No surprises at all in the arbitration department. We offered it to Vicente Padilla, and did NOT to Rod Barajas or Eric Young. I would have been stunned if EY came back, and the same with Barajas, and especially after his botched contract signing up in Toronto.
On another note, the A’s did offer it to Barry Zito, which is probably just a formality so the A’s can get an extra pick. Assuming we sign Zito (big if), I’d surrender our draft pick for that.
Also, not that this would affect us in any way, but I noticed that the Padres offered salary arbitration to Chan Ho Park. He’s been in the majors for some time now – what the heck does he still get salary arbitration for? I would have thought he was past that by now.

Scott Miller over at CBS Sportsline really torched Jon Daniels for being so inactive this off season. I’m not sure if it’s worthy of as many words as Miller wrote. Take out all the irrelevant fluff in the article and it’d be about half the length. And it boils down to him not liking us not doing much.
While it is a bit of a eyebrow raiser that we haven’t done much, I’m not terribly concerned. I like the quote of Daniels saying that he doesn’t want to sign someone just to have an announcement. Some of the more “baseball worthy” quotes from the article:

The Rangers right now are like that guy in Airplane who periodically observes things like, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking” and “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.”
Things keep going like this, the Texas Rangers’ 2007 lineup will consist of a cardboard cutout of Nolan Ryan, a Jeff Burroughs bobble-head and a pair of Alex Rodriguez’s sweaty old spikes. Oh, yes, and Michael Young at shortstop.
In Texas, meanwhile, the Rangers right now would get out-shopped by Charlie Brown for a Christmas tree.
Texas’ Alumni Club is growing more rapidly than Notre Dame’s vaunted Subway Alums, and the Rangers aren’t even BCS-eligible.

I’ve liked Miller for awhile, and while this one article won’t change my opinion there, I have to say it’s got some really dumb writing in there as evidenced by the quotes I’ve picked out above.
If you want to read the entire piece, you can do so here.

Adam over at lonestar ball thinks so – he linked to a story at ESPN (which is behind their pay area, darn it), saying this:
I’m hearing that [the Rangers] are closing in on a deal to re-sign Vicente Padilla.
Be nice to see us resign one of our own free agents. :) Vicente Padilla Pidente is probably the best option for us to sign a veteran starting pitcher. Especially one that doesn’t seem fazed by our ballpark. Resigning him would allow Josh Lewin to talk about he “random plunking of a batter” he used to talk about with Chan Ho all the time.
I can’t seriously see Zito coming here, and I don’t want Schmidt (injury problem), and Eaton wasn’t a realistic option, I thought. My guess as to what it will take? Four years, $36-$40 million. Or three with a easily vestable option fourth.

The biggest of the last few days came tonight while I was at church at my discipleship class. Frank Catalanotto has returned to the Rangers pending a physical. The deal is for three years, $13 million (similar money that DeRosa got from the Cubs). The Rangers hold a team option fourth year. This is probably a hedge against GMJ going elsewhere, which unfortunately looks pretty likely. Most Ranger fans were sorry to see Little Cat go, I know my wife was. I enjoyed him myself during his time here, so that will be a nice return. So we still do have something from the Juan Gonzalez trade! (Granted, its’ via free agency, but still… :) )
A few days back, we signed Miguel Ojeda to a contract for 2007, virtually assuring that Rod Barajas will not be back. I didn’t see enough of Ojeda to have any real comments on him, but it’s probably the signing we had to make for a backup (although I admit I was hoping they’d sign Gregg Zaun).
The Texas Rangers also signed RHP Franklyn German and INF Ramon Vazquez to minor league contracts with invites to spring training. I admittedly do not know much about these two. There was more on them in a recent Newberg report.
We also signed LHP Matt Merricks and INF David Matranga to minor league contracts. I know a little about Matranga, having driven down to Round Rock a few times and seeing him play there for the Express. Neither of these strike me as much else besides roster filler. If they do get to the bigs, I can’t imagine it will be for much more than a cup of coffee.
There was also word this past week that Jon Daniels is hopeful that we can resign Vicente Padilla. I wonder if the change in managers will make a difference in his surly behavior. Maybe not, but as long as he pitches well, I guess it doesn’t really matter, eh?

The Official Rangers site does not have this up yet, but I decided to scan in the 2007 promotions schedule that came in the group info flyer I got in the mail earlier this week. It’s huge, so I’m not going to inline the image here. Click on this link, and you’ll get it.
https://www.rangerfans.com/images/2007promotions.jpg
There’s a couple more scheduled concerts here, including another appearance by Mercy Me. There is another local Christian band I’d like to see out there, The Afters. Anyway, check out the promotions.

I do my news browsing via an RSS feed reader (Google Reader specifically). This has the advantage of putting all my stuff in one place, makes things a lit more readable. It also has the advantage of sometimes seeing things that were removed. You see, not everyone properly updates their RSS xml file all the time, and a story gets removed from the website, it’s not always immediately removed from the rss feed.
Such is the case with mlbtraderumors, who posted a story earlier this evening about the Rangers and Matsuzaka. The story has since been removed, but it was still in the rss feed. This is what it said:

Early reports appear to indicate that the Rangers may have submitted the highest bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka. An emailer just wrote in to tell me that 1310 Sports Radio in Dallas reported that Texas posted the highest bid, estimated to be around $25MM. In addition, I’m hearing that Bruce Levine of ESPN 1000 reported that the Cubs did not win the bidding. We’ll see if we can get a few more sources to confirm this preliminary info.

Did anyone here who listens to the Ticket hear that story? Would like to know if that was really said on the Ticket or not.

Barry Zito? Barry Zito? I knew Ron Washington might change the perception of free agents wanting to come here, but yikes. This was a surprise when it popped up in my RSS reader this afternoon.
Zito told Washington on Tuesday that the Rangers would be among the teams he would consider signing with this offseason.
Somehow given our history with things like this, you have to wonder if we wouldn’t be used to drive up the price for some other team. But then I never thought we’d sign Arod, either. :)
If he did sign here, he would be the first non spring training player to wear #75 in Rangers history. :)

In the press conference this afternoon, Ron Washington said that the makeup of the coaching staff was not set, and they had not discussed specifics. I find that a little hard to believe. Especially after reading this article on the Phillies site. It says that the Rangers have received permission from the Phillies to interview former Ranger coach and A’s/Mets manager Art Howe to be Washington’s bench coach. The article seems to implu we only have permission for 24 hours to do this, so if this is going to happen, it’ll happen quickly, I would imagine.
There’s several open managerial slots, and Wakamatsu will probably be in on several of them. Even if he doesn’t get one of them, it might have been odd to have Wak as the bench coach for the guy who beat him out. I’m sure Wak would be professional about it, but still, you have to think it would be a sticky situation. Hopefully Wak can land one of the open managerial slots.

Kip Wells has filed for free agency today. I don’t think he’ll be back – I don’t see a groundswell of support for the team to retain his services.
If he comes back at all, it probably will be a non roster invite in the spring at best.

Well, the search is over. We’ve been hearing for the last few days that the announcement on who to hire would come early in the week. That early is very early. According to TR Sullivan, the decision has been made, and Ron Washington, the former coach of the Oakland A’s will be named the manager of the Rangers tomorrow. Ron beats out favorite Don Wakamatsu, who all along I figure most people expected to be named, and former Ranger potential manager Trey Hillman.
For Washington to beat out Wak is a big achievement, as I got the feeling that the interviews were a formality that it was Wak’s job. I don’t know much about Washington, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot shortly about it.
UPDATE Nov 6 @ 1AM: There’s a good article over at the San Francisco Chronicle about Ron’s hiring. Includes a few quotes from Ron. The article also says it is a two year deal for Washington, but gives no further details than that. They also believe that Wakamatsu would be a candidate for the A’s job. Check out the article here.
UPDATE Nov 6 @ 2:15PM: There’s stories all over the place today about the hiring. The Rangers are having a press conference to introduce Mr. Washington at 5:30PM today. Here is the official release from the Rangers about the hiring.