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Benoit signed for 2006

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Short story. Joaquin Benoit was signed for the 2006 season, avoiding arbitration. He resigned for $750,000 with an additional $50k in incentives. He gets $25k if he makes 55 appearances, and another $25k if he gets to 60 appearances.
I don’t think his resigning is a bad thing, but after the moves with Millwood and all that activity, it sems like an “eh” move.

A few short stories

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Baseball Prospectus Rangers notes for Dec 30th:
They weigh in on the Millwood signing, the Eaton/Young trade, Vicente Padilla, and the starting to be annoying Roger Clemens rumours.
Mets sign Bret Boone:
This has two benefits. We won’t do something stupid and sign Boone (something I heard rumoured this morning on XM’s MLB Home Plate channel). Second, we don’t have to see the stupid bat flip anymore, as he’ll be in the NL.

Rangers to win AL West, Millwood to win Cy Young

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The Texas Rangers are going to win the AL West.
Millwood will win the AL Cy Young
These are a couple of the 2006 predictions by Jim Evans over at Baseball Digest Daily. This is what he says about Millwood in his predictions article..

With all of Texas cheering him on, and Tom Hicks installing a giant fan to counteract the jet stream effect that occurred when he built a luxury box addition to Arlington Stadium, Millwood wins the Cy Young with an ERA of 2.98, and a 23 win season. Johann Santana fans cry foul again, as he leads the league in ERA and strikeouts, but wins 6 less games.

23 wins? 2.98 ERA at our field? A Ranger pitcher a Cy Young winner? Jim, I think you have some bad leftover Egg Nog there. That’s way out there. I’m a Ranger fan, and while I like the optimism, I’d be totally and absolutely stunned if anything like this actually happened. Plus the “giant fan” remark kind of makes the whole paragraph seem like a bit of a joke to me.
Minor rant aside, check out Jim’s article. Has some intersting names turning up in his predictions.
He also makes a remark about imported players like Ichiro & Jojima from Japan being ineligible for Rookie of the Year starting in 2007. That’s a good rule if true – I hadn’t heard of it before. Never felt those guys should be eligible for ROY in the first place. Nothing against them, I love Ichiro a lot as a player, but to call him a “rookie” is a bit of a joke.

Anderson & Diaz signed

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  • P Brian Anderson signed to a 1 year AAA contract with an invite to spring training [ Link ]
  • P Joselo Diaz signed to a 1 year AAA contract with an invite to spring training [ Link ]

2006 Preview

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MLB.Com has posted 31 season previews, one for each team, and one overall one for baseball in general.
Here’s the one for the Rangers.
If you’ve been following the team pretty closely, there’s nothing here that’s really new, but it’s a nice summary of what’s going on just the same.

Happy New Year

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As we close 2005, we have a lot to be excited about for 2006. I think we might finish higher than third for the first time in SIX SEASONS now. Ugh. Anyway, I just watned to say Happy New Year. I’ve been quiet lately as I’ve been working on a bunch of behind the scenes things for next season. I’m still working on revamping my daily game recaps for 2006. They’ve remained the same since I first started the site in December of 1998, so they might be in need of an overhaul. I’m probably going to be quiet for a little while longer, as I want to make sure I get everything done and ready. Should there be big news, I’ll have the headlines, but I probably won’t write a ton for the next couple of weeks.
Also, I just saw where Yahoo will be running their fantasy baseball again for free in 2006, so I’ll have my league from this site as usual. They say registration starts in early February, so I’ll post when it’s open.

Blalock to White Sox?

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Heard on XM Radio a few minutes ago a new rumor about Hank Blalock being moved.
Blalock to White Sox for a starter and Joe Crede.
Depending on who the starter is, I’d do that. Most of the White Sox starters had great records last year, so if we can grab one of their guys, that’d be cool, but it wouldn’t make much sense to me for the Sox to move someone like Garland, Contreras, etc…