JD talks trash about the Rangers

I’d say it’s time for a fisking, but I’m not going into that much detail.  Just a few thoughts on an article on the Rangers site today.

The title is “Daniels says Texas could add to ‘pen”.  That should tell you a lot.  In fact, the opening quote is “it’s more likely that he’ll be able to improve his ballclub by adding bullpen help than in any other area”.  Now, you may be right, I may be crazy, but it just may be a lot of things we’re looking for, but one of them is not bullpen help.  Why, you ask?  If I could be bothered digging out the study I’m thinking of (my guess is it’s either in The Book or on The Book Blog, about the smartest baseball site around), it shows that the worst position to trade for during a season is the bullpen.  These guys don’t pitch much, and when they do they’re prone to great variation.  You’re just as likely to pick up good bullpen help by picking random player X from AAA as you are in a trade, and you don’t even have to give up something to get it.

If the Rangers have anywhere to improve, it’s the rotation.  Millwood is pitching lights-out, because he’s got a contract to play for, and Feldman has been more than holding his own (seriously, all those scouts who talk about a “game face”, they never looked at Feldman and said no thanks?  At least one of his parents must have been a frog).  But the rest?  I mean the other seven guys who’ve started a game for the Rangers next year, they’ve been below average (Padilla, McCarthy), sucky (Harrison, Holland), or roster filler (the rest).  Mathis is doing well in AAA but couldn’t make the leap, Feliz is staying down a while longer, and the rest aren’t anywhere near.  The thoughts of contention in 2010 rapidly fade when you think that maybe Holland and Feliz will be here, with less than a year’s experience, and the rest of the touted pitchers are still far away.

So yeah, if they want to contend in ‘09, they need a starter.  But then JD says “the club’s need for starting pitching is not as dire as it’s being made out to be nationally”.  Uhh, right.  You go into a season with basically the same staff as last year, a year when they trailed the world in pitching, and imagine they’re going to be great this time around.  That May thing, where they pitched surprisingly well for a month before slumping again, that was what’s known as an outlier.  June is called regression to the mean.  By the way, did you notice they did the same last year – team ERA for May ‘08 was 3.90, next best month was 5.08 – what’s that about?  The May ‘09 ERA was 3.57, best since May (again!) of ‘05.  Did you think they could repeat?

“Daniels said his most likely direction right now is to, “probably stay the course.”"  Or, in other words, to pretend that they are contenders with the team they have, since crowds are up a little and no-one seems to be noticing the glaring holes.  And, oh yeah, there’s that little thing about money.  The thing where Tom Hicks bought a whole bunch of toys (Rangers, Stars, Liverpool, the AAC, the list goes on) using Other People’s Money, and now it’s time to pay the bills and he’s being found out for the fool he is.  Along with a bunch of other financial geniuses, of course.

“Daniels, like manager Ron Washington, continues to express confidence that first baseman Chris Davis will snap out of a season-long slump that has the Rangers considering other options at the position.”  CD sucks, so get him down to AAA.  You are of course aware that he just set a record for fastest to 100 strikeouts.  He is swinging at anything, and you see the fear in his eyes.  I happened to be browsing a story from April yesterday, which said they’d signed Joe Kochansky as depth at first.  Lost him pretty quickly, and never filled the gap.  Shame, because they really need it now.  Frankly, anyone would be better than CD right now.  I wonder if Ben Broussard is available?  CD needs to go down, but they will not admit they are wrong and send him there.

“Nationals first baseman Nick Johnson has been mentioned as a possibility and Cardinals infielder Troy Glaus could become available at some point.”  Johnson will cost a lot, because the Nats suck badly, and the only way they’ll get better is by robbing someone in a trade.  And yes, Glaus could become available, just as soon as he gets into a game this year.  The Rangers will do better to give the job to Andruw Jones for the meantime.

“But one of the reasons why we’re in the position we are today is how we’re playing defense and Chris is a big part of that.”  I always choose my first baseman based on how good his glove is.  The bat, that’s kind of incidental.  I mean, he’s just one number away from being a second baseman, and no-one cares how they hit, right?

“Nobody is more frustrated than he is.”  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.  Yeah we are.

“Starting pitching could be more expensive, both in prospects and salary that would have to be added. The Rangers are reluctant to trade top Minor League prospects”.  Me too.  Really, I don’t believe the Rangers are contenders, and I don’t believe there’s only one piece out there that would make them so.  There are a lot of empty shells that look pretty, but don’t help the team as much as you might think.  I love Marlon Byrd’s work ethic, but let’s face it, he is a below average hitter and his fielding is pretty bad too.  Shame that Hamilton had to run into a wall too many, but of course he’s more suited to a corner too.

“and this could be a tough time to add salary with the current economic conditions.”  Especially when your owner was one of those morons who said “hey, property values are always going to go up, let’s gamble since it’s free money!”

I think I actually like Jon Daniels now.  He’s doing a pretty good job lately.  Okay, ignore the fact that Danks, Young, Volquez, Millwood, Galarraga would look like a fairly decent rotation.  I mean apart from that.  Clearly, in an interview like this, he’s got to say a bunch of good stuff about the team.  First of all, chances are some or all of the team are going to hear about his comments, and it won’t go over too well if he tells the truth about them.  And second, there’s all those tickets to sell, during the summer when it’s getting time for the Cowboys to start practicing.  If they can just pretend the team is contending for another month or two, they might be able to break even this year.

But never mind, it’s his job, for now at least.  Personally, if you or I gave Ron Washington an extension based on his performance this year, our feet wouldn’t touch the ground on the way out the door.  JD says he has a plan, and I have to believe him, even if I think that plan is slipping to 2011 or 2012, and depending on what they do the next few weeks, maybe even 2013.  At the very least, he’s padding his resume for a future director of scouting job.

The other thought that crosses my mind is Pedro Martinez.  Not the ridiculous rumors that we should sign him, both sides would be foolish to do that.  I actually mean the trade that took him to Boston.  Carl Pavano and Tony Armas were considered top prospects, and the initial reaction was that they paid too much for Pedro.  Wouldn’t hear that now, would you?  No, now all you’re hear is TANSTAAPP – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect.  JD ought to remember that, when he’s thinking about blockbuster deals (which should be a year or two away).

And if anyone dares to mention Orlando Hernandez, I’ll be waiting for them outside with a bat in my hand.

Washout

No, there’s no space in the title, so don’t get your hopes up.  They extended him, anyway.

I hate rainouts.  You have all the waiting round to see if something is going to happen, and then it doesn’t.  Waste a bunch of time that you could use on more interesting things, but you don’t want to get started on something in case the game starts.  You’d think they’d have a better system for calling games, like someone saying “hey guys, there’s a bunch of tornadoes around, let’s get out of here!”.  They just don’t want to give up the ticket money.

Our garage door was bowing in the wind tonight, I really thought it was going to bust in and do some real damage.  It’s an interesting feeling to be watching the rotation in the clouds, while you’re listening to sirens going off.  No touchdowns, but it was certainly running through my mind at the time.  And there’s still thunder as I write, 6 hours later.

Our first pick in the draft went to Klein High in Spring, which is where both David Murphy and my niece went.  At different times, of course.

The Red Sox are 7-0 against the Yankees this year?  Wow!  If it wasn’t for that series, the Yanks could have a good lead in their division.  Of course, we might say the same about us and the Tigers, too.

I really want to write something insightful here, but I don’t have squat.  If I’d thought of it earlier, I could have started a longer stat study, my next will be on the 300 game winners and how they got there.  But it’s almost 1.30, so you’ll have to wait – just don’t hold your breath.

It’s June, time for the collapse to begin

I write this in my head every day.  It’s the getting it out through my fingertips that is the problem.

I want the Rangers to win, I really do.  I want them to make the playoffs, to actually win a playoff series, to win it all.  I’d love it if it was this year.  But as a Rangers fan (and an Arsenal fan) I know that it is far too easy for a team to set you up and then knock you down.  Every day I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the bandwagon to turn into a pumpkin.  That’s the way my mindset works.  The longer it takes for the Rangers to fall away, the worse it is going to be.  That tiny little feeling in the back of my mind that yes, they really are going to do it, is just going to end up a cruel joke.  And those folks who are getting on the bandwagon are going to be getting off in a hurry (Newy Scruggs, who has built his Dallas career on slamming the Rangers, had the gall on the radio today to be telling folks to shut up and enjoy the ride), and many of them will be having fun at my expense (all the people in my office who today are coming up to me and talking about “our” Rangers, in September they’ll be saying how much “your” team sucks for blowing it).  I can’t stand it, as Charlie Brown would appropriately say.

All of Tom Hicks’ teams are falling apart financially.  Even Liverpool lost fifty million pounds, seventy-five million dollars give or take, although they’re pretty much blaming the way he financed the team for that.  It’s funny, this is one of those cases where you’re enjoying a banker getting his, but then realizing what it could mean for the team.  Nolan Ryan as the owner?  Not many would say that was a bad thing.  But who else might want to get in on it?  David McDavid was rumored, not sure how a guy in the car business would get that kind of money these days.  And then there’s the man himself, Mr Cuban.  Out of the frying pan indeed.

You know what’s funny?  For years I’ve seen guys like Adam Dunn or Ryan Howard striking out near 200 times, and said who cares, it’s just an out, and they’re still hitting 40 home runs.  But when it’s one of ours, somehow it’s personal.  I think Chris Davis needs to go back to the minors, sad as that would be.  I just don’t want to see him flailing wildly again any more.  I’ve gotten to the point of closing my eyes or leaving the room when he bats.  It’s sad when they have to pinch-hit Andruw Jones for him to avoid a sombrero.

Wash was renewed today, of course, just a day after ESPN published a story saying how he wasn’t happy that he hadn’t been renewed yet.  Okay, technically he said he didn’t care, that he’d find something, but still, it was interesting timing.  I wish I had the dates from when he was extended last year, I’m pretty sure it came after a hot streak and was followed by the team’s collapse, but I may just be dreaming that (or foretelling it).

McCarthy is so brittle, they ought to check to make sure he has all his bones.  Although if they do, they’ll probably find another one he can break.  So much promise, so little on-field time.  You could argue that this comes so soon after his back-to-back 118 and 124 pitch starts, that surely they’re related.  I ought to make a chart showing the pitchers’ recent performances before their injuries.

Way back at the start of the season I said “I will bet you that one or more of these first four starters will be on the DL by the end of the month.”  Well, I was off a little, both in numbers and time.  The first five starters of the season were Millwood, Padilla, McCarthy, Benson and Harrison.  Four of them have now spent time on the DL.  Wow.  How are the Rangers still managing to win?  Maybe they are star-crossed this season.

You’re not a true DIYer until you’ve fallen through a ceiling.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Padilla is infuriating.  I’ve said before that I watch his starts hiding behind the chair, just peeking now and then, waiting for the meltdown to happen.  Was that whole waiver thing really an attempt at a wake-up call?  Could they really afford to dump him now, when there’s no-one else left to go into the rotation?

Holland isn’t going to be a big league starter.  Not with three pitches, one of which he throws 80 percent of the time.  You can blow a 97 mph fastball past AA players, but in the majors they feast on it all day long.  Have you noticed how the more he pitches, the more he’s hit, and the worse he looks?  Okay, he’s still young, but there’s a lot more development needed.

I’m going to predict right now that the Rangers will make a blockbuster trade this month, for a starting pitcher.  The sooner the better.  I’m not saying Halladay or Greinke caliber, but Bedard might be available (although not necessarily within the division), or maybe Cliff Lee?

It says something when you’re unhappy about the Rangers splitting a road trip to NY and Boston.

As of when I write, the Rangers are leading the majors in Ultimate Zone Rating, or UZR, one of the better fielding ratings out there.  That’s going from dead last a year ago.  Really, the only significant change was moving Michael Young to third and bringing in Elvis at short.  Somehow, Michael is actually a worse third baseman than shortstop (you can make the excuse that he’s learning the position all you want.  I’ll just reply with the defensive spectrum, that short is a much harder position to field).  He’s even worse than the rag-tag mob that played there last year.  Between Elvis, who is head and shoulders above any other shortstop in baseball this year, and Kinsler, who has made a dramatic improvement, they’ve lifted the team a lot.  There are people who say the change this year is not the pitching, it’s the fielding, and they may be right.  Could all that losing of the last decade be placed on the horrible fielding from Michael Young?  If we’d had a decent shortstop in that time, could things have looked a lot different?  Something for the simulations, I guess.

2am.  This is why I don’t post that much.  Won’t even have any time for some Far Cry.  And only 17 hours until it all starts up again.

A little help

What would you think if I ran out of runs, would you stand up and walk out on me?  Lend me your ear and I’ll tell you a tale, and I’ll try not to go oh for three.

And so we continue the saga of Kevin Millwood suing the Rangers hitters for lack of support, as the rather boring old joke goes.  Here’s a question for you:  what exactly does clutch mean?  Numerous sabermetric studies show that clutch hitting doesn’t exist, but any baseball man will tell you that such-and-such a player is clutch, because he gets better when the game is on the line.  And, returning to Millwood, they’ll tell you players perform better in contract years, because their money is on the line.

Let me suggest this to you (and you’ve probably heard it before):  since it is impossible for anyone to give more than 100% (which by definition is the maximum), if they improve they must have actually been giving less than 100%.  So a clutch hitter is, if ever possible to find, not so much a clutch hitter in those pressure situations, but rather a choke hitter at other times.  And a Millwood is not so much proving himself this year, as proving he was dogging it the last three years.  He can bleat all he wants about finally being healthy this year, but you go back every spring and you’ll see stories about him being fitter than ever (didn’t he spend the winter a year or two ago doing karate to improve his fitness?).  So, whether these first three starts are an indication of being healthy, being better, or the contract year, I have no faith in him any more.  I’m waiting for him to break down, and I’m waiting for him to prove it was just a small sample size thing.  If that doesn’t happen, I’ll consider him a money-grubbing jerk.

We went to Saturday night’s game, but I spent more time out of my seat than in it.  Had to get seats in the third deck, because I sure as heck wasn’t going to pay $65 a seat to sit in the good seats (although by the end of the game I told my wife to make me buy the better seats if I ever think of going in the third deck again).  I spent about two innings trying to get some hot dogs and cokes on the third deck, and after a long wait I eventually went down to level two to get them, which was much faster.  Note to Rangers:  your food service on the third level sucks.  Watching the servers for four different lines grab each hot dog or hamburger as they came out, one by one, was pitiful.  The vendor up there is not doing their job, and even if I did only pay $8 a ticket, I would rather stay at home than sit in there again.

Between the first two games of the season and last night, someone in the Rangers organization made the rule that the vendors have to take the caps off the soda and water bottles before giving them to us.  Note to that person:  you are a $*(&(@$&.  Get out of your air-conditioned box, then try carrying a tray with hot dogs and a couple of uncapped bottles up the stairs on the third level.  I don’t care if someone else threw their caps, you don’t punish everyone for it.  You’re not Homeland Security.

Brad Wilkerson retired.  Some of us would say he retired three years ago, he just kept wearing the uniform.

Not even a Michael Young walk-off can make me happy about the fact that the Rangers are playing sucky ball.  I keep thinking I need to revise the projection down.  Seventy is looking a long way off right now.  The teams we’ve played so far are a combined 17-20 when not playing the Rangers.  How bad are we going to be when we play some good teams?  Better yet, how bad is the rest of the division when we’re tied for second?

Wish I’d known Derek Holland was in the bullpen Saturday.  We stood behind there in the late innings, and I looked at them, but the only ones I knew were Frankie Francisco and Taylor Teagarden (FF & TT).  Would have even been a nice surprise if Holland had had his jacket off, so I could have read the name on his back.  Could have told my son that there’s another one of the guys we met at Jamey’s book signing in December.

I feel pretty confident in saying that this is no longer Michael Young’s Rangers, it’s now Ian Kinsler’s Rangers.  There was a palpable difference in the crowd when Kinsler was up, compared to anyone else.  Okay, he just cycled and went 6 for 6, which would sure help his profile, but even without that I think he is now the man.  If you want another indicator:  my four year old now has an Ian Kinsler shirt, to go with his old Michael Young.  His choice.

I still want an Elvis shirt.  Best first two weeks for a Rangers rookie ever?  Must be close.  He’s starting to get the crowd buzz, too.

Do you need anybody?  I need somebody to love.  Could it be anybody?  Sure, as long as they can help the Rangers win.  It might take Superman though.

Fooled me once, shame on you

They give you hope, they take it away.  Actually, I don’t have hope, except for a fleeting moment after sweeping the Indians, and watching the Angels implode.  Fact is, the Rangers are in last place in the West, and there’s only one team with a worse record in the AL.  Sweet dreams are not made of this.  The Indians, the team we swept, have gone 3-5 since, so they were a bad team we were beating up on.  The only good team in the West, and I use good in it’s broadest sense, are the Mariners, off to a 8-3 start on their way to 75 wins.

My guess?  First team in the West to 81 wins will take the division title.  Rangers?  71.

Over-under on Ron Washington I put at May 10.  Can’t even win when we’re given a patsy schedule to start the season?  His only saving grace may be the Rangers in foreclosure, so they won’t want to pay him to do nothing while they hire a new manager and have to pay them a million bucks.

2010 is looking a long way away, and realistically, if we’re planning on contending with a bunch of rookie pitchers, it ain’t gonna happen.  Let’s assume we get three prospects up from OKC by the end of the year.  They replace Millwood, Padilla and Benson.  Are we really going to be in it with a rotation whose most experienced player is Brandon McCarthy?  Or whichever piece of dreck they drag in next winter?  Nope, those guys will need time, as will the next group, and the group after that.  At best you’re bringing in three guys a year, two of whom can stick.  In three years you have half a pitching staff, with very little experience.  2012 is the earliest, unless the other teams throw in the towel.  Let me revise that:  2012 is the earliest we win a playoff series.

Millwood is flattering to deceive.  Just pray he doesn’t get to 180, or we’ll get another year of it.  I’ll be at the game tomorrow night, so I bet his true colors will be shining through.  Five innings, five runs.

It’s become even more clear that Nolan Ryan’s emphasis on starters going longer has been pushed into the manager’s brain, because he gets everybody 100 pitches regardless of if they stink or not that day.  I think he has a flowchart on how to manage pitchers, with the first box asking “has he thrown 100 pitches?”, and the No answer being “do nothing”.

CJ Wilson should never come in with a four run lead.  I’ve talked about this before:  bring him on with bases loaded and nobody out, he strikes out the side.  A four run lead, he will melt like an icecream on a Dallas sidewalk in August.

The Rangers are second in the league in batting average.  Take out Kinsler and Byrd and they fall to tenth.  Yeah, that’s how much those two have meant so far.  The offense has definitely not been firing very well so far, and 19 run outbursts really just mask how things are.  If we really have such an excess of offense, as we seem to every year, how come we’re not trading some of it for pitching?  Oh yeah, park effects.  Raw data gets masked so easily.

I think Kinsler flirts with .400 one of these years, if not this one.  Okay, six for six will inflate you a little in the early going, but he has so much potential and room for development.

If your four year old gets onto a team called the Diamondbacks, and they play a team called the Rangers, who do you root for?  I’ll find out in a few weeks.  Oh, and don’t tell anyone, because I’m trying not to be “that guy”, but I was as proud as punch when in his first ever practice with a real team, he was hitting harder and further than anyone else.

Central Market is expensive, but I could stand in the coffee aisle all day with my eyes closed, just breathing.

The Rangers need to wake up and smell the coffee.

300 Game Winners by Year

One of the baseball stories I get a little tired of, and one that is going to pop up again pretty soon, is the demise of the 300 game winner.  In a few weeks Randy Johnson will win his 300th (he’s at 295 as I write), and there will be a trove of media stories about how pitchers don’t win as much any more, they’re not as tough as the old days, and that we may never see a 300 game winner again, at least not in our lifetimes.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on wins and other stuff to do with pitching, and I’m going to start sharing some of it with you.  Here’s the first piece, and we’ll start with a chart:

From this, you can tell that I like ugly charts, and it’s probably too small to read.  Click it to go to Flickr and see it larger if you wish.

This chart is showing you two things:  the red dots are the year that a pitcher reached 300 wins (mostly one a year, in a few cases two reached in the same year), and the blue line is the number of active 300 game winners by year.

The blue line does need a little clarification:  it means when a 300 game winner was pitching, not when a guy who would win 300 was pitching.  For example, Greg Maddux won his 300th in 2004, so he counts from 2004-2008, the years he had 300 or more wins, but he doesn’t count from 1986-2003, the part of his career when he had fewer than 300.

What I am attempting to show here is scarcity.  There have only been 23 300 game winners in baseball history.  If you take the history of baseball as being from 1870-present, that’s about one every six years.  If you count from 1888 (the first year someone won 300), it’s still only once every five years.  But here’s something interesting:  they appear to have some clustering.  Take the last five years, for example, and you have three guys who made it.  From 1983-90, you’d expect about one and a half, but you actually have six!  The peaks of the blue lines show how clustered things seem to be.

Now, the point of all this was the meme that the 300 game winner is going the way of the dodo.  The point I am making is that we’ve gone through a recent history where there have been more 300 game winners than ever before, and although this is a historical blip, somehow writers are assuming it has been the norm, and they’re thinking that things are going wrong.  Fact is, there have been more 300 game winners in the last 25 years than in any 25 year period before.  The only comparable time was the late 1800s, when a group hit 300, in the days when baseball was a lot different than today.

To suggest that 300 game winners are dying because we are dropping down from a peak is like suggesting that home runs are disappearing because we’re coming off recent records.  We went from the 1930s to the 60s with just a single 300 game winner, and from the 30s to the 80s with just three.  At those times you might have had a reasonable argument that the 300 game winner had disappeared, but they came back with a bang.  Incidentally, this may in some ways devalue the 300 game winners of the 80s, because it suggests they were somehow lucky to be pitching in the time they were, where for whatever reason a group of guys made it to 300 together.

Next time I’ll show you how the 300 game winners got there.  If you thought this chart was ugly, you’ll think the next one was drawn by my four year old.

Bubbles bursting pop!

Been meaning to write all week.  Takes the first loss of the season to get me to do so.  Hopefully that will deflate a few of the people talking about the Rangers contending.  Okay, yes, they did sweep the Indians, but one series does not a season make.  Has anything changed on the Rangers in the last week to make them suddenly likely to win the division?  No.   I’m sure you’ve heard it here before, but remember this phrase: “small sample size”.  How many times did the Rangers win three in a row last season?  A lot.  Just because it happened to come in the first three games of this season, are all the clouds surrounding this team blown away, and everything is now all fluffy and light?  No.

Hey, are you, like me, wondering what kind of idiot Ron Washington is?  In my case, it’s because he’s giving his starters 100 or more pitches in opening week!  Come on, even Kris Benson gets 100 today, when he sucked all day?  I know Nolan Ryan talked about getting the guys more physically fit so they can go longer, but please, this is ridiculous.  It’s like they told Washington that he will be fired if his starters don’t go 100 every night.  And yes, I freely admit that blame could just as easily go to Mike Maddux.  As of right now the MLB site shows 27 pitchers have thrown 100 pitches so far this year (presumably all in starts), and that doesn’t count Benson, who’s not on the list yet.  Our other three starters are though, tying us with Cincinnati as the two teams with three pitchers to do that.  I will bet you that one or more of these first four starters will be on the DL by the end of the month.  Don’t I remember Padilla having some trouble late in spring training, so much that he might have missed his start on Wednesday?  It’s criminal.  And yes, I did say when Millwood came out to pitch the seventh on Monday that he was about to melt down, having already gotten into the 90s in his pitch count.  If I can tell from section 235, how come Washington can’t?  Of course, I also called Salty’s home run (told my son to pay attention – he was goofing around – because Salty was going to hit a homer, and two pitches later he did), so maybe I’m just psychic.

Love the red.  Get a clue, Rangers.  Blue should be gone by next season at the latest.

Enjoyed Opening Day, despite the horrible traffic around the ballpark.  Somehow they actually managed to make it worse.  Yes, they’ll blame construction, which will presumably make things better one day.  Me, I blame the cops, who were doing a terrible job of traffic control everywhere I went.  When you’re in a mile-long backup, seeing the cop just letting people turn right on red into the very road all your cars are trying to get to, that’s pathetic.  We couldn’t go anywhere because the right-on-redders kept filling in our gaps.  If the cop had stopped them once in a while, we’d have gotten there in half the time.  And as for the folks at Six Flags (where we were forced to go to park), they should realize that they should open all of their ticket booths when they have a thousand cars waiting, not half of them.  I wanted to tell their workers who were blocking the lanes off that they should open the booths instead, but my wife wouldn’t let me.

Wednesday night was a lot better, of course, since only half as many people showed up.  I think it was a much more enjoyable day, too.  The temperature was just right (whereas on Monday we were fine in the sun but froze when the shadows hit).  The ballpark has much better screens this year, I really like the various video boards.  Plus, we saw Elvis hit his first career home run, hopefully the first of many (and yes, I know he’s only going to average two a year, but still).  I wonder when we’ll be able to get Andrus shirts in the store?  If it’s anything like Chris Davis last year, we’ll have to wait until Opening Day 2010.

How do you explain to a four year old that green dot won’t win every time?  He was just so mad about it, and then red won twice in a row, so that just made him even madder at Mommy (her dot is red dot.  Mine is blue).  It’s really funny to watch him get mad about it though.

One of the things about blogging (or indeed writing in general) is that you need to stick with it to be successful.  Take a few days off, and soon enough it becomes a few months.  I must try harder to post daily, or at least several times a week.  Too many thoughts bounce around my head to not commit them somewhere (and no jokes about committing me somewhere, please).

Nick Adenhart, huh?  On Opening Day we were in traffic that was so slow (I estimated it took us 45 minutes to drive a mile at one point) that the passenger in the car in front of us went to the cooler in his trunk twice while we were watching.  He tried to hide it when he went back, but obviously he and the driver cracked a couple of beers each while they were driving.  How stupid can people be?  And how come a victim like Adenhart dies, while the driver walks (or runs) away?  Let’s get some serious punishment for these people.

I like the idea of day games, but it still doesn’t really feel like the season has started until we get into our rhythm of watching the ballgame every evening through the summer.

What bittersweet schadenfreude

I guess it takes a lot to get me to write these days…

Poor little rich boy only did steroids while playing for the Rangers.  He of course quit when he went to the Yankees, because he got away from all the pressure that the contract brought here in Texas.  As everyone knows, there’s no pressure in New York, ever.

Way back when (June 07 to be precise), I wrote a post about a few things, and included this incredibly prophetic paragraph:

Has anyone ever questioned A-Rod and steroids?  I mean, here’s a guy who is poised to be the youngest to 500, having already done it to 400 and 300 and a whole bunch besides.  He’s played on the Rangers with a bunch of guys who’ve gotten tarred with the steroid brush, and on the Yankees with them too.  Come on, if the guy can cheat on his wife, why not take a few steroids too?  He’s not Mr Squeaky Clean, he’s a dirty rat both on the field and off it.

Now, I’m not saying I’m a genius, but I certainly feel a little vindication.  He’s throwing the Rangers under the bus (and good on Hicks for his righteous indignation, normally an owner would sweep it under the rug), trying to regain his reputation as much as he can.  All I can say is I hope he gets treated the exact same way as Bonds, Clemens, McGwire et al are.  Including his Hall of Fame chances.

I don’t quite follow the timeline, but according to the reports on the weekend, the Sports Illustrated reporter talked to Rodriguez in a Miami gym on Thursday.  The story broke on Saturday.  On Sunday, Scott Boras said he hadn’t spoken to his client because he was out of the country.  Then Rodriguez shows up on ESPN on Monday, having been in the Bahamas.  Doesn’t that sound like he knew the story was coming down, and he jumped and ran for a few days?  Then, having talked to his PR people, to get his story straight, they all agreed that they could dump on the Rangers and pretend he was clean before and after.  You always have to remember when listening to Alex Rodriguez talk:  every single word has been pressed and massaged by the PR people before they come out of his mouth.  He is incapable of saying anything straight to anyone.  Don’t believe me?  Just ask Joe Torre, who last week was calling him A-Fraud.  Now of course he is A-Roid.

Quote from ESPN’s story:  “Rodriguez said he didn’t know for sure he had failed a test until Sports Illustrated contacted him last week.”  Right.  Because if someone told me I may have failed a drug test, I’d be like “okay, whatever”.  Wouldn’t give a damn about clearing my name, or limiting the damage.

Another:  Rodriguez added: “I am sorry for my Texas years. I apologize to the fans of Texas.”  Can we get an apology for stabbing us in the back?  For insulting the entire team?

Now to the bitter part of it:  this is just another confirmation that the Rangers were one of the epicenters of steroid use in baseball.  Oakland being the primary, of course, but you wouldn’t put many other teams above Texas.  To this day I don’t know if I believe Raffy or not.  I want to believe him, but too much evidence has racked up against him.  We all know about Canseco.  Juan Gone was gone to a bunch of injuries very early in his career, a sign of steroid use.  And then there’s Pudge (and I write this with clenched teeth).  Pudgy Pudge down to Skinny Pudge (and the deterioration of his career, although he was a catcher so there’s extra wear there), that was a little too blindingly obvious to avoid.  I will deny it until the day I die, or the day he is inducted into the Hall of Fame, but there is a very long shadow over him.

One last thought:  there’s 103 other names out there.  The other guys who failed a test in 2003.  If you don’t name them, everyone gets guilt by suspicion.  If you do name them, it won’t lift anything else off the ones who didn’t fail.  Everyone will always assume they were roiding in the early 2000s.  But right now I say name all those names.  Bite the bullet, if you don’t name them there’s just going to be endless speculation.  Come clean now, and in a year it will be forgotten (until the next scandal).  If you don’t, it’s going to hang over baseball like Damocles’ sword.

Catching the worst option they could

The Rangers had a surfeit at catcher, if you listened to anyone worth listening to.  They were going to deal some of them, and get some big-time pitching prospects in here, guys who were going to jump into a major league role right away.  The top four (Laird, Saltalamacchia, Teagarden and Ramirez) were all mentioned in different ways.

Of those, Salty was the one talked about most, and Ramirez hardly at all.  Jamey Newberg had Salty on the way out the door, Boston bound, and we were going to get Clay Buchholz or Michael Bowden in return.  We’d be pretty happy with either of those guys, right?  Either one would step into our rotation plans, probably as a 5th starter in 2009 but you’d expect them to be a 2 or 3 by 2011, the earliest the Rangers are likely to contend.

So what did the Rangers actually do?  They traded Gerald Laird to Detroit for nothing.  To be more precise, a 25 year old still struggling to get out of A ball (= No Prospect), and a 17 or 18 year old who has a thousand mile per hour fastball but is a crapshoot.

Yeah, genius work.  Much of the value of the catchers was in Salty, and if you consider that Teagarden is the one for the future, then it wouldn’t matter if you deal Salty or Laird, except for the fact that you get a much better return on Salty than on Laird.

So we presumably go into 2009 with Salty and Teagarden as our two catchers, two guys who have little experience at the job.  Yeah, they can learn on the job, but who are they going to learn from?  My ideal situation would have been to trade Salty for one of those Boston guys, and let Teagarden learn from Laird for a year or two before turning into our catcher of the future.  As it is, Salty hasn’t shown much of anything either with the bat or behind the plate, and may be destined to be yet another prospect who turned into a pumpkin at the big league level.

My biggest fear hasn’t been realized (yet):  that they will bring in a veteran to help the young guys.  You know, an Einar Diaz, Sandy Alomar, Rod Barajas, someone whose only job is to block young players from getting playing time.  It’s fine to have them as a teacher, but you don’t deal someone who could do that and then go get another one at twice the price.

This is the same brain trust that has them talking about bringing in Randy Johnson.  I defy you to find a more bone-headed move that the Rangers could make.  RJ would take a lot of money, and would bring back 300 wins (he’s at 295 now), so would get a lot of publicity.  But it would be Sammy Sosa publicity, where nobody around here really cares, because we know he did it all with another team.  It would be a publicity stunt to try and get the local fans interested, and God knows they’re going to have to do a lot to get the Texas fans interested in 2009.

My favorite line about Johnson was in the Dallas Morning News.  Nolan Ryan was quoted as saying he’d be a great teacher for the young pitchers we have coming through.  But then, Johnson’s agent said that he was a good teacher if the young guys asked him about things.  Not that he’ll be volunteering anything, but if some snot-nosed 20 year old comes up to future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson and asks him for help, he will offer it.  Yeah, that’ll happen.

And they bring back Mark Connor, to a minor league role?  Did they forget how he was destroying young pitchers?

Seeing Sabathia and Burnett sign with the Yankees was very demoralizing.  The Rangers are left with Ben Sheets, hoping he’ll take a home town discount (except then there’s the story that he’s trying to sell his house in Dallas!).  Not a good long-term bet.  And I don’t think the Rangers should be signing anyone long-term, they should be concentrating on getting the kids in short-term.  Once we see the upswing in the team’s chances (and I said 2011 above), then you look for a free agent or two who can help put the team over the top.  Every dollar spent on top level free agents right now is a wasted one.  On bottom level ones too, for that matter.  Recognize the team isn’t going to win, and go with the kids, don’t bring in roster filler who are taking their time away.

Back from the dead

This is horrendous. This is an indictment of Rangers management past and present. And of the future, at least for some time, but when will that happen? 2010? 2012? 2020? 2050?

Idling through some numbers the other day, I came up with this chart:

MLB Standings 2000-08

Team	W	L	PCT
NYY	862	592	0.593
BOS	825	632	0.566
STL	822	635	0.564
OAK	815	641	0.560
ATL	806	650	0.554
ANA	803	655	0.551
CHW	778	681	0.533
MIN	776	682	0.532
SFG	767	688	0.527
LAD	767	691	0.526
HOU	758	699	0.520
PHI	757	700	0.520
SEA	752	706	0.516
CLE	751	707	0.515
NYM	745	711	0.512
ARI	735	723	0.504
TOR	730	727	0.501
FLA	724	732	0.497
CHC	724	733	0.497
SDP	694	765	0.476
TEX	689	769	0.473
COL	677	782	0.464
CIN	673	785	0.462
MIL	661	796	0.454
WSN	652	805	0.447
DET	643	814	0.441
BAL	634	822	0.435
PIT	619	837	0.425
TBD	610	845	0.419
KCR	607	851	0.416

Uhh, yeah. 21st out of 30. Isn’t that about where you’d expect the Rangers, or maybe a little high? After all, only one winning season in that time, but most of the time they’ve been just a bit below mediocre, in the 70-80 wins range. As I’ve said many times, not good enough to compete, not bad enough to tear it all down and start fresh. Instead we get, year after year, the same old blather about needing to sign just one or two more starters and we’ll be there. Uhh, no.

The Rangers have a shot at getting to 20th (five wins behind a terrible San Diego team), but not 19th (35 wins behind a couple of teams). They could also fall a couple of spots, if Colorado or Cincinnati come on. The truly amazing thing: even if the Rangers went 162-0, and the Yankees 0-162, the Yankees will still have a better record for the decade. And the Rangers are 63 games back of Seattle, the next worst team in the AL West.

Of the current crop of Rangers starting pitchers, who do you think should be there when the Rangers are trying to compete? Padilla maybe, but he only has one year left on his contract (I think). Millwood has flamed out. The others have all been terrible. Of the 15 pitchers who started a game for the Rangers this year, only 3 had an ERA+ over 100: Ponson, who got dumped because he was a cancer in the clubhouse, McCarthy, who had five starts in a injury-plagued year, and AJ Murray, who pitched 7 innings. Feldman, who a few folks laughingly said had a good year? ERA+ of 82. Matt Harrison? 79. At least he’s young. Feldman sucks, and will never be in a rotation that could go to the playoffs.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? Our expectations have become so low about Rangers pitchers, we’re reduced to thinking that Scott Feldman might be a solution.  Or Dustin Nippert, good grief! For the first time since 1988 (not including strike shortened 1995) the Rangers drew less than 2 million fans. Even I gave up on them, hardly bothering to watch, let alone post here, after the football season came on. When you’ve killed the fans so many times, and you’ve lied to them about how the pitching is going to be better, and you tell them that this was a good season (take out about three weeks in May and they’d fall back below 70 wins), and they just know it’s going to keep being bad, and you suck the life out of the city’s interest in baseball. Bringing in Nolan Ryan as the savior was kind of like putting lipstick on a pig.

Everyone will tell you that there’s a great crop of kids coming through from the minors, and in a couple of years we’ll be loaded. I say show me the money. Come back here in those couple of years and see how many of them have actually made it. Do you think we’ll get a whole rotation’s worth out of them? Here’s a thought for the day: if you could graduate just one decent starter a year from the minors, you could comfortably turn over your rotation every five years, and that might make you competitive. The guys at the top get sold off for something before they hit free agency, and you plug in someone at the bottom. I know what you’re thinking, this is not a novel idea, it’s what Oakland does. Yep. And look at them in the chart. Fourth place, and they’ll crow about their payroll being half of everyone else.

I honestly cannot tell you who will be in the Rangers rotation next year, let alone in four or five years. I know there’s a bunch of guys down in the minors who are winning (as Jamey tells us), but like I said above, the history of the Rangers is to ruin them or trade them before they get to Arlington. Give me a list of your top 20 pitching prospects in the Rangers system right now, and we’ll see if even two of them are in the rotation in 2012.

I really shouldn’t do this, either:

Millwood 9-10
Padilla 14-8
John Danks 12-9
Edinson Volquez 17-6
Armando Galarraga 13-7

Wow.  What if, huh?  Just by themselves they’re 65-40.  Galarraga had the fewest starts (28) of those three guys.  Millwood and Padilla each started 29, then you go to Feldman’s 25, then Harrison’s 15.  The Rangers don’t just give arms away, they destroy the ones they have.  I’ll go back again to Volquez’s quote about going to Cincinnati, where he was encouraged to pitch, not just throw.  Losing Mark Connor is the first step in resolving that, but there’s a lot more to go.

Sorry to be so negative.  Every time I’ve wanted to write for the last three months, all I can think of is negative things to say about the Rangers.  This is one of those years where you feel even more beat down at the end.  I can’t raise my hopes to look at the horizon, because I don’t see anything coming any time soon.  I think 2009 is going to be a real trough of a season in terms of fan interest.

Oh yeah, one last note:  Shame on you, Rangers, for not having Chris Davis shirts available, even at the end of the season.  He was one of the very few feel-good points of the season.