The logical conclusion all along was to move Josh to right, to save wear and tear on his body, improve right field defense with a center field-capable player, and put his cannon in the place where it can best be utilized. But so often with trades, position moves, lineup arrangements, or whatever, the “logical conclusions” fans on blogs come up with don’t necessarily agree with the decisions of management.

But now, by moving Young to third and Hamilton to right, it seems clear that Nolan and JD are on the same page with the rest of us. Good stuff.

Hambone in right, Borbon in center, and one of the others in left will be a deadly good outfield defense.

Otherwise Byrd plays everyday over Cruz or Murphy. As well as Byrd did vs RHP last year, hard to predict that to continue.

Seems like a strange thing for a club president to say. Either Hamilton really goes to RF showing Nolan has all the power, or Hamilton stays in CF and makes it look like el presidente is just firing from the hip.

Even stranger that he’d comment on that without discussing it first with the manager (really the GM’s job). Seems like a pretty rookie media mistake for such a veteran of the game.

If he hits, then he will make Murphy irrelevant, regardless of what Nolan thinks about it. It’s up to Cruz to perform this season.

1.Rangers management have decided to make defense a priority…Young to 3B, Andrus/Vizquel at SS. Moving Hamilton to RF and inserting Byrd in CF adds even more to the defense. Thumbs up.

2.Rangers management seems to be setting the table this season for a few young guns…..First it was Andrus, and now its Borbon….It would not suprise me if sometime this year we had Feliz or Holland in the rotation. It has become obvious that the Rangers want these young guys to experience their growing pains this year rather than next year.

3.The Rangers do not see Cruz in their plans. I think they are taking the approach that Cruz will need to blow them away in the spring to have a shot at making the club….Are we really going to keep 5 OF’s (ham, byrd, murphy, boggs, cruz) considering we will also have Hank stuck at DH and 2 catchers (tea and salt) that will both need lots of playing time….don’t forget we will also need a utility IF (vizquel or Duran). I guess they could keep Cruz and put Boggs in AAA, but I think Cruz as it stands right now is on the outside looking in.

Everyone is acting like Hamilton, Byrd, Murphy, and Blalock are each going to play 162 games this year. I know what Nolan said, but I imagine through injuries and reasonable resting that there should be at least 100 games available out of those 4 positions. Blalock isn’t the standard of perfect health, I’m not sure about Murphy’s minor league track record, but last year wasn’t a great year in terms of showing he can play every day and if Byrd is playing CF every day, I think it would be good to give him a day off every now and again. I would prefer to give Cruz all of those at-bats and make sure we do/don’t have a good hitter for 6 years than bringing up Boggs when he could use more tim in AAA. Does anyone think that Cruz wouldn’t be able to get into 100 games under that scenario?

has a very long column up with lots of good stuff particularly his discussion of the competition for the 19 remaining roster spots open throughout the league with 100+ free agents remaining and 227 guys currently out of options:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2009/02/01/captain_caught_no_interest/?page=1

He also notes that Littleton seems to be a lock for the bullpen.

He sucks…

aside from the wear and tear, I don’t think Hamilton is a very good center fielder. Then again, neither are any of the other guys until Borbon is ready.