Caught this little tidbit in this morning’s newsletter from Jamey Newberg:
Detroit manager Jim Leyland has invited Ron Washington to coach third base in this summer’s All-Star Game. Washington has accepted.
That was a very nice thing to read – be nice to see our guy out there like that in San Francisco in July.
Earlier this spring, I posted the radio and TV schedule for the spring, thanks to Victor Rojas. This morning I went through the remaining schedule, and put together a “broadcast” schedule of games you can listen to, but this time I included games that are available on MLB.com’s Gameday Audio package.
Now MLB doesn’t need the help in pushing their products – these guys are masters of ramming advertising down your throat, but the Gameday Audio package is one that I feel needs to have some light shed on it. Mostly because they’re too busy trying to get you to buy MLB.TV – which is nice, but isn’t priced to a point where I think the casual fan will up and buy it. Gameday Audio is. It’s just $15 for the entire season, and you get home and away (and sometimes Spanish) radio feeds for all games. MLB.TV as well as the Extra Innings packages give you home only. Or worse, if you want Phillies games, you can’t get Phillies home coverage because Comcast in Philly continually gives the big ol’ middle finger to satellite, and won’t let them carry the signal. The audio package has none of that garbage. You get all the teams, both home and away all season, plus an archive of games played, too. It’s a good deal, especially if you have to work a lot when games are on, and have access to a computer. Check it out over at the MLB.com website.
Anyway, I went through the various team schedules, and put this together. Obviously the KRLD games are also on MLB.com, but the ones noted as “MLB.com” are only available in the Metroplex via mlb’s website.
Thu Mar 08 – A’s – MLB.com
Sat Mar 10 – @Giants – KRLD
Mon Mar 11 – Angels – KRLD
Tue Mar 12 – Brewers – MLB.com
Wed Mar 14 – Padres – MLB.com
Fri Mar 16 – Padres – MLB.com
Sat Mar 17 – @Mariners – KRLD
Sat Mar 18 – Rockies – KRLD
Mon Mar 20 – Giants – MLB.com
Thu Mar 22 – Angels – MLB.com
Fri Mar 23 – Brewers – KRLD
Sat Mar 24 – A’s – KRLD (& FSN)
Mon Mar 26 – Mariners – KRLD (& FSN)
Tue Mar 27 – Padres – MLB.com
Wed Mar 28 – Mariners – MLB.com
Fri Mar 30 – Brewers – KRLD/KFLC
Sat Mar 31 – Brewers – KRLD/KFLC
There’s also these but I don’t know of any way to watch this in the Metroplex. On DirecTV, they have a package where you can get all the various “Fox Sports Net” channels from around the country, but they black out games during those times to protect regional markets.
Wed Mar 21 – Cubs – CSN TV in Chicago
Sun Mar 25 – White Sox – CSN TV in Chicago
It hasn’t been announced yet, but it appears that the extension for Michael Young is 5 years, 80 million. Add in the $4 million option for 2008 ($5 with incentives), and its an average of about $14 million a year.
A lot of dough yes, but it’s probably worth it for Young.
What will it take for Tex? 7 or 8 years at $20 million a year, I’d guess.
After much delay, my 2007 schedule is online. Managed to get it all done today while my daughter was taking a nap. :) You can check it out on my schedule page. It includes all the games, TV stations, and whatnot.
I also need to finish updating the 2006 schedule pages. From 1999-2005, I hand created all of my recap pages. In 2006, I moved over into Movable Type blogging software for that. The problem is doing them that way removed my changing the schedule page to account for the recap pages. The old way it was a piece of cake, the new way I kept forgetting to update the schedule page with the recap. So much so that I discovered at the end of the 2006 season that I wasn’t updating at all! So I got about halfway through updating that a few months ago, and never finished either. The fact that I let it slide like that twice, annoyed me. So I decided for 2007 I was going to do something automatic, and I finally today figured out how I can do that – wish I would have thought of it last spring. Anyway, once the games start happening, you’ll see the recaps listed on the page with the schedule again. That makes it a heck of a lot easier for me to keep up to date. But I still need to finish off the 2006 season. I know a lot of people don’t read these old recaps of mine, but it annoys me personally that it’s unfinished like that.
UPDATE @ 9:10PM: I’m sure you were all waiting with baited breath. I finished the 2006 schedule and recaps tonight. That leaves the schedule totally up to date for the start of spring training games in a couple of weeks.
Saw this picture online today. w00t! First picture from Rangers camp 2007. No clue who is in the picture, but who cares? Pitchers and catchers report tomorrow (officially)!
I haven’t seen this published in any of the newspapers or on the Rangers site, so I emailed Victor Rojas and asked if the 2007 Spring Training radio dates had been decided upon. He wrote me back with a schedule for spring that included this info. Here are the dates that are being broadcast on radio, along with two listed TV dates.
Fri Mar 02 – Royals
Sat Mar 03 – Royals
Sun Mar 04 – Royals
Sat Mar 10 – Giants (Scottsdale)
Sun Mar 11 – Dodgers
Sat Mar 17 – Mariners (Peoria)
Sun Mar 18 – Rockies
Fri Mar 23 – Brewers
Sat Mar 24 – A’s – Also on FSN
Mon Mar 26 – Mariners – Also on FSN
Fri Mar 30 – Brewers (Frisco)
Sat Mar 31 – Brewers (Arlington)
Almost all of these are in Surprise. Only a couple are not, and those cities are noted above. Thanks to Vic for the info.
From the “throw a lot of crap against the wall and see what sticks department” comes the news that the Rangers have signed home run specialist Bruce Chen to a minor league contract for 2007. He also got an invite to spring training.
Is anyone as excited about this move as me? He had a somewhat respectable season in 2005, but he’s been the definition of journeyman. Since he broke in, he’s been with:
Atlanta (1998-2000)
Philadelphia (2000-2001)
NY Mets (2001-2002)
Montreal (2002)
Cincinnati (2002)
Houston (2003)
Boston (2003)
Baltimore (2004-2006)
And now Texas
All I can say about this is given the sheer volume of candidates for the fifth starter position, if Chen (or anyone else for that matter) makes the club, then he will have earned it, given the sheer number of people going for the same thing around him.
Well, Sammy Sosa officially signed with the Rangers today. $500,000 minor league deal with a boatload of (as of yet) unspecified incentives. Be nice if he could be the old Sosa, but recent history says he won’t be, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll give Jason Botts a chance. :)
Press conference at 1PM tomorrow. Ought to be interesting.
SI.com has just posted a rating of all 30 teams based on their off season activity. The Rangers got a B+ from them. Here’s what they had to say:
A winter that started with Carlos Lee bolting cross-state and Matthews going west (for $100 million and $50 million, respectively) steadily grew much more promising. Eric Gagne potentially gives them one of the best back-end bullpen duos. Frank Catalanotto is underrated. Kenny Lofton is still going pretty strong after all these years. Vicente Padilla showed he can win in a hitters’ park and Brandon McCarthy is a better bet than John Danks in that he’s major-league ready. Nice comeback. Grade: B+.
You can check out the full report on all 30 teams here.
