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MLB Front Office Manager & Rangers

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2K Sports is deciding to use their official MLB license to produce another game beyond the annual “regular game” (this year being MLB 2K9). They’ve also had a pretty good side game called “The Bigs“, as well as a downloadable game for the Xbox 360 called “MLB Stickball“. However, coming in a week or two is a new one, called “MLB Front Office Manager“.
If you’re familiar with the game that EA put out called NFL Head Coach, you have an idea of what this is about. I know there’s a group of people here who might be interested in this game due to the annual folks who play the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league. This is a “Run every stinking little detail about your team” type of game. It’s not a true “play the game” type of baseball game. This is not out yet, so I can’t do a review on it, but I’ve always loved the game “Baseball Mogul” for years, and this seems like a snazzy version of that, so I’ll probably be into it.
The primary reason I’m doing this story now instead of when it comes out is something about the game that just popped up. As you’re probably aware, the Xbox 360 game has “Achievements” – little awards if you will that you get for doing things inside games. Every Xbox 360 has them. It’s a requirement. Anyway, the list of achievements for this game came out today, and the game has taken the mickey out of the Texas Rangers a bit. Some of the achivements are standard things like…

  • Complete an entire Amateur Draft.
  • Manage a minor league game from beginning to end.
  • Successfully sign 50 free agents to your team in Career mode.

However, the reason I’m posting this is because of this achievement:
Win the Rangers their first World Series in Career Mode.
Grrrrrrr. ;) In all fairness, they have the same achievement for eight other franchises, too – they’re not solely picking on the Rangers. But thanks for the reminder that we haven’t won a World Series guys. Appreciate it.
The game is coming out on three platforms. Xbox 360 (my preferred), Playstation 3, and PC. I have links to purchase all three here. The 360 version is above, and the other two are shown here:

 

Uniform Numbers

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Today I managed to get my hands on a spring training roster. The cool thing about this roster was that it included uniform numbers. Those who follow my site know that’s something I care about, so I took the opportunity to update my uniform number history section of the website with the 2009 number assignments. This includes everyone on the 40 man roster, as well as all the current spring training invites.
If you’ve never visited this part of my site, I have the history of each uniform number going back to 1972. I have the info from the Senators days, but I never seem to find the time to get that all in there. :)
Anyway, a couple of guys had changes in this list, they are:

  • Joaquin Arias changed from 4 to 3, due to Jackie Moore’s now having 4.
  • Travis Metcalf changed from 30 to 15, due to Gerald Laird’s departure.
  • Josh Frasier’s 66 was taken by Netfali Feliz. No idea what Frasier is wearing, or even if he’s bullpen coach again.

Michael Young

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I’m still pretty surprised by the Michael Young thing.
I don’t know what to say about it, which is why I haven’t said anything.

“My MLB” on MLB Site

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Saw something tonight on the MLB website which appears to be some sort of personal portal page concept they’re putting together. It’s called “My MLB”. It’s a page which you can customize with information about yourself, and about your favorite team. I went and customized mine a bit, you can see it this screen capture I took below.

I’m guessing MLB will eventually offer this as a “Home Page” on mlb.com. Each season since MLBAM took over control of all the sites, they have a refresh and/or upgrade of the site features right before the season starts. I’m guessing this is going to be part of 2009’s refresh. Don’t have any info to back that up, but it seems like a logical move.

I found this when I commented on a news story, and when I read the comment, I saw my profile name was clickable, so I clicked it, and found the page. Given the way to see this isn’t overtly in your face, my guess is that it’s not ready for a full blown test. I did find a way in this way. The link here will go to an account for you, the link in the thumbnail above goes to my profile page.

You appear to be able to add friends here, but I can find no mechanism to do so. If you know of a way to add friends here, please let me know. Something else that’s interesting is a section in your profile for your favorite teams (for me, Rangers, Phillies, & Pirates), and your least favorite teams (Yankees, Mets, Red Sox). The least favorite show up on your profile as “Rivals”, although they’re defined as “least favorite” in the edit profile screen. You can also pick your favorite active players, too. That shows up on a lower part of the profile page, which you can see here.

If you have a blog at mlblogs.com, stories from that show up here, too. I experimented with one back in 2006, and I stopped using it ages ago, but it shows up here. Wish there was a way to get rid of that. Next three games for your favorite team is here, it has some good potential. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Tonight is the first time I’ve seen this feature; has anyone else spent any time poking around with it? I would like to know how to add friends there.

Dave Barnett is the new radio guy

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From the day it was announced that Victor Rojas was leaving the Rangers to go work for the MLB Network, you haven’t heard anything about a replacement. Or at least I didn’t. I was surprised at how LITTLE you heard about this. All I heard at the time was that both Victor & Josh were up for the TV job in San Diego with the Padres. I still wish that Josh would have taken that to be “Mr. San Diego”, then bump Victor to TV and bring in someone new for radio. Didn’t get that, but we did get a new radio guy today.
It was announced this afternoon that Vic’s replacement in the radio booth is a guy by the name of Dave Barnett. I don’t have much to say about him, because I don’t know who he is. I IM’ed Jamey about it, and he replied with the fact that he used to do Rangers TV back in the 80’s, and national work since. I didn’t move to this area until the 1992-1993 offseason, so that was before my time. Jamey did call the hire “fantastic” in the IM chat with me, so that’s encouraging. He also spooged about the dude in an email update a few minutes before I wrote this. :)
Check out the story on the Rangers site for more details about him. Hopefully he shows up at the Winter Carnival in a couple of weeks. Be nice to meet him and say Hi.
I did get a small chuckle out of this quote from the Rangers site story. “Nadel, who has been the lead broadcaster on radio since 1995, had significant input into the hire.” If they made this move without major input by Eric Nadel, that would be a massive mistake!
While the broadcast didn’t say anything about it, one would assume that Barnett would pull the double duty that Victor Rojas did and fill in for Josh Lewin on TV when he’s off doing Chargers games. Scratch that. According to this story on the FTWST website, he’ll be doing the same thing that Vic did subbing for Josh. I’ve updated my broadcaster history page for 2009 with Dave Barnett, and assuming the sentence above is correct. Check it out.
The FTWST article does have this quote:

“For the last couple of years I’ve been looking for a situation where I could work with a team again and still work with ESPN,” Barnett said from his home in Denton.

Does this mean that Barnett will also be leaving to do work for ESPN during the season? I don’t like that about Lewin, he should be there for all 162 games. I don’t like these disappearances.
After posting this article, and looking at the picture, he looks like he could be Howie Long’s brother. :)

About Milton Bradley

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I liked Milton Bradley when he was here. To see him interact with the other Rangers representatives in the Home Run Derby was great, but he was someone I enjoyed watching in our uniform. I’m disappointed he won’t be back, but I have to shake my head at what the Cubs gave him. For two reasons.

  1. Three years? When on the field, he’s great (or was for us), but that seems like more years than we would have gone. I thought we might have taken a stab with 2 years and an option.
  2. On the field. Since he’s going to the National League, he has to play the field. That was something he didn’t do a lot of with us, he was DHing most of the time. I have a hard time believing he’s going to stay healthy enough to make it worth the deal. If he does, great – he’ll probably help the Cubs alot. But it seems like an odd move, I would have surely thought he would have gone AL.

But he strikes me as a more recent vintage from the John Rocker & Carl Everett mold of free agent we had. Big headcase and reputation before they got here, and were great when they were. I hope he does good, but if he misses time, or gets into problems, he’s got a hothead of a manager up there, so I could see the clashes between Bradley & Sweet Lou being epic in scope. :)

Mark Teixeira

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This..

Is a long way from this…

One can only conclude this…

MLB Network

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Well, yesterday was the launch of the new year. It was also the launch of the new Girl of the Year Doll over at American Girl. I spent a few hours there with my daughter and my wife, it was a lot of fun (even if the place is seriously pink). :) It was also the launch of the new MLB Network, of which I have a few things to say.
First off, it was a great joy to see Victor Rojas up there. I didn’t want him to leave – I frankly would have preferred he take the lead TV play by play job here, but I can understand from Vic’s standpoint why he left here to go to northern New Jersey. He was sitting at the desk with Harold Reynolds, Barry Larkin, & Al Leiter. Harold I was glad to see again, as I always enjoyed him on Baseball Tonight. Particularly his sparring with John Kruk, so perhaps he can develope that same kind of rapport here with someone on MLBN. Assuming the duties we saw last night hold up, it appears Vic is the main “anchor” of the broadcast of the nightly news show.
The studio itself looked pretty good, although I do have one complaint. When they are showing a wide shot with all four guys in view, it was hard to see them. The screens behind them are fairly busy, and their heads got lost in the shot. When on a closeup of one guy this, was not an issue, but showing all four guys at once was hard to see any of them due to all the info that was going on behind them. Kind of like losing the ball in a bunch of white shirts. That’s kind of what I felt. But that was the only negative I had to say about it. Seemed pretty good, and most of the on air talent had little to nothing to do, but that was just the first hour. I’m sure things will change in a month when spring training gets going.
There’s a news scroll detailing current stories and events on the botom of the screen, much like is what is on ESPN’s channels. This is on all the time, so if you’re watching some of the older footage and non live programming hours, you can get updates there, too.
I watched most of the Don Larsen perfect game coverage. Was kind of cool to watch that. The game had a different feel back then. Really “feels” different with no camera behind the pitcher, and no closeups, and virtually zero graphics. On top of that, seeing the old commercials from 1956 was quite a blast, too. If you get a chance to watch this, it definitely shows you how different TV coverage is now.
I think it’s a great idea, and should garner a lot of eyeballs for baseball fans. Once all the kinks are ironed out. Apparently, the launch has had some technical problems getting going on some carriers. I’m not talking about carriers that aren’t carrying the channel (like Dish Network, although if you’re on satellite you should be with DirecTV anyway). But some carriers like Time Warner here in the Dallas area are having some issues. I can attest to this myself, as I’m having some problems with the channel. The short of it is I have two TiVo’s. One is an older Series 2 unit that uses a Motorola Cable box provided by TWC. The other is a TiVoHD unit that uses a M-type CableCARD. The Series 2 box can see the channel, but that’s because of the Motorola box. My TiVoHD cannot see it. I called TiVo today and spoke with them on the phone for roughly an hour trying to resolve the problem. After speaking with more than one tech there, they concluded the problem was with TWC, and filed an official report with them over the channel. So basically, I can see it on the old small TV in my bedroom, but not out in the living room on my big TV with all the fancy HD stuff. :) I did some research online and happened upon this article over at bizofbaseball.com. It details some problems other carriers are having. It appears there’s some techie stuff relating to TiVo units that use CableCARDS (that would be me and my TiVoHD), that prevents them from seeing the channel. Oh great.
At least I can see the channel on my old TV. It’s not optimal, but at least I can see it. Hopefully this gets straightened out in short order, as I really wanted this channel in my living room on my big TV. Of course there’s a separate issue of TWC Dallas not carrying the HD feed at all, but I’m trying not to get TOO worked up over this issue.
Anyone else in the Dallas area with a TiVoHD (or Series 3 or something like that) have the channel? Do you have a CableCARD?

Derrick Turnbow et al.

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The Rangers have decided to kick the tires of deposed Milwaukee closer, Derrick Turnbow.
Turnbow who spent the last four years in the Brewers organization comes to us after having spent most of 2008 on the shelf. He pitched just eight games this past season, so his numbers aren’t probably relevant. Which is good, as his ERA in 2008 was 15.63! :eek:
He’s obviously here because of our new pitching coach, Mike Maddux. A couple of years ago, he was quite the dominant closer in Milwaukee, and if he has healed, and can recapture that, it probably will help us. He was deposed before he got hurt and couldn’t play. So hopefully his signing isn’t a case of a pitcher forgetting how to pick (hello Rick Ankiel). Still, it’s a minor league deal, so he has to prove he can pitch to make the club. If he does make the club, his salary will be $925,000 plus another $300k or so in incentives. Not the worst deal from the Rangers standpoint if he does make the club and then stink up the joint.
We also signed two other guys to minor league deals. Casey Daigle and Elizardo Ramirez. Elizardo had a cup of coffee with the Rangers in 2008, but didn’t really distinguish himself. Daigle I don’t know anything about, so I don’t have a ton to write about here on these guys.
None of these signings make me want to jump up and down, but none make me want to go “D’oh!” either. We’ll have to wait and see what happens here in the spring.

Todd Van Poppel

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For no good reason, here’s a funny video from a few years back. Remember that game that Mike Lamb caught (as the starter) and had a ton of passed balls? Forgot about this video. Todd Van Poppel was on the mound. What a mess that was.