Evan Grant has a new Rangers newsletter up...
A lot of good stuff in there...Grant says that Kevin Millwood has earned his paycheck this year, and deals with the inevitable Buck Showalter questions and the "mental toughness" stuff.
Grant also makes a point that I've been harping on for a while:
If the Rangers decide to trade Teixeira, they might as well do a full-scale Florida Marlins extreme makeover and trade Blalock and Michael Young, as well. Also, they should probably try to deal Kevin Millwood and Akinori Otsuka, and there would be no reason to keep Gary Matthews Jr., Mark DeRosa or Carlos Lee. They might end up getting a lot of young talent, but don't expect the playoffs for another two or three years - at a minimum.
Grant also says that, of the Rangers pending free agents, he'd offer arbitration to Lee, GMJ, DeRosa, Eaton, and Padilla. That leaves Barajas, Wells and JHJ in the "no arbitration" list.
A month or two ago, my position was that offering Barajas arbitration was a no-brainer, because he's almost certainly going to be a Type A free agent (yes, even with his mediocre numbers...Mike Matheny and Brad Ausmus have been Type As in recent years, after all), and because he'd almost certainly reject arbitration in favor of a multi-year deal.
Barajas's back situation, though, complicates matters. He's only been able to play twice so far in September because of his back problems, and given the demands of the catching position, I'm fearful that that may make potential suitors leery of giving Barajas a multi-year deal.
Which makes it more likely that Barajas could accept arbitration and seek a $4-5 million, one-year payday from the Rangers, which would put the team in something of a bind.