BaseballGirl over at AthleticsNation posted an email she received from an Angels fan about how the AL West battles are going to develop.  In an effort to shatter the stereotype that the only people who trot out the "Rangers can hit but don't have starting pitching" meme are national writers and uninformed Ranger fans, her correspondent says:

"Texas doesn’t even enter this conversation.  Let’s talk about that.  They did nothing in the offseason to improve their perennial weakness: starting pitching.  They did add Josh Hamilton to the OF, so I guess the old “we’ll bludgeon our way to a pennant” strategy still holds sway in the Ranger front office.  Oh, those Texans. In a way it’s almost loveable.
Threat assessment:  none."

I think that even Ben Broussard's mother will acknowledge that this lineup, as constituted, isn't going to do much bludgeoning.  As a matter of fact, I believe they mentioned on Norm's show today that there were more homeruns at Safeco last year than at TBIA.  And it's weird that no one seems to acknowledge that this is a staff with a high beta... sure, Millwood, Padilla and Jennings could all serve up piping hot mugs of suck all year, but none are all that far removed from decent seasons.  At least with Padilla in the rotation, we can raise the threat assessment to "elevated chance of concussion" every five days.  To cap off the post, BaseballGirl includes a poll about how the race will end up, with the Rangers in last for every option but one, which says facetiously, "The Rangers will win it all."  Ha ha!  It's funny because we suck!

Over at BeyondtheBoxscore, R.J. Anderson has a post that has pitching advice from Nolan Ryan and George Bush.  Suprisingly, the President does not recommend push-polling in an effort to hurt the opposing batters' reputations... instead, he suggests calling in precision airstrikes on them.  Anderson analyzes all of the no-hitters since 1970 in an effort to validate his hypothesis that pitchers with a higher BB/9 rate would have a higher incidence of no-hitters.  He concludes that there doesn't seem to be a correlation, but it's an interesting post nonetheless.

Over at Sickels' site, he had an April Fool's joke about a "sleeper" prospect that incorporates some Star Wars humor.  After reading it, I was reminded a bit of this, from The Onion.  Ah, dorky in-jokes, you gotta love 'em.