Here is a good trade idea that may be worth pursuing:

Rangers get: Clay Buccholz, Jed Lowrie, Josh Bard, Manny Delcarmen OR Edgar Martinez

Red Sox get: Jarrod Saltalamacchia OR Taylor Teagarden, Michael Young

most seem to want to give up Buch..

link

As if he were the FOTF. Mike needs to get off his high horse and accept the position change or he’s going to be on some other team playing 2B. Would he be making such a hissy fit if he were asked to move back to 2B?

Very well put by Daniels. I love the way he’s framing this whole thing, and I think he’s of course completely in the right.

Way to go JD — I hope you come out of all this alive.

Bust out the JD terminator looking over the shoulder in glasses picture.

Yikes, this sorta reminds me of the first Jason Kidd trade.

I sorta think MY is worth a bit more than most here do. He’s a good clutch hitter. And $62 million, while certainly high, is not over-the-top for 5 seasons of .300 hitting. Sure, we know his flaws, but, all players have flaws when you watch them every day. (See: AROD and Playoff performance).

Major League sources said Young’s contract is a factor.

You don’t say.

The Rangers aren’t worried about age and don’t regret signing him to the contract.

I’m thinking this is actually not at all true.

But I think JD is kind of awesome, that’s just me though.

Major League sources said Young’s contract is a factor. He signed a five-year, $80 million contract extension in Spring Training 2007 that begins this season.

Blogs and people were saying that MY should go to 3rd but no one took it seriously.

Sports hernia good; 100% to go in spring. Hurt last 3 seasons but never hurt in minors; freak injuries. Just kinda happens.

Uncle Milt – Ian and him got along great. Hopefully MB has success in Chicago.

Ian took dirt from all over Yankee stadium (dad’s from NY so gave it to him).

Ian liked Don Wakamatsu; happy he got the job.

Pitchers for the future: Matt Harrison, Derek Holland (is unsure how to pronounce Neftali). He didn’t sound very confident in his knowledge of the minor league players.

Taking off for ST beginning of Feb.

Chris Davis: locked in at 1st. He doesn’t know what’s going on with the other players, lineup, if MY gets traded what will they get, who plays third. Sounds like the players are asking each other these things and there are lots of questions in the clubhouse about who’s doing what in 2009.

Nolan: impact of Nolan is that it’s Nolan Ryan. When he speaks everyone listens. Minor leaguers listen to him. Trying to get pitchers go deep in the game.

Trying to buy a house from Teix for cheap (pretty sure it’s a joke).

Started with the MY/trade stuff, but mostly burned through. Ian brought that issue up on his own later in the interview. Sounds like it’s on his mind and others.

It’s Michael Finley all over again.

BTW – I am kind of glad this all happened

That contract was terrible, Young was one of the worst defenders playing a premium position, we teach a pitch to contact philosophy, and there was seemingly no way out. Even if he moved to third, I was still going to be upset but that seemed like the only way to get him off of SS.

Well, now we have a bona fide way of getting out from under the contract. And yes, it makes the Rangers look bad, but it doesn’t make them look SOOO bad as just flat out trading the face of the franchise would have. At least the Rangers went to MY with a reasonable offer and MY was the one that suggested the trade.

People keep saying that the Rangers knew that Young would refuse a position change but I wouldn’t have thought he would demand a trade because of it. Hell, Soriano didn’t even demand a trade. In my wildest dreams, I never thought the Rangers and MY would part ways.

Granted, this is only phase 1. There is still a lot of evidence to suggest that MY will still be playing 3B come 2009. But, if you had to draw up an MY exit strategy, isn’t this the first move you would have envisioned?

for one just got a lot more interested in Ranger baseball for ’09.

Question? How in the world could a guy who made 32 errors in A-ball be ready for ML?

Ready or not I’m pumped about the prospect of watching him play every night, although 3 trips to Frisco last year left no indelible impressions…….

FOTF = STFU

I love Lonestar Ball, the participants, the thrills.

I do think sometimes an idea comes around like: Our S-S Young sucks, look at these-here stats. See?

Enter: The new consensus: Don’t be fooled! Michael Young ACTUALLY sucks!

Then everyone piles on the “new” blog consensus, which is actually a contrarian consensus compared to the popular consensus.

I’ll cut this short. I’ve been a Ranger fan since 1974. All in all, I never needed Bill James to show me or tell me that the Rangers (and most of their players) pretty much sucked. I loved Mickey Rivers. Why? He was fun to watch.

I have to go now. But hopefully someone out there understands that, perhaps, this time, the Blog scene actually hurt the trade value of Michael Young.

I can totally see why Michael Young feels the way he does, but his feelings aside is this not what is best for Michael Young’s career?

Does he think that whatever team trades for him is going to keep him at short for much longer? He goes somewhere new and he loses his position in the clubhouse. The new team will be even less loyal to him. If he stays with the Rangers he has a lock on his offensive position. He has a leadership position and the ear of the front office. At least in regards to who the Rangers bring in (see Josh Hamilton).

Over the past 24 hours, this late season entry of Adam’s (Improving Run Prevention – A Modest Proposal) keeps popping into my head. Is it possible that JD and his management team honestly feel that the single best way to improve this team for ’09 and going forward is to move Young to 3B and put a good defensive SS out there? If this team were to save 40 runs due to run prevention, that would be equivalent to swapping Peavy for Millwood.

Jack Bauer is a beast!

But, janeane garofalo sucks in this role…

What a shock.

wouldn’t that be crazy?

Has managed to turn into another “JD sucks” dogpile by Josey and Clueless (who could be the same guy, ya never know). Kinda makes you wonder if there are classes you can take on how to take any subject and twist it into a completely different one that’s been rammed into the ground a thousand times.

I can go back to ignoring baseball for a few more weeks. It would be nice if Young would move to third. Kind of the whole, go out on top sort of thing, with respect to the respect he has for his play at SS.

I’m fully expecting Young to be a Ranger and to be the starting SS. Nolan has said they won’t suspend him if he doesn’t move. It’s the only compromise that leaves both sides feeling like something was accomplished while both take a hit.

So, in about two weeks or so, I think it will be time to plop Major League in the VCR and maybe Bull Durham and get excited about ST.

…my baboushka dolls will be down to just Blalock. By next year, they will be worthless.

Imagine a scenario where management convinces Young that Andrus is the SS of the future and Young reluctantly moves over to third base. Come spring training, the front office decides Andrus needs a couple months in AAA and then bring in an Omar Vizquel type to play short for the time being. How does Young react to this? Does he throw another tantrum?

Thats not that bad.

You know, management didn’t have to have that conversation with Young at all. They could have signed a stop gap shortstop and then made the announcement at the press conference. Now, they didn’t do that because talking to Young was the right thing to do, but I think we’re losing perspective on how nice JD was supposed to be. Maybe JD could have pretend to be more accomodating, but it seems like we’re talking about JD being 5% nicer when he was already 95% of the way there.

And despite that Gold Glove, a lot of writers and bloggers and sabermetricians who study fielding will tell you he isn’t really close to being the best fielding shortstop in the AL.

I was of the opinion that MY would be a poor 3b, that it would be tough to swallow for even the immediate future yet alone the 4th/5th years, and that it would be a lot better if he were to be traded than move to 3b.

It would probably still be better because of the payroll.. but aside from money, reading everything today, thinking about his defensive strengths as pointed out in a previous thread.. im beginning to come around to the idea that he might be able to contribute positively at 3b for a few years.

If he really had improved to “only” below average at ss the past few years.. and with 3b more suited to his defensive skills.. maybe he would be better then I thought defensively there, enough to play his offense into an alright 3b for a while. Not worh 16 mil (or 12 if you want to discount the bonuses), but perhaps not completely dead weight.

Just on my mind. Although of course now if we keep him hes probably angry at the org and who knows how that presents itself over time. Obviously hes not going to tank it, but he might not be playing through broken fingers again.

Either way? ghtd36 (Mr. Logic)…please explain.

Why did the clueless person cross the road? Because he saw a chicken do it and thought it looked like fun.