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.

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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.

Read this online tonight.

Update: Mesa has informed the Rangers that he’d be willing to pitch in a setup role for closer Francisco Cordero, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.
Recommendation: Wherever Mesa lands, setup duties could be his eventual role. Those with early deadlines in keeper leagues should take note.

As I also follow the Philles & the Pirates, I have to say this scares me. A lot. It will be Jeff Brantley all over again.

Since I last updated, there was the dalliance with Hank Blalock & Josh Beckett. However, there were a number of smaller (subjectively) news items that occured. I wanted to note them here.
Jon Leicester acquired: On Nov 16, we acquired Jon Leicester from the Chicago Cubs. I don’t know a whole lot about him, but Jamey Newberg called him a “decent prospect” back in August of 2004. That’s about all I know. He was acquired for essentially nothing. The old trade for “cash or a PTBNL” type of trade never seems to work out well. But it’s a low risk move, and if it works out, great!
40 Man Roster additions: We added four players to the 40 man roster last week. They are infielders Ian Kinsler & Joaqun Arias as well as pitchers Wes Littleton & Omar Beltre. With these guys (and Leicester) that brings the total on the 40 man to 36. It’s usually more crowded than that when the Rule 5 protection addtions are made. We did leave a decent number of good players off the list, but are unlikely to be selected. Some of those names are John Hudgins, Nick Masset, Drew Meyer, Vince Sinisi, & Ruddy Yan.
Juggling of Coaches: The Orel Hershisher/Dodgers dance ended with Orel staying here, but not in the way most of us expected. He resigned as pitching coach, and took a job in the front office as “executive director”. Sounds like a no real duties job to me – just training for his next job. Because of that move, Mark Connor was promoted from bullpen coach to pitching coach. Lisewise, Dom Chiti who was previously the ‘directory of player personnel’. Not sure why that qualifies him. I would have thought John Wetteland would make a perfect bullpen coach, myself.
Also, the times for all the regular season games as well as the spring training games were announced. I’ll have that update soon, as I’m still thinking about how I’m going to do 2006 game updates – the format will probably change from what I’ve done since the 1999 season, but I’m not sure how yet.

This afternoon there was a news report by Jayson Stark that said that the Rangers were not the frontrunner in the Beckett trade sweepstakes. Then late this afternoon the word came down that he’s not being traded to Texas at all, that he’s likely going to Boston.
We’ll wait for the final word, but it appears to be done.
Looks like the homies will remain. :)

Several reports today say that a deal is in place to trade Hank Blalock & John Danks to the Florida Marlins for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell. My guess is the Rangers have soured on Blalock given the fact at how badly he slumps in the back end of the season. Lowell I’ve always liked. He had a terrible year in 2005, hopefully that’s not where he is headed career wise. Josh Beckett can certainly help us, that’s for sure (provided he stays healthy). Danks is unproven of course, but you never want to give away stud pitching.
As I write this, it’s the first I’ve heard of it, so I haven’t had time to digest it. Don’t want to give up one of our young players, but if we need pitching, then you have to give up something, it’s just my gut says that Blalock and a stud pitcher is too much. We’ll see what happens. I just hope that we get some cash back as Lowell is owed $18 mil over the next two years. You put that with the money we’re paying the Yankees for Arod ($6 Mil), and the money we owe Phil Nevin in 2006 ($12 Mil), and that means we’d be on the books for $27 million for Nevin, Arod & Lowell. That’s a lot.
It appears that this is supposed to happen “by Monday”. If this goes down, I guess Hank’s Homies are done.
News Stories:
Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News #2 (Monday morning)
Ft Worth Star Telegram (Sat Night)
Ft Worth Star Telegram #2 (Sun Morning)
Texas Rangers Site
Fla Marlins Site
Sportsticker via SI.com
There’s been a few moves the last couple of days, mostly procedural, some coaching – I’ll catch up on Monday most likely.