Tuesday morning Rangers things

the Rangers have a lot of depth in bullpen arms and it’s not something we should all be frantic about. Chris Ray looks good in the long run to me, even if he hasn’t thrown all that well at times thus far. Good stuff in that arm. And there are numerous options on the farm. O’Day has done his job, Nippert has been better than most realize here. Really, the bullpen has had some bigtime meltdowns that are coloring our overall perception of them. And they’ve been put in a bad position by Harden and Feldman a few times.

The bullpen troubles are a tad overblown, IMHO.

as does Phillips, whom I expect we’ll see sometime this summer.

I wish I wouldn’t have.

otherwise it would’ve ruined my morning. ;)

I didn’t do a full inspection after the fact.

What, are you afraid of girls, son?

yips aren’t incurable. It just seems that way because the cases of yips ruining a career are well documented but there are people that come back from it.

What’s more interesting is that he has a 952 OPS in AAA. More K’s than I’d like to see but still very good

Why not trade? Or are you assuming trade for this season, free agent in the offseason? I’d much rather see them acquire someone in trade, the options are better and younger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILFWDwVJQxs&feature=related

After Borbon caught the ball, the camera caught Feliz for a split second with an eyebrows-raised “Damn I’m lucky” expression.

The couple times I’ve met him, he seems like a nice guy, but also someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

I am sure if Nadel went to management and said Barnett had to go then he would be gone.

Nadel said it on the broadcast last night as well.

Showing bunt may be a way to throw off the pitcher with zero intention of actually bunting who knows. You get the defense to play in a little bit, maybe get the pitcher to throw a fastball since you are supposed to be bunting. Just showing a bunt means very little and last night he was bunting for a hit it was pretty obvious.

he’s pinch run for. Wash is an idiot. He does things out of habit, not strategy, like his continual chewing of sunflower seeds to appease his oral fixation.

Someone made the comment last night that if you’re really worried about defense you should be substituting for Young there, and I agree

Good point. Would MY ask for a trade during the game or would he wait until after the game?

You unfortunately can’t pull the 80 million dollar man

they just made questionable choices doing so in the bullpen. I’m not going to argue that Matsui was a poor choice, no matter what he does this year, that looked like a decent decision.

that they’ve got a fanpost up about the rumor that Texas is interested in AJ Pierzynski (please, no) and the consensus seems to be that Texas is a team whose roster is filled with d-bags and AJ would be just another douche.

that they don’t need to fill holes since their manager is a god. Just like Seattle didn’t need to actually put together a decent team since their GM is a god.

is definitely pushing it. But, his struggles right now are beyond ridiculous.

could be some innings insurance.

At least not when you know the phonetics of it.

I still think Harden has a lot of upside, if he can re-acquire his command. That Oakland game was amazing. The Toronto game was like slitting my wrists.

You evaluate decisions that turned out poorly to see what you might have missed at the time, of course, but you simply cannot use hindsight as your primary evaluation tool, idiot. The team knew the risks with Harden and decided his upside was worth it. Millwood is most probably a middling pitcher, and the team has plenty of those. It was a decision I supported, as did Nolan Ryan, btw, and still do.

You stake out a skeptical position on nearly every decision made by the GM so you can use hindsight combined with confirmation bias to “prove” you were right all along.

about the use of hindsight to evaluate the decision making process in my reply to Josey, I agree.

I disagree about Harrison, though. He’s the 4th piece in that deal so I can’t see how his former, current or even future status would affect that deal. They dealt for a ton of potential. Every pitcher carries lots of risk, so anything Harrison does or doesn’t do has basically zero effect on how I’d perceive that deal. Harrison still has potential, and still looks like the 4th piece in that deal, big whoop.

The Rangers were fully aware of the risks in both of these deals. The risk of Harden being injured was well known and they obviously considered it. Millwood looks likely to again have a poor 2nd half, based on his peripherals, wouldn’t surprise me. But whether or not he actually does wouldn’t change my perception of the decision making process that led to the deal. If Harden never pitched another inning it wouldn’t change my mind.

The team KNEW that was a possibility when they made the deal, so I can’t possibly see how anyone could point backwards and say they shouldn’t have made the deal on that basis. You CAN say that at the time you viewed the risk as too great and wouldn’t have made the deal because of it. But you can’t say that Harden’s performance so far proves they shouldn’t have made it. It does nothing of the sort. It merely demonstrates the known risks.