game three hitter victory. It's late, I'm going to bed.

[No Pepper]

I'll definitely follow this one. Here in Milwaukee, I'm curious to see how Jenkins does for you. The real Jenkins is such a streaky player and the trade rumors are just beginning to heat up.

[boilermaker]

P Rich Harden and the Oakland A's destroyed us 5-1 today. I know 5-1 doesn't sound like a destruction, but Harden had 4 perfect innings and 9 strikeouts. It was a 2-1 game going into the 8th, but Kyle Farnsworth gave up 3 runs off a 1B Jim McKenzie bomb. P Kevin Millwood gets tabbed with the loss and we stumble out of the gate with a 1-4 record.