he is going to do it at the Major League level. He doesn’t need any more time in AAA. I think he has to learn what it is like to start in the Bigs

as Mike Bascik said he said he doesn’t know yet.

and most likely will be forced to take an incentive laden contract. I think there is going to be more competition for him this year and Boston probably ends up with him.

Mike Bacsik was saying that his baseball guys that know Sheets said he doesn’t if he can pitch again or if he can how effective he can be.

currently sitting on his 2nd story apartment balcony hammering Natty Light, trying to beat his own personal best of 33 12oz cans in one 24 hour period. He should pop up here on LSB sooner or later, be on the lookout.

can’t stay healthy and will want too much $.

Living in SD, my only choice was the orioles feed.

Jim Palmer could barely contain his laughter, pointing out his egregious pitch-tipping. He actually called what pitch was coming 10 or 11 times (that I remember). Obviously, good color guys guess what pitch is coming, based on the situation, some of the time. But Palmer was doing it strictly based on Lewis’s body language.

It would have been really funny if I was an O’s fan.

:)

The reason you have the sense of dread is probably a couple of reasons. One being that Nippert was a guy who we picked up once he was DFAd by Arizona a couple years ago and in his first appearance he got shelled. Nevermind that the guy hadn’t pitched in over a week, had been traded from Arizona to Texas, and his wife had given birth to their first child. That first appearance left a bad taste in your mouth that you haven’t been able to get out. He hasn’t been great but hes been a pretty nice bullpen piece for us the last couple years.

And for BMac, well its all about the trade. Dank had a good season in 2008 and BMac has been hurt since coming here. I swear the guy could go out and thrown a no hitter and some would bitch about something simply because its BMac.

If he’s healthy, start him in the rotation. When he gets hurt, remove him from the rotation.

What’s the harm?

and BMac doesnt have near the stuff that Wood had/has.

He’s a guy who, when he’s successful, has three good pitches he can command.

Guys with three good pitches but no great pitch don’t work too well in the pen.

did spot start more, but his 2nd year he went 84.2 innings, most of which were in the bullpen for the White Sox.

He’s worth the Type A compensation. You take a risk in his bat going back to below average, but his defense is that good that he would make sense for any contending team needing a top defensive IF.

If we could trade Hunter, Kiker, Smoak + choice of Beavan/Poveda, would you do it for Greinke?.

9 in a row or something like that.

16 was the highest all year for any pitcher I believe.

But he still had a down year, and we would buy lower than a guy like Cain or Greinke

Holland is only a couple of years older than him and can talk about how the Rangers took him from a nobody draft and follow to one of the top, young LH pitchers in baseball. You don’t need him to lead, just to talk about how great his experiences have been with the Rangers over the past couple of years.

1. The rangers starters were coming off an outright terrible year. Various guys had major health issues, and Hurley was outright done for the year in ST.

2. In 2008 the bullpen got completely torched by the starters not being able to go any innings, and the lack of depth of starters who could go even 5 innings into a game just made it worse as the season went on. Starting depth was effecting the entire team.

3. I believe the situation was Benson could opt out, and at the time had had some decent ST stats at least and had a chance of being able to sign somewhere else.

Given those points, the Rangers (and there were quotes to this effect) placed emphasis on maintaining whatever depth and options they could.

So they ended ST, and after some bad performances by Feldman he and Benson were pretty close on the “help in 2009” list.

Benson had never relieved, Feldman had spent most of his career doing it.

They have full control of Feldman and know very well they can put him in the bullpen and then let him start when someone went down or was ineffective, which was a near 100% certainty with the Rangers situation. Putting him in the pen to start the year doesn’t mean that was their plan for the whole year and it got busted when he had to be put in the rotation.

You are really telling me as the situation stood on April 1st or whatever, that the logic is completely idiotic? Literally makes no sense? Absurd?

I can easily see disagreeing with it, I didn’t even really agree with it I said I didn’t care either way.. but I still don’t understand how so many of you guys can think its this idiotic moment of the decade. Theres got to be a certain amount of consideration given, you can’t just flatly say no matter what no veterans all young guys, that will give its share of awful results too.

The only problem in signing these veterans is when you do it to block major prospects that are ready (feldman wasn’t a major one..) or when you stick with them despite poor performance. The rangers have done that on occasion, but this wasn’t such a case. He sucked, they got rid of him.