I think the Smoak talk is negotiating tactics, especially since neither Smoak nor his agent have talked directly with the press about not signing. Leaked comments like that just seem like ploys to me.

Amazing how winning seems to beget great chemistry and how losing does the opposite, isn’t it?

can wash that bus tread off their faces before they have to appear on TV again. Can’t say I blame Marlon, either. Just… incompetent.

“I started falling behind, and they were sitting on my two-seamer inside,” said Mendoza, who fell to 3-6 with a 8.13 ERA in 11 starts. “Yeah, I’m frustrated right now. Two bad outings in a row. I don’t know what to say.”

Ian Kinsler did. The second baseman said the young pitchers need to start keeping the Rangers in games.

Now would be a good time to do it.

“I don’t care how old you are,” said Kinsler, who had a solo homer in the eighth. "A lot of guys in the clubhouse were young when they first got to the big leagues. It’s about learning the game, learning what you’re capable of doing and how to be good about it.

“We need these guys to start figuring things out quickly.”

Can’t dispute it but would hate to see the clubhouse divide after such a great season, but I guess I’m making too much of the quote

What is the schedule, will it allow him to rebuild value before the meetings?

but really we were never in it.

At least the misguided belief that we were made us not be sellers.

It’s amazing how he suddenly has two great weeks and now he can talk trash about the pitching staff, haha!!

I don’t remember the pitching staff talking trash about Byrd to the media when he was sucking the first 4 months of the season!!

What an idiot!!

Where was Byrd when the pitching staff had three straight shutouts in May?? That’s right, out with a sprained uterus…..or whatever it was!! It’s a good thing though, because his .129 batting average at the time definitely wasn’t helping the pitching staff!!

(I bitch about Byrd, but I would probably say the same things about the pitching staff sucking if I was on this team right now……..but not if I sucked for 4 months. : -)

I wonder if the Kinsler and Byrd quotes are a reaction to a full season of poor pitching, or the belief that the Rangers should be able to beat a team like Boston.

He saw Robbie Ross at the Frisco game last night escorted by the Rangers’ front office. That’s gotta be a pretty good freakin’ sign. lol

if Josh and Katie have had their kid yet?? Didnt get to see the game last night so i didnt know he left. Hope all is well with them both!!

Better at pointing fingers than Teixeira?

Kinsler, I’d say so. Calling out player performance is safer than implying the front office lost the season. Byrd, gone.

i can understand his frustration but he probably should have kept those comments to himself. sure he’s hitting now but the first half of the year he was craptacular or injured.

And these young pitchers were kind of thrown into action when the staff all went down with injuries.

And what annoys me most is guys get a pass when they say this crap, yet a guy like cj says what he feels and is honest and he gets shat on my his teammates and the media (not to say what cj says or does is always right either)

Whatever. The pitching is horrendous. I see no fault in players pointing out the obvious. The offense has done its job this year, yet they aren’t competitive. Yeah it sounds silly from a guy who spent the first half of the season not remembering how to hit, but he’s right nonetheless.

I hope Byrd is gone next year, not because of this, but because he’s built up his value to the point where he’ll be a better trade chip this coming offseason.

the number of games sweet ol’ Wash has remaining in his managing career. As Norm would say, “He was a good man……..”

With his free time Wash can spend more time setting up his dream dinner with CHER.

from BA

In other draft/independent league news, Miami first baseman Yonder Alonso told John Fay, our Reds correspondent and a writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, that he could be headed to indy ball if he can’t work out a deal with the Reds.

Alonso’s buddy and workout partner Alex Rodriguez has offered to let him live with him in New York and play in the independent Atlantic League next season while he awaits re-entry into the 2009 draft. Selected seventh overall, Alonso reportedly wants a big league deal worth $7 million.

When Fay asked him what would happen if the Reds offered him a $3 million major league contract, Alonso replied, “You’ll be writing a story about me going to the independent league.”

Two points:

1> You are Yonder Alonso – you get a chance to crash in ARod’s pad in New York for 5 months or so? How can Cincy beat that?

2> Isn’t this tampering of some sort? Should major league players be giving incentives to draftees of other teams not to sign? Imagine if this was a Boston draftee and not a Reds guy. Imagine the scandal…

is the fact that this team wouldn’t be nearly as terrible if the defense didn’t suck by every metric.

Ian, I love you buddy, but if you didn’t keep bobbling balls, we’d be a better club pitching wise.

They’re fed up, no matter what they do offensively it’s not enough. J D can’t keep marching these clowns out there to be shelled. Too bad he didn’t get one solid arm at the trading deadline with this staff being the disaster that it is. The only thing I worry about is that Hamilton is going to get burnt out with the whole mess like Tex did and not want to come back here. I know that’s a ways away but let’s not let the seed of discontent begin to sprout to the point where he’s just …..OVER IT and reminiscing how lovely it was to ride with the top down through the streets of Manhattan.

If JD decides he’s going to be a hardass with Teixiera, Jr. and we don’t get him signed, will it make it an easier pill to swallow knowing that we have Chris Davis manning 1B decently enough in his first two months? In addition, we’d get a comp. pick for Smoak not signing.

All of this leads to the idea that maybe Nolan uses all of this as better reasoning to signing a Type A FA pitcher this winter and not having to worry too much about giving up the first round pick, assuming we don’t completely fall on our face (like we did in Boston) the rest of the way and finish in the bottom 15 of the league.

Am I way off base with this chain of thought?

Well so much for Marlon Byrd having a future with the Rangers. Sigh.

Keep your mouth shut and keep smacking the baseball. Why ruin a nice hot streak with stupid comments. He has no idea what JD and Nolan tried to do to acquire pitching at the break. Who would he like us to go get? Not a whole lot of quality available in free agency after Sabathia and Sheets this winter.

Sure Smoak is a quality hitter, but he has to realize that he has no leverage in asking for a ML deal. With Davis young and entrenched at 1b, the Rangers do not need to give out the ML deal. I’ll take Ross signed and next year’s 10a pick if Smoak was making ridiculous demands.

Borbon was different circumstance last year. When we gave him the ML deal we had what many thought was the worst outfield in baseball. Now we are overloaded… go figure.

It is the player taking the risk in this situation. Smoak has no guarantee he will be healthy next year and his stats could go down. Then he would easily be available at 10a next draft.

If he has a great year, great for him. He moves up a couple of spots for an extra 200k. Big whoop. Rangers thought they had to give Borbon the deal because they had a definite hole in CF development. We do not have that hole in 1st base development with many potential prospects in the pipeline.

Maybe if the Nationals don’t sign Crow, we can just take the 10a pick next year and grab him then.

I consider the possibility of losing Ross more important than losing Smoak. You never have enough lefties, but we have plenty of 1b prospects in development already.

I would agree that even if he was a great value, I would have rather not drafted him and gone for the next best pitcher on my board.

If Chris Davis was 30, THEN I would have drafted Smoak.

I believe the Rangers will sign both Ross and Smoak before the weekend. Then it is a win-win-win for the players and management.

firebat, sorry just don’t agree with injuries not having an impact. Smoak tears his ACL and misses his entire senior season he will not be picked in the first round and will not get the 2+ million he would be leaving on the table.

Rangers about to go on a tear.

Car chase going on right now. Awesome.

The top TL performer was breakout prospect Derek Holland, who has rocketed to Double-A in his second full pro season. Signed for $200,000 in 2006 as a 25th-round draft pick out of Wallace State (Ala.) CC, Holland struck out 10 for Frisco in eight innings, giving up only one unearned run on four hits and one walk. According to Rangers maven Jamey Newberg, Holland hit 97 mph five times and sat in the 93-95 mph range with his fastball, and for the year, Holland has performed with eye-catching numbers: 11-1, 2.44, 138 strikeouts, 35 walks and just three home runs allowed in 133 innings. Did we mention he’s lefthanded?

I wouldn;t mind loading up on HS talent, because with all the youth already in the system… we have the time to let the HS pitchers grow up slowly.

Allyson, Dallas: Will Holland and Feliz both be in your top 25ish minor league players?

Keith Law: (1:56 PM ET ) Feliz will be in the top 10.

Nick, Texas: Will the Rangers get Smoak signed? Think about a Hamilton, Smoak, Davis 3-4-5 in the future!

Keith Law: (1:15 PM ET ) Yes, I think he and Robbie Ross will sign tomorrow.

I think that’s it. I posted the Smoak note in another thread…

As we all know, all players are removed from the 60 day DL the day after the WS is over…That means that alot players are going to be optioned back to the minors. That means they have to go through waivers….How many of the young SP’s could possibly be lost there?

by the offense about the pitching, but it doesn’t do any good to bitch about it to the media. Especially considering all the injuries on the staff.

How many extra pitches have all your errors this year cost the staff Ian? The pitchers didn’t bitch about the defense early in the year when you had a error every other game.

Heh Byrd you were hitting like the pitchers were pitching all year ’til 3 weeks ago. Who died and made you team spokesman and captain?

Just stop looking to point the finger and go out and play the damn game.

had anything to do with his brother Paul sitting over on the opponent’s bench in a shiny cap. Especially since he cost nothing but $2M in salary for the rest of the season?

Whether anyone here wants to believe it, the players still think they are in a WC race. If I’m a player, I’m pretty pissed that my front office wasn’t in on that deal considering the state of the rotation.