That didn’t take long. According to this story, Kenny Rogers has signed a two year deal with the Detroit Tigers the night after the Rangers formally cut ties with him by not offering him arbitration. That part is not a surprise, really. The surprise is that it’s a two year deal for $16 million. $8 Million a year for Kenny Rogers, eh? Wow.
At least it’ll bring back the battery of Kenny to Pudge. Provided Pudge doesn’t whine his way out of Detroit.

Forgot to mention this yesterday, but the Rangers formally cut all ties with six players by not offering them arbitration.
The players are: C Sandy Alomar, Jr., RHP Doug Brocail, INF Greg Colbrunn, OF Richard Hidalgo, RHP Steve Karsay and LHP Kenny Rogers.
No surprises on any of them, although there was some noise the last few days saying the Rangers might offer Rogers arbitration. Boor-ass came out and said that it was in his contract that we can’t do that, so I don’t know what all the speculation was about. I would have liked to have seen us retain Alomar, I thought he did a great job as the backup catcher this year.
Additionally, the following former Rangers were also not offered arbitration by thier respective clubs: Todd Hollandsworth, Jay Powell, Royce Clayton, Juan Gonzalez, Jeff Nelson, Todd Greene, Rafael Palmeiro, Ugueth Urbina, Rudy Seanez, James Baldwin, Carl Everett. Also Danny Kolb was traded back to the Brewers from the Braves for Wes Obermueller.
We avoided a scary situation today when the Colorado Rockies signed Jose Mesa. I really did not want him coming here at all. Having followed him the last 4 years or so in Philly & Pittsburgh… Uh, NO. Thank you Colorado.

I’m not quite sure what to make of the story that Arod frequents poker houses.
In one regard, he should be allowed to do that. I don’t know if I agree with Selig’s freaking out about it. Sending the wrong message? I think he should worry more about steroids and the fact that most kids and their families can’t afford to go to more than a game or two a season, it’s just too damned expensive.
I say let Arod play. Let’s see if he’ll be lining up with Pete Rose to sell autographs down the street from HOF induction ceremonies.

The Rangers lost first base coach DeMarlo Hale to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday. He goes to the Red Sox to coach third base. While it might initially be seen as a lateral move, the third base coach has a more presitgious job. Also, Hale has a stonger tie to Boston’s club. He was drafted by them originally in 1992, and played in Boston’s minor league system for 7 years. Hale managed Texas’ AAA club for two years (00 & 01), and then was the Rangers’ first base coach from 02-05. Ironically (if I remember my dates right), Hale’s replacement as AAA Oklahoma manager was Bobby Jones, who was the Rangers first base coach before him, and is the leading candidate to replace Hale.
While I don’t really want to lose Hale, he seemed like a good enough coach and guy, if the replacement is Bobby Jones, I’m OK with that, it just makes the real choice being who replaces Jones at AAA? Click here to view DeMarlo Hale’s page on the Rangers site. Click here to view the story about Hale’s hiring on the Red Sox site.
Also, Orel Hershisher is talking to the Dodgers about their vacant managerial job this week. If Orel goes, we’ll probalby promote Mark Connor to pitching coach, and I’d love to see them make John Wetteland the bullpen coach.

Well, I get to report about this in my “Former Rangers News” category.
Kenny Rogers won’t be back in 2006. The Rangers have taken the rather interesting step of saying that they won’t offer him a contract in 2006. There’s a story about it on the Rangers site.
I find the timing interesting. It could be genuine, or part of a plan to reduce the salary request. If Kenny goes into the off season too far w/o a deal, it might end up with a Twins type of thing where he takes reduced money. If NO ONE takes him, we could bring him back. Remember, John Hart said that we weren’t interested in signing Chan Ho, and we did. :) Still, my gut feeling says he won’t be back, although where he’ll end up, I don’t know.
Are there any former Rangers who are still playing that aren’t in some sort of trouble or contract squabble or something? Pudge is complaining in Detroit, Juan’s still hurt in Cleveland, Raffy’s got his steroids fiasco, & now Kenny has his contract situation. I guess Julio Franco’s not making any noise in Atlanta. :)
UPDATE: Jamey Newberg has a great writeup on the Kenny Rogers situation, and several issues relating to it. If you haven’t already checked it out, do so here.

There’s a good article by Jayston Stark on Rafael Palmeiro up on ESPN today. Check it out. In short it wonders why anyone would take a chance on Raffy in the off season, specifically going so far as to say he’s likely to be the last free agent signed.
I think for Palmeiro to play in 2006, he’ll have to come clean during the offseason about what happened. I think that’s about the only way someone will want to take a flyer on him.

There’s a story that was posted late last night about Raffy’s steroid case. From the article..

Rafael Palmeiro’s positive steroid test was for stanozolol, a powerful anabolic steroid that is not available in dietary supplements, according to a newspaper report.

If that’s true, then it seems to appear that he did lie about this, but it also says that the testing was done AFTER his grand jury case, so there’s probably no Congressional perjury issue anymore. But wow, does this look bad. If you look at my Raffy posts for the last few days, I sort of defended him, but if this is true, I fail to see how the “never intentionally took” claim can fly, assuming it is this Stanozolol.
Sigh.

[Read more…]

After thinking about it a bit, I think Raffy will still get into the HOF, but I’m sure there will be a bunch of doubts. Jason Stark had a bunch to say on this issue in his column on ESPN. Check it out. My favorite quote from him:

Would I vote for a guy with 3,000 hits and almost 600 homers for the Hall of Fame? Yeah, I would. On the first ballot. And every ballot.
It’s some kind of commentary on the bizarro world we live in these days that stuff like this is now a subject for serious debate. But steroids have done that for us.

Jason also feels that when it actually is time to vote on Raffy for the HOF, the 5 year period after a player retires will probably cool off a lot of people’s thoughts. Right now it’s a hot issue, people are passionate about it, but I suspect it won’t be that “big a deal” in 2010 (assuming Raffy retires after this year). Although, I wonder what kind of heat a team may take for signing Raffy in this offseason, assuming he wants to continue. His contract is up after this season.
Also, it appears that the Rangers have cancelled a pre-game ceremony meant to honor Raffy when the Orioles visit town this weekend. I can’t say I’m surprised by that.

Well, we always wondered when the Major League Baseball drug policy would name a major player. That’s finally happened. Up until now it’s been fringe major leaguers, or minor league players that the average fan has never heard of nor ever will again. But this time, we got a biggie, and that was Rafael Palmeiro. Raffy was suspended for 10 days by MLB, starting today (Aug 1).
I have to admit, when I saw Raffy in the congressional hearings I believed his “I never did Steroids” claims. The amount of his denial seemed to me to be enough – he was clean of that. Now, I’m not foolish enough to think I know the honest to god truth, but I bought it from him. Was it because he was a former Ranger, one I liked, and I didn’t want to believe Canseco’s claims? Possibly, I can’t really tell. But the bottom line is that I believed him.

So today we get the suspension of Raffy for a violation of the steroid policy. Shortly after the suspension news came down, Raffy released a statement on the matter. In it, he says this..
I am here to make it very clear that I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period.
That’s pretty much the same thing he said in Congress, except this time it has the word “intentionally”. While I’m no expert on the matter, I’m just a fan, from where I sit, I wonder exactly what constitutes a positive. Is it like getting a DUI – where if you’re over “X” in blood alcohol, you’re considered drunk? Do these tests look for any existance of whatever it is they’re looking for, and you’re guilty? Or do you have to have so much over a certain threshold? I have to imagine that at least part of it could be because of the way other things one might take interact with each other causing a false positive. Now Raffy could be guilty as sin, and lying out his ass – I suppose only he will ever know for sure. But like I said above, my gut feeling is that he didn’t do what Giambi & Canseco (and likely McGuire, it seems) did, which is inject themselves with steroids. But, the suspension is there. It exists, so something has to have happened.
We’ll probably never really know the truth, but I really hope this doesn’t start too much of an uproar over his HOF credentials. There’s been a lot of talk about Raffy and the HOF, with a lot of national folks saying he’s definitely not a HOF player. Feh – he’s most definitely a HOF player. Most of the people who said he wasn’t are doing it on a “He hasn’t won any championships” kind of stance. His numbers are awesome. He should be there on the numbers. But I wonder how this allegation will weigh on writers’ minds when it comes time for Raffy to enter Cooperstown. Granted, if you go just on numbers, than Pete Rose should be there too, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
So now what? The Orioles are coming to town this weekend, so if the Rangers were planning on anything to mark Raffy’s 3000th hit, I have to imagine that’s been scrapped. I would have to imagine he’d get booed – who knows? The bottom line is that it’s really disappointing to have this come out, whether Raffy stood there on the mound injecting himself, or he has a false positive. Yet another thing I’d rather not have to try and explain to my daughter. Good thing she’s only 3.5 months old, and doesn’t grasp this stuff yet.
One other thing. In reading around online about this situation this afternoon, I ran across this quote by a Red Sox fan (soxfan@redsox.com, actually). He said..

What I can’t wait for is the first player to actually admit to having used steroids when he gets caught. Giambi came the closest, though he was never caught by the league and suspended for it. It’s always “an accident,” or something like that. Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the people who are crummy enough as human beings to cheat at their job are also the ones without the sense of responsibility to actually admit their mistakes.

While I don’t think Raffy is lying, it’s definitely an interesting take on this situation.
Here’s some more reading on the issue:
Jim Evans of Baseball Digest Daily
Baseball Musings (The comments area is where I got the soxfan quote from)
Lone Star Ball

This weekend, DirecTV was having a free preview weekend of the MLB Extra Innings Package. I was taking advantage of that in flipping around some channels, as my wife was working, and my baby was asleep. Stopped on the Mariners Orioles game, and it was right as Raffy was coming up to bat. It was some fortuitious timing on my part, as a few pitches after I landed on the channel, the pitch to Raffy landed in left field near the line for a double – Raffy’s 3000th career hit.
I was there in person that Mother’s Day a couple of years ago when Raffy hit his 500th home run. I rather liked the fact I managed to see his home run live, and not on Baseball Tonight or some other clip show. I saved it to DVD.
As much as Raffy didn’t fit the situation here when he left, I still very much like him, and hope he can stick around long enough to get to home run #600, which is probably the only real plateau left for him I think. As of right now, he needs 34 more home runs to achieve that. A couple of years ago, that was a no brainer, but as his production declines, I would think he’d need all the way through the end of the 2006 season, and possibly into early 2007 to achieve that. I’d be surprised if he’s still playing in 2007.
But tonight is about his achievement. He’s only the fourth player to have 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. He joins Eddie Murray, Willie Mays, & Hank Aaron in this club. Bonds could probably do it, he needs another 270 hits to get to 3,000 though.
Congratulations Raffy!