Overnight a few articles have come out saying what the Rangers have apparently offered Delgado.
This wire story says that it’s 4 years, and $40 million.
This New York Times Article last evening said it was 3 years and $39 million, but later in the evening changed it to 4 years and $48 million.
Don’t really know what to believe, although all the reports seem to indicate that we’ve offered 4 years, which is what he’s wanted. I suppose we’ll find out for sure tomorrow, which is according to several reports when he’ll decide on the Rangers.

Apparently, the Carlos Delgado meeting went pretty well with our offer being surprising to Delgado and his agent. There’s apparently going to be another meeting of some sort tomorrow, and there’s a chance Delgado will decide on the Rangers’ offer on Sunday.
More here, here, and here.

This morning comes the (pretty much expected) news that Texas Rangers GM John Hart and Manager Buck Showalter have been given contract extensions. Can’t say I’m surprised by either move.
The former I’m not terribly sold on, I still think that Grady Fuson would have been a better GM than John Hart is. Hart still seems to not turn up for bad news, he seems (to my eyes) to only want to talk about good news. On the other hand, I don’t view him with the vitriol that some do (Randy Galloway for example). I doubt any GM is out to tank the team, but I just would have preferred Grady Fuson. Hart’s contract is for two years renewable annually. That’s what the news stories say. We’ll see if it really is just two years, and isn’t some sort of “open ended” thing due to the verbiage of “annually”.
Buck Showalter on the other hand I was a bit more intersted in seeing an extension on. I rather like him, and was glad to see we’ve got him on board for awhile. His new extension (three years) locks him to the Rangers through the 2009 season (with a club option for 2010). The 2005 season is the third of the original four year contract that Showalter received. If you believe the stories, Showalter was the behind the scenes power that forced Fuson out and kept Hart as GM, as it gives Buck a GM that’s easier to his own whims and decisions. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s obvious Showalter is a powerful person. I’ve spoken with him a few times, and as a fan, he always seems (to my eyes) to go out of his way to make sure the fans are included, thought of – something that not many baseball men do anymore. I like that.
So I give the moves a thumbs up, but not all the way up because of the extension (and the open ended nature of it) to Hart. You can read more details on this over at the Rangers website here.

The Carlos Delgado watch continues. The problem is I don’t know what to believe about it. First we got fed a dose of “We can’t sign Carlos without trading Soriano”. I don’t buy that for a minute, because moving Arod was supposed to create room for stuff like this. Plus a lot of old contracts (Van Poppel, Palmeiro, Gonzalez, etc) were off the books. We had the space. OK, for the last several days, we’ve been reading quotes about “We can have both of them”. What I personally think happened there is that we couldn’t get enough back for Soriano, so it was decided to say “We can keep both now”.
But then in today’s local media we have differing opinions on Delgado. The Dallas Morning News has a story with the headline of “Rangers a step behind in the pursuit of Delgado“. The thrust of the article is that we’re coming to the dance late, other teams have talked to him twice, basically taking a defeatist attitude towards it. Then also in today’s Ft Worth Star Telegram, we get an article titled “Hicks ready to open up wallet to sign Delgado“. This article is all postive, saying that Hicks has that “glint in his eye”, and that he’s ready to do what it takes, and how it would all be good for our Latin connection, which has been lacking the last several years.
So I don’t know what to believe about Delgado now. Are we lacking as the DMN says, or are things rosy like the FWST say? I suppose we’ll find out next week for sure.
Can we just start spring training, please? Thank you.

One of the nice surprises of 2004 (relief pitcher Carlos Almanzar) resigned with the Rangers today. He’s got a 1 year deal, and was the final player we had that was arbitration eligible.
That takes care of all of our roster concerns of this type. Now it’s on to Carlos Delgado, hopefully. :)

Former Atlanta Brave Mark DeRosa was signed to a 1 year minor league contract today with an invite to spring training. I assume he’ll have a chance to compete for the job that Eric Young had last year (although I don’t know if DeRosa played the OF at all).

Tuesday morning we locked up Gary Matthews Jr for the 2005 season with a 1 year deal, avoiding arbitration. It’s worth $1.1 Million.

Monday afternoon brings the news that Alfonso Soriano was signed to a 1 year contract, avoiding arbitration.

On Friday afternoon, Richard Hidalgo meets the press in Arlington. I didn’t personally see any of the coverage, but I saw an article about it on the Texas Rangers site. However, did anyone notice that the picture they chose for Richard for the article was horrible? The funny thing is the picture is really bad, he looks mad, and the caption is “I am really happy to be here”.

On Saturday afternoon, the Rangers signed Rod Barajas to a 1 year deal, avoiding arbitration. He got a $1.85 Million dollar deal, which seems a bit high, considering his highest salary previous to this was $300,000. Still, he did good for us last year, and if he can keep it up in 2005 it should be a decent signing.

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