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This afternoon there was a news report by Jayson Stark that said that the Rangers were not the frontrunner in the Beckett trade sweepstakes. Then late this afternoon the word came down that he’s not being traded to Texas at all, that he’s likely going to Boston.
We’ll wait for the final word, but it appears to be done.
Looks like the homies will remain. :)

Several reports today say that a deal is in place to trade Hank Blalock & John Danks to the Florida Marlins for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell. My guess is the Rangers have soured on Blalock given the fact at how badly he slumps in the back end of the season. Lowell I’ve always liked. He had a terrible year in 2005, hopefully that’s not where he is headed career wise. Josh Beckett can certainly help us, that’s for sure (provided he stays healthy). Danks is unproven of course, but you never want to give away stud pitching.
As I write this, it’s the first I’ve heard of it, so I haven’t had time to digest it. Don’t want to give up one of our young players, but if we need pitching, then you have to give up something, it’s just my gut says that Blalock and a stud pitcher is too much. We’ll see what happens. I just hope that we get some cash back as Lowell is owed $18 mil over the next two years. You put that with the money we’re paying the Yankees for Arod ($6 Mil), and the money we owe Phil Nevin in 2006 ($12 Mil), and that means we’d be on the books for $27 million for Nevin, Arod & Lowell. That’s a lot.
It appears that this is supposed to happen “by Monday”. If this goes down, I guess Hank’s Homies are done.
News Stories:
Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News #2 (Monday morning)
Ft Worth Star Telegram (Sat Night)
Ft Worth Star Telegram #2 (Sun Morning)
Texas Rangers Site
Fla Marlins Site
Sportsticker via SI.com
There’s been a few moves the last couple of days, mostly procedural, some coaching – I’ll catch up on Monday most likely.

The AL MVP was announced today. Arod won. Don’t care about that.
Two Ranger players were in the results. Mark Teixeira came in seventh and Mike Young came in 11th. Tex got one vote for third place, which was the highest either of them got. Mike Young’s highest was two votes for sixth place. I expect Tex to place much higher than that over the next couple of years, as would Mike Young.
Here’s a page on mlb.com with the complete tally of votes.

Well, today is the day that free agents can talk money with other clubs, as the “exclusive negotiating” period has ended. That means the following players are now no longer Rangers:
John Wasdin, Kenny Rogers, Sandy Alomar, Steve Karsay, Doug Brocail, Greg Colbrunn, & Richard Hidalgo.
I suppose technically we can still claim some sort of minor hold on them through December 7th, which is the last day to offer a player arbitration, but for all intensive purposes, they’re now “former Rangers”. Kind of surprised to see John Wasdin turn up there, as I thought he wanted to stay, as did Sandy Alomar. The rest don’t bother me in the least, we can take care of their spots in some other way.
I’ve updated my roster page with all these changes (and rather easily too, a nice side benefit of the blog software I’m moving most of the site towards.