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2006 Schedule

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The Ft Worth Star Telegram today published an article saying the Rangers have gotten a preliminary version of the 2006 schedule. The article posts some highlights, some of which are:

  • We open the season at home for the first time in several years – Apr 3, 2006.
  • The Home Interleague games are Padres, Diamondbacks, & Astros.
  • The Away Interleague games are Giants, Rockies, & Astros.
  • We’re home on the 4th of July again

There’s some negative things, too:

  • The Home Opener oppponent is the Red Sox, which means we’ll have a bunch of annoying opposing team fans – the Sox fans are almost as annoying as the Yankees fans now. They were more tolerable before they won.
  • Two Yankees series. There’s some games I won’t go to, I hate going to Yankee games – same reason; obnoxious fans.

I personally would have liked to have seen Philadelphia come down here, since we went up there last year. Plus we played in Florida two years in a row, so I would have liked to have seen more of the NL East before we moved out of that division and back to the AL West.
If anyone reading this finds a copy of the full schedule somewhere, let me know, as I’d be really eager to hear if the Rangers are at home on April 16th or August 20th.

Roster move

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On Tuesday afternoon, less than 12 hours after RicRod’s stinkfest in Beantown, he was placed on the 15 day DL (although initial reports said he was demoted to AAA). We recalled Erasmo Ramirez to take his roster spot, although this doesn’t address the status of the rotation at all.
Still waiting to hear if Kenny Rogers appeal will be successful or not. But as the days drag on, it’s getting to the point that it doesn’t much matter whether it’s shortened or not, does it?

Aaron Sele and the Major League Rotation

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The Rangers re-signed former pitcher Aaron Sele this past Saturday. He obviously enjoyed the best part of his career here with Texas during the late 90’s. He’s now pitching for us in AAA Oklahoma, and made one start. He went six innings, giving up four runs on nine hits and two walks. Not exactly setting the world on fire mind you, but then again, neither is anyone else on the major league level.
What I think should happen now is that we bring up Sele, send CJ Wilson back down, and move someone like Greg Colbrunn to the 60 day DL to clear a spot on the 40 for Sele.
Someone on my forums posted this over the last couple of days:

i wanna know why isnt that Diamond kid pitching in the show yet?

Here’s what I wrote about that..
What makes me irritated is how everyone automatically just says “Bring up the stud” like this. It’s not all about that. There’s a lot more to consider than just “bring ’em up” without examining the entire picture.
Read this – all of it – it was from today’s Jamey Newberg’s report.

I suppose we can assume that whatever Texas decides from this point forward with regard to the rotation will have 2006 in mind at least as much as 2005 — but it’s not as if the list of candidates changes that much between the two objectives. If Volquez weren’t still sidelined with that oblique strain, maybe he’d be on the immediate radar, but that’s about it. It would be shocking to see Texas bring John Danks or Thomas Diamond to the big leagues at any point this season, as neither needs to be added to the 40-man roster for another 15 months. Why does that matter?
It’s not so much because of 40-man roster spots right now. Though the roster is full, Texas can clear space easily by transferring Frankie Francisco or Nick Regilio or Laynce Nix or Greg Colbrunn to the 60-day disabled list.
It’s not so much because of concerns over options. Bringing one of those two up now would probably mean neither would return to the farm this season (Frisco’s season will end in less than four weeks), so their first option wouldn’t be exhausted until April (assuming they wouldn’t stick with the big club then). And it’s unlikely that Danks or Diamond will need three years of options, though you don’t want to treat that issue flippantly.
The real issue is what giving Danks or Diamond a look this season would do to the roster this winter. If either is brought up, it would take up a spot on an off-season 40-man roster that will need lots of work. The Rangers will need an influx of several veterans to come in and play significant roles. And the club tends to add three to five Rule 5-eligible prospects to the roster every winter. This winter the eligibles include pitchers Volquez, Hudgins, Wil Rodriguez, Scott Feldman, Kelvin Jimenez, Wes Littleton, A.J. Murray, and Chris Jaile; catcher Lizahio Baez; infielders Ian Kinsler, Joaquin Arias, Drew Meyer, and Nate Gold; and outfielders Ruddy Yan, Vincent Sinisi, Juan Senreiso, and Anthony Webster.
If the plan today is to add five of those players to ensure they aren’t lost in the Rule 5 draft, you don’t want to bring Danks or Diamond up, even for a spot start — because then the plan becomes adding only four draft-eligibles from the above list, and exposing one more prospect to the draft than you have to.
There are some non-roster players whom we’ll likely see in Texas before this season ends, but I’m going to strongly suggest neither Danks nor Diamond will be among them.

I have to say I agree with Jamey on this issue completely – as he wrote this far better than I could, I just used his text. And since I used it, I’ll plug his site – go check out http://www.newbergreport.com and get his newsletter if you aren’t already getting it.

G111: Ricardo Rodriguez stinks up Fenway Park on the way to an 11-6 Ranger loss

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Well, that was frustrating. After starting off the top of the first inning 3-0, it went downhill pretty quickly. Ricardo Rodriguez was out of the game in the first inning, which is never a good sign. Ricardo’s ERA for just this game was 54.00 – ACK! I thought we had seen some stinking piles of pitching garbage before, but this one took the cake. In fact, due to the debacle that was last night’s pitching, I’m ready to throw in the towel. As those who regularly read my site know, I’ve not been one to give up the season. Now I am. Given how horrendous our pitching situation has degenerated into, I see no hope, and even if we do make it in somehow, we’ll get destroyed in the playoffs, so yeah – I’ve given up on post season for 2005. I could be surprised, and I’d be overjoyed if I was totally wrong, but I don’t see any hope anymore for this year.
Offensively, we had hits all over the place. 16 of them, and every starter had at least one. Blalock had the most with three. Blalock also lead with 2 RBI. Also, in an interesting non Rangers kind of stat, we had no home runs – the first time that’s happened in a game in awhile, and only like the third time all season, if I remember right.
On a fun note, it’s always great to hear the clang of a ball hitting up against the Green Monster in Fenway. Is it me, or has that gotten louder lately? I wonder if someone has stuck a microphone out there to amplify the sound of when that happens. It’s kind of like when a ball hits a foul pole, the sound we get on TV seems so much louder than you would think it should be.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

Hidalgo to DL, McDougall back up

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Forgot to mention this, but on Saturday, Richard Hidalgo was placed on the DL. Uh, why are we going to bring him back? I think we can survive quite nicely the rest of the season with an outfield of:
LF – David Dellucci
CF – Gary Matthews Jr
RF – Kevin Mench
Someone will have to sit if Hidalgo is activated again, can it be Hidalgo?

G110: Rangers win 9-3, taking series against Baltimore

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Chris Young showed the form that was having folks talk about rookie of the year today. He’s slid a bunch the last month or so, but today it was early season Chris Young again. He went 7 innings, giving up no runs on five hits. A masterful performance that was marred by the appearance of Kevin Gryboski in the 8th who gave up all three runs the Orioles scored. Doug Brocail finished things up with a scoreless ninth.
Once again, Sidney Ponson continues to show why the Rangers would have been absolutely insane to trade for him. He leaves the second game in a row against the Rangers with an injury, and to hear Tom Grieve talk about him, he’s a fat slob who doesn’t care about himself and his team by not being in baseball shape. He just strikes me as an major career threatening injury waiting to happen. In fact, it wasn’t just Ponson, the Orioles sent out four pitchers today, and they all gave up runs. Ponson gave up 3 in 2.1IP, Williams gave up 1 in his 1.2IP, Bydak gave up 3 in his 2IP, and finally Jorge Julio gave up 2 in his 2IP. Not a good day for the Orioles in regards to pitching.
It was a good day for Ranger bats. We had 14 hits, and pushed across nine runs. The charge was lead by Tex, Gary Matthews, & Kevin Mench who all had home runs. Tex and Matthews also accounted for 2/3 of the runs themselves driving in 3 apiece. Mike Young continues to make one think that he might take a run at the batting championship as well as the hits lead, as he’s batting .331 and went 3/4 last night, raising his total hits for the season to 151 with 52 more games to play. I say 200 is pretty much a lock unless he gets hurt.
We move on to Boston, which could be bad for us, as we tend to never do good in Fenway.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

G109: Rangers retire Johnny Oates #26, and then win 10-3

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This was the game that The Rangers retired Johnny Oates’ number at. I’m going to avoid talking about that for now, as I’m planning on writing something larger about Oates in it’s own article.
We got out early in this one. We put up a six spot in the second inning, and never looked back. Orioles starter Daniel Cabrera had some major control issues that led him to give up four walks in the second inning. The inning was capped off by a David Dellucci grand slam to left field to cap the scoring that inning. We also put up a four spot in the fourth behind two home runs and a fielding error (Roberts). So we’re up 10-1 after four.
John Wasdin turned in a pretty good pitching performance this day. He went six innings, giving up 6 hits and two runs with 2 walks and 3 strikeouts. Overall a pretty decent pitching performance. Following him for 3 innings was Kameron Loe, giving up no runs, and earning a save – something I don’t understand, the score was 10-1 when Loe came in, so I don’t get that at all.
Still, nice to see a good pitching on a day where Ranger manager Johnny Oates was paid tribute to. Nice to have a good game to go with a good ceremony.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

Roster Transaction

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  • P Aaron Sele signed to a AAA contract
  • OF Chad Allen released from AAA
  • OF Richard Hidalgo placed on the 15 day DL
  • IF Marshall McDougall recalled from AAA [

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G108: Rangers lose to Orioles on Friday, 10-5

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Mark Teixeira had a home run, his 29th of the season. So did Hank Blalock. So did Alfonso Soriano. So did Mark DeRosa for cryin out loud! All five of our runs came on the longball. Was a power night, although with a power night sometimes comes not much else. Which is the case, because outside of the home runs, we had just three other hits in the entire game. Most of this off of Bruce Chen, a journeyman who seems to have found some consistency with Baltimore, not unlike John Wasdin with us.
But that’s not really the story of the game. Why did we lose this one? Oh yeah, C.J. Wilson really stunk up the joint. I mean, we’ve had some bad pitching this year, but wow, that was a steaming pile of… well, you know. His line was 2.2 innings pitched, 9 hits, 8 earned runs, two walks, no strikeouts. That’s just positively atrocious. James Baldwin also gave up two runs, but over 4 plus innings, which isn’t too awful. However, the surprise of the night was Steve Karsay, who went two innings, giving up nothing in his Ranger debut. That’s something we need to see more of out of the pen.
We also put Mark Holtz & John Wetteland into the Rangers HOF this night. As per usual, local TV coverage totally botched it and didn’t show us the ceremony. We saw pieces of it, but they cut away in the middle of people talking. Once again, local TV management needs to be shot, as I don’t need to hear how Ford is the Best in Texas, and I don’t need to hear how Dodge things I should be grabbing life by the horns. I should be watching the pre-game ceremony, you twits!
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

Devil Rays series

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I’m busy trying to wrap up a project today at work for the weekend, so I likely won’t have time to update for the last two games in the Devil Rays series.
Was nice to see us find the can of whoopass and unleash it last night against the Rays. Too bad we couldn’t actually do that regularly, we might have a shot at making a run at it, but this team is just too inconsistant for that.
Good to see Phil Nevin get in the groove last night going 3 for 4, scoring four times. He had a homer, a double, and a single. Good night for him. Hopefully the first couple of games were just jitters.
Baltimore comes in this weekend, minus Rafael “Giambi” Palmeiro. I’m also really annoyed that the Oates ceremony isn’t on TV before the game (if you get the Newberg Report, I was the the reader he was talking about who told him it won’t be on TV). Thanks Fox. By picking this game for national, we lose not only our own coverage guys, but we don’t get the pre-game ceremony. That’s doubly annoying as I can’t go – even though I have a ticket, so I was hoping to see it.