It’s been previously stated that the local Rangers coverage is carrying five games this year. That news is now a week or so old. However, today MLB Network published their broadcast schedule of games for spring training. They’re running several games, but not all of them are live. A decent amount are live, but not all of them. The first thing I did was check the Rangers appearances.
They are listed as being on the schedule three times. March 14th, March 27th, and April 1st. Two of these three dates are already on the local TV broadcast schedule. The third (April 1st) was not. However, April 1st is the one game of the three that isn’t live. According to the existing schedule, that game will be played at 1PM Central Time. The MLBN schedule says it will air at 4PM local time. If you can avoid the score until the game comes on MLBN, it is an additional game you can check out.

Another day, another few random comments from me about recent stories:
Josh Hamilton Quits Again: There was a story in the DMN on Monday about Josh giving up chewing tobacco at the request of his kids. I can’t say I have a problem with that. The stuff is fairly disgusting, IMO. I’ve become a big fan of his. I have started passing his book around my church so people will know his story. Especially those that aren’t big baseball fans. Might pull some of ’em in. :) Anyway, this line from the article was particularly effective at getting the point across:

“You know it’s bad when your 3-year-old holds up a water bottle, and asks if daddy spit in this before she drinks out of it,” said Hamilton, referring to his daughter Sierra. “That’s when you know it’s a problem.”

What’s more encouraging about that is Josh said he broke the habit by asking the elders of his church to lay hands on him and pray. That’s great that he came to God to rid himself of a vice like that. God is Good!
Justin Smoak: You know, even if you do no research at all on the Rangers’ minor leagues, you can’t help but pick up on the guys who are going to be a big deal. By osmosis. Just being in the same town as Jamey Newberg, you just know the guys to watch out for even if you never saw or heard or read anything about them. That’s the feeling I get about Smoak from Jamey. DMN had an article about him today. It had some seriously high praise for him, saying:

Special adviser Mel Didier, who has been in baseball more than 50 years, said Smoak is a more complete switch-hitter than Mickey Mantle and Mark Teixeira were at this stage.

Wow.
Michael Young Fourth: The intrasquad games played on Monday contained a surprise. Michael Young batting fourth. It’s an interesting proposition, and something that I’ve always wondered about. When I was young and growing up, the thinking was that you put your best hitter fourth. That’s why it’s called “cleanup”. The idea is that the first three guys would be on the bases, and the fourth, the guy MOST LIKELY to drive them in was the cleanup batter. Generally that’s a big home run guy (for me it was Mike Schmidt), or at least it used to be. Generally fourth is still a power guy, but the cleanup slot has lost its prestige to the third slot. Somewhere along the line, it became the way things are done to put your best hitter third. Which is where Michael Young has been a lot the last few years. But he was fourth here. Granted, it’s the first spring intrasquad game, so it’s not a major deal here, but it’s an intriguing proposition. With Bradley gone, we do need protection for Hamilton, I’ll be curious to see if Michael young doesn’t end up behind Hamilton once the real games get started.
Vernon Wells: Joey M over at BBtiA has a nice article about what might have happened had Vernon Wells decided to sign here a couple of years ago when he was a free agent. At the time it was WIDELY expected he would, being a local boy, and a friend of Michael Young’s, but he stayed in Toronto. If he had signed here, I’d say we probably wouldn’t have Josh Hamilton at this point.
Spring Video: The Ft Worth Star Telegram Baseball Blog (“Foul Territory“) has been posting a lot of cool video of batting practice, impromptu interviews and the like. I’m not going to list them all, but there’s some good stuff there. If you’re reading this, then you probably know about it already, but just in case you didn’t.. There you go.
Nelson Cruz: A lot of fans (myself included) seem to think that Cruz may have finally broken the AAAA label he had, and had the lightbulb go off. One hopes that it will stick with him. Rangers history is littered with guys who have great August and Septembers, but when it comes time for next season, stink up the joint. Cruz hit a grand slam in the intrasquad opener, which is a good sign, and is just one hit obviously, but it’s a nice “oh please let that be real” moment. :)
Mailbag Stuff: The mailbag segment with TR Sullivan and the official site is back. While the usual moronic questions of “trade x for y” (without any thought given to the question) are at a minimum, I do have to say I was a bit disturbed by the thought that mlb.com thought it wasn’t needed and had actually taken it away. With Even Grant’s newsletter gone now, this is the only regular one like that Yeah, Jamey has started doing that, but his is less frequent. I wonder if the FTST will start doing this.
Two days to go until the first game on the radio! :)

In addition to the Anna Benson signing news, the Rangers also released their 2009 TV schedule. It’s available as a pdf download from the Rangers site (not the usual webpage story). You can grab it here. I’ve decided to comment on some of the text contained within the press release.
First off, they say “the majority of” Rangers games will be broadcast in HD this season. As this will be my first full season with an HDTV, I’m interested in that. I am curious to see what “majority of” means, as that could mean anywhere from 82-161 games. We shall see. They also have not announced what games are HD yet.

Texas Rangers local television rights holder FOX Sports Southwest today announced the team’s 2009 TV schedule. The 158-game local package includes an all-time high 133 games on FOX Sports Southwest, 24 over-the-air telecasts on KDFI My 27 in Dallas-Fort Worth

First off, the schedule says 158 game local package. The remaining four games are scheduled to be broadcast. One of them is on ESPN (May 3), and the other three are Saturday afternoon Fox National games (May 16, May 23, & Aug 8). So all 162 games are going to be on this year.
However, If I was viewing Rangers games on JUST rabbit ears (no cable or satellite), I’d be pissed at this. Of the 162, only 28 are on free over the air TV (24 on Ch 27, and 4 on Ch 4). Most of those are bunched towards the front end of the season, too. If you go look at my site’s schedule page, you’ll see the breakdown. Of those 28 over the air games, 7 are in April, 8 are in May, 7 are in June, zero in July, 1 in August, and 5 in Sep/Oct. It’s pretty stacked towards the early part of the season. On top of that, after May 26th, every single free over the air game is a Saturday. While this doesn’t affect me, if you’re an older viewer who does rely only on rabbit years, you’re moving to radio mostly, because you’ve just had a major dent put in your viewing.

Josh Lewin begins his eighth season as the television voice of the Rangers. He’ll be joined by former Rangers player and general manager Tom Grieve, who is back for his 15th season as analyst. Jim Knox returns for his 10th season as roving reporter on home games.

Tom Grieve is quite good. Lewin I’ve kind of cooled on lately. While I don’t actively dislike him like some of the other local fans do, I was kind of hoping Josh would take the San Diego job, and let Vic get promoted (although his new gig with MLB Network trumps this). Unfortunately, we are getting a 10th anniversary of Jim Knox. Ugh. I really really wish we wouldn’t have dumped Craig Miller and John Rhadigan for Knox. This means another season of “It’s the second inning, we go to Jim Knox”, or translated “It’s the second inning, reach for the Tivo skip while we talk to people in the Fox Box we couldn’t care any less about”.

John Rhadigan and Dana Larson host RANGERS LIVE with Ric Renner and Emily Jones reporting. RANGERS LIVE home game shows once again will originate from a set on the left field concourse level at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, giving fans attending games an opportunity to watch the live broadcasts in person.

Ric Renner is another guy that can go. He’s too hyper annoying, and most of the people he interviews have this look of “Can we please get someone else?” Rhadigan, Larson, & Jones are all fine. Renner is another use of the TiVo skip button. I do wonder about the post game show, though. They had Mark McLemore on for a lot of those. I saw him turn up as an in studio analyst with MLB Network this past week. I wonder if that’s his new gig.
The press release also talks about the ancillary shows they will be having again this season, including “Lunch with the Rangers”, “Rangers Live” (pre & post game), and “Rangers Insider”. In addition, there will be Rangers discussions on the Fox Sports shows “In My Own Words”, “Spotlight”, & “Under the Lights”.
Finally, if you’re not a Metroplex viewer, this news might be of interest to you:

Games on FOX Sports Southwest will be shown on cable and satellite television systems in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and parts of New Mexico. FOX Sports Southwest also has created a Rangers broadcast syndication network to distribute the 25 over-the-air games carried in Dallas-Fort Worth to television stations in the team’s outer markets. Participating affiliates will be announced later.

Make sure and check out the entire press release here (pdf download).

It was announced on Saturday that the Rangers have signed Kris Benson to a minor league contract with an invite to spring training. This is pretty much a zero move. I can’t imagine this amounting to much of anything. This just feels like the Kip Wells move in 2006. Meh.
The only realy good thing about having Kris Benson on the team would be his wife Anna. See below. The only downside to THAT is that they’d send Jim Knox over to interview her, and as much as I’d want to see Anna Benson on TV, I’d prefer Jim Knox not be there, too.

I’ve decided that I’m going to try and shamelessly steal an idea that Joey over at BBTia does which is offer my thoughts on the stories of the day. I probably won’t be able to do it as regularly as him, mostly because i don’t always have time in the morning to peruse the stories, digest it and spit it out, I have stuff to deal with at work. hahaha. :) Anyway, here’s what I see today.
Minor Injuries: It seems that Brandon Boggs and Marlon Byrd are dealing with some minor injuries. Boggs has an inflamed right shoulder (and got an MRI), and Byrd is recovering from a knee surgery. Byrd has apparently declared himself 75% healed, and there’s not a ton on Boggs. In the various scenarios we’ve been hearing, I haven’t heard much about Boggs. He was a nice story in 2008, but barring injuries to our projected front line guys, I don’t see Boggs cracking the lineup much this year – especially if Andruw Jones is on the roster.
Ben Sheets: Given Sheets didn’t sign with the Rangers and had surgery, he probably thinks he can make a major play with a team contending. I was hoping we’d do the sign for a two year contract with year 1 being next to nothing. Oh well.
Nelson Cruz: There was a nice article I read in the DMN about Nelson Cruz and his turnaround last year. Apparently the fact that no other club claimed him when the Rangers released him was the turning point. If he continues that into 2009, I think it pretty much seals it for Brandon Boggs as I theorized above.
Number 21: Jarrod Saltamacchia has switched to #21, voluntarily giving up 25 for Andruw Jones. I covered this last week when I updated my uniform number history section of the website with all the spring moves. Anyway, some notes from the DMN say that it was done out of respect for Andruw. Uniform numbers are a big thing with me, so I like to make note of things like this.
Joaquin Arias: The same set of notes talk about Joquin Arias and playing short again in workouts so far. The last remnant of the Alex Rodriguez trade (either direct or indirect) is probably never going to make it with the Rangers, I would imagine. With Elvis Andrus all but being handed the SS job, and Michael Young going to third, I can’t see where Arias fits anymore.
Frank Catalanotto: Here’s another guy who I think would be off the club if his contract wasn’t what it is. He seems to have been relegated to almost 25th man; we barely saw him last year. This article talks about his playing for Italy in the World Baseball Classic. It’s theorized he will probably see more action there then he will for the Rangers. Shame, as I really liked the guy, but when he came back, he “not hit” himself into the position he’s in. The Rangers website talks about this too, also including Travis Metcalf in this category of “just about forgotten players”.
Rudy Jaramillo & Steroids: OK, I’m breaking my steroids rule after only a couple of days, but not for the usual reason. This was an angle I had thought about a lot. With all the talk of Ranger players and steroids, did it diminsh the reputation of Rudy Jaramillo at all? He’s generally considered the best hitting coach in baseball, and if the Rangers were as roided up as has been theorized, perhaps Rudy wasn’t that great after all? I’d like to think that’s not the case, and this article by Jim Reeves addresses this issue. It’s a good read. Rudy’s also the last link back to the Johnny Oates era (well, OK Jerry Narron is also here in an advisory capacity), and I kind of like he’s still around – even if just for that reason.
Less than a week now till the first game of spring training.
Oh, and finally, thanks to Adam Stellar over at “Ranger Rumors” for naming me a “Hot Rangers Fan“. It was kind of odd to see that pop up. Not sure what I did to deserve that, but thank you. :)

So we’ve gotten going with pitchers and catchers. That opened on Saturday.
In a move that surprised me, Ron Washington has effectively named his starting rotation. Now. Before position players are supposed to report. If you had a rotation slated to include Cy Young, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Steve Carlton, and a fifth of Roger Clemens, it seems odd to name your starting rotation this early. Especially when the names are Millwood, Padilla, Feldman, Harrson, & McCarthy.
Millwood & Padilla probably are both good #3 guys, but I’m not sure if either is #2 material, definitely not #1. Scott Feldman has done well for us lately, but I don’t think that’s truly a confident fan choice. Matt Harrison also has done well, but has little under his belt long term, and McCarthy? Can we have John Danks back?
It just seems odd to me to declare these guys the starting five. Obviously, anything can change between now and the start. It probably will, but I don’t understand the mindset of having things declared this early. I saw some line about having our catchers get in sync with the starters. That seems like a pile of bunk, to be honest.
There’s a boatload of other guys in camp that fall under the category of “rotation competition”. Does anyone really believe these are the five we’re going to battle with at the start of the season? I don’t.

I’m pretty sure we’re going to be hearing a ton of “Elvis has left the building” jokes this season. I’m sure I’ll make some of them, but I’ll try and space them out. So I thought I’d get the first one out of the way on the opening of Spring Training.

If you’re reading this site, you know that Spring Training officially opened today. Pitchers & catchers had their formal reporting day yesterday, and today was the first day of workouts. A good deal of the position players are in camp as well, which is no real surprise. But it’s nice to read reports on actual game play. Not too long before games start, either.

We did however, make it into spring training after an offseason where we signed nobody to a major league contract from the free agent pool. Everyone we signed as a minor league deal, which doesn’t count against the 40. The problem with THAT is if there’s a ton of them who play well enough to get roster spots, we’re going to have to get rid of some people to make that move, but we’ll see how it plays out.

First game is Feb 25th, but the first “real” game is Feb 26th, and it’s on the radio. This is good.

The Rangers announced this afternoon that our Spring Training broadcast schedule will be far greater than at any point in the past. Some highlights:

• Five games on TV! – In the past, we’d get generally two, and all in the last week. This time most of them are at the end of spring training, but there’s one early. The five dates are Mar 7 (White Sox), Mar 22 (Dodgers), Mar 25 (DBacks), Mar 27 (Brewers), & Apr 4 (Royals). The last one is the spring finale, and is in Arlington.
• 18 games on the radio! – This was previously announced when the new radio deal with 105.3 FM was announced, but it’s nice to see a lot more of them. You can check out my schedule page for spring training to see what is what there.
• MLB.com Gameday Audio – It was said that there will be eight (presumably other) games that will be webcast on Gameday Audio. I’m hoping it uses the Rangers guys, and not just the general MLB guys. The latter don’t make for a good broadcast, I think, since they spend most of their time talking about everything else except the teams on the field. The press release refers to it as “Texas Rangers Gameday Audio”. That could just be markting crap, and it’s the MLB guys, but I’m hopeful those will be actually listenable. The press release does NOT, however say which eight games. They only mention the first one, which is March 10th. If anyone knows the dates of the other seven, please pass them along to me. Thanks.

In addition, I went through my schedule for the regular season and updated game times. The schedule published a month or so ago had about 20 games with TBD as the gametime. That’s been rectified for all but one game, so I’ve gone ahead and updated my schedule with the proper times. The official press release talks about three other games that have had their times changed, I picked up those, too.
Saturday, June 20 at San Francisco: TBD to 8:05 p.m. CT
Sunday, August 16 vs. Boston: 7:05 to 1:05 p.m. CT
Friday, August 21 at Tampa Bay: 6:08 to 6:38 p.m. CT

The Rangers continue their march to getting to camp without signing a single player to a major league contract from the free agent pool this offseason. A couple more signings.
Yesterday, the Rangers signed Jason Jennings to a minor league contract with an invite to spring training. Last year was clearly a disaster for the Mesquite TX native. He even said so in the remarks about the contract for 2009. This really is not a big deal. He’d have to pitch his way onto the roster. Doesn’t cost us much at all – if he makes the roster, he gets $800,000 plus various incentives totaling $1.4 million based on innings pitched (from 110 through 200). Only $15,000 of the contract is guaranteed, so this is no brainer, really.
Today, the Rangers signed Brendan Donnelly to a minor league contract. Apparently if he makes the club, he’ll get $950,000 and can request his release if he’s not in the majors between March 27 and April 27th. He’s coming off of Tommy John surgery in 2007 for his right elbow. This would be about the time guys bounce back, so we’ll see. Ranger fans should remember him (and his goggles) from his time with the Anaheim Angels.
Finally, while he hasn’t signed, there’s a lot of talk that the Rangers are about to sign Andrew Jones to a minor league deal. He’s getting a gazillion dollars from the Dodgers in money and deferred money to go away, so he’s a zero risk player – we don’t need to pay him anything at all, really. Rudy Jaramillo has a habit of working gold with players, and until he dropped off the face of the Earth two years ago offensively, he was seriously top dog player. I don’t particularly think outfield is a place we need to pick up players – we have an overflow as it is, and a couple really good guys in the system. Unless Rudy fixes him in spring, and he hits 50 HR and 145 RBI again, I’m not particularly sure I see the need. We’ll see.
Oh, and I haven’t said anything about Ben Sheets at all. He’s hurt. Nobody signed him. Now we know why. I would like to see the Rangers sign him to a two year contract now with the first year paying him next to nothing, and the next year be somewhat realistic. Probably won’t happen, though.

The Rangers made it official today, bringing Eddie Guardado back for the 2009 season. It’s a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. I’m pretty sure he’ll be in the pen when the season starts. I have no facts there – just a gut feeling.
I wrote about why I thought it was a good (if not exciting) move a couple of days ago, so I won’t repeat that. I will say this, though. It makes the Rangers one of just two teams to not sign a single player to a major league contract this offseason.