Saw this picture from spring training today. Somehow it just speaks to me about how the new regime will be a lot different than the old one.

Just seeing this picture gives one a nice feeling, eh?

As pitchers and catchers report on Saturday (which is about 25 minutes from when I’m writing this), I figure I better get my duff in gear and get various sections of the website ready for the upcoming season. The Rangers Official site posted a few pieces of information that I was waiting for them to post. The information they’ve posted tonight is:

• The uniform numbers of everyone who is coming to camp
• The TV schedule for 2007

Regarding the first one, I’ve gone and updated the uniform number history of my website with all the numbers they posted. Now the uniform numbers change daily once games get started. Or at least they did under camp Showalter. They would call 3-6 guys over from minor league camp daily, and give ’em really bizarre numbers in the 90’s usually. Those you can’t adjust until they happen, but the roster as it exists going into camp is now reflected in the uniform number history section of my site. Only minor blip to that is that they did not post the coach numbers. A few are holdovers from last year, but there’s several new guys I don’t know the numbers for – if you do, please let me know. These coaches are: Art Howe, Jose Vazquez, & Gary Pettis.
As for the TV schedule, I still need to get my 2007 schedule online and completed anyway, so I should have that finished shortly. The Rangers site has a story up about that. I’ll have more to say about the schedule once I get mine posted.

Anyone catch the new ad campaign by the Rangers? Just read about it on their site today. Here’s an image with one of the slogans…

“First base has nothing to do with kissing”. I find it fairly funny personally. I just look at that and wonder how many parents are going to be irritated that they will now have to answer questions like “What’s that mean, Mommy?”, or “If First base is about kissing, what are second, third, and home plate for Daddy?”. As a parent of a 22 month old, these things cross my mind a lot. :)
A far cry from the ad campaign of a few years back with the slogan “Your friendly neighborhood baseball team”. :)

The equipment truck leaves Arlington this morning to head to Surprise, Arizona! :)
Also, Yahoo Fantasy Baseball opens up again on February 15th, so I’ll be setting up leagues then.
UPDATE: There’s a story up on the official Rangers site with the annual picture of the truck sitting at the loading dock at The Ballpark in Arlington before it heads out to Arizona. Check it out if you’d like to read something else other than Anna Nicole Smith stories this morning.

For my regular site visitors, I intend on doing the fantasy leagues I’ve done the last several years.
I checked this afternoon, and they haven’t announced the start date yet registration – once they do announce that, I’ll get something together for the site and announce it.
Thanks for visiting!

While I don’t have much to say about Sosa (yet), I wwant to take a minute to point out Jamey Newberg’s latest update. Now I know anyone who reads my site will be checking out Jamey’s stuff (as well you should), but he has some non histrionic things to say about Sosa’s possibly return to the Rangers this spring.
He raises an interesting point. A lot of the hysteria I’ve seen has been of the ilk of “He’ll take away at bats from Botts, Cruz, etc”. I love his response:

So from that standpoint, giving playing time to Sosa might cost Victor Diaz and Marlon Byrd some at-bats, but there have historically been two or three outfielders on the Rangers’ non-roster invite list each spring, and there were none on the list announced by the organization last week: no Adrian Brown’s or Adam Hyzdu’s or Chad Allen’s or Jason Conti’s or Andres Torres’s or other non-roster 4-A’s this year.

Rather enjoyed reading this one – has a bit of a more grounded response to the dance we’re doing with Sosa than some other online writers I’ve seen. Including some of the pro writers I’ve seen, too.

In an idea that I admit I completely ripped off from the USS Mariner Site, I went through my attendance history page, and entered the data into Excel. I produced a graph that shows how the attendance records and the winning percentage go over time. I went from 1972-2006. I do have the records from the Washington Senators, years, but I did not include them.
Whenever we hear from the Rangers that there’s too many empty seats, someone will almost invariably follow that up with a statement saying “Well, if you win, people will come”. Yes, that’s true, but it’s also true this is Cowboy land. Some people are loathe to deal with the Rangers. Newy Scruggs over at NBC5 for one. You can almost see the pain on his face when he has to talk baseball. But that’s a rant for another time. I decided to look at the numbers and see how this all breaks down. Take a look below. I have a few larger size images for you to check out besides this thumbnail here. You can also download my Excel spreadsheet if you’re so inclined to look at it that way. I’d be curious to see what you think of this – please leave some comments below. Thanks.

[ Full Size Image | 800×600 | Excel Spreadsheet ]

I work at a game company that has to deal with large bandwidth usages at time on our web servers. So I’ve always been curious what the back end of the mlb.com website is like. They do a virtual boatload of bandwidth, and I’ve been following the official sites for awhile now. I started this website in December of 1998, and have been with mlb.com since before they centralized all the websites under one banner. Used to be each team “rolled it’s own”, and it was haphazard. Heck, I remember when they didn’t own mlb.com, and you had to enter majorleaguebaseball.com (which still works).
Anyway, as they’ve grown over the years, their bandwidth has jumped, with more archives, video streams, etc, etc. So it was with some interest that I ran across this article tonight which talks a bit about the back end of the mlb.com website. It’s not as in depth as I would have liked, but it is an interesting read if you like baseball and are into web servers. This is my favorite quote from the article:

“After the third out in an inning, everyone goes away, then we have 60 seconds for commercials,” Nelson says. “God forbid they pinch-hit at the top of the next inning. Then half a million people request the same JPEG within a 10-second span. You go from zero to 600 miles per hour really fast.”

I don’t know how many of you regularly read the site “The Business of Baseball”, but they post some great stories over there. There was one posted this evening which I found rather fascinating. It’s about television territories and how it affects expansion & relocation. You always hear some teams whining (Angelos & Orioles, the Giants) about their territories. This article goes into that a bit in detail.
They also have a map which shows where each team’s rights go. If I’m reading that map right, the Rangers own rights into New Mexico? That seems a bit far away. Check it out, it’s a good read.