Another pretty upbeat day in Rangerland, as Evan Grant, Tom Singer and Dave Sessions all call Eric Gagne's session yesterday a big step forward. Grant also talks about Jamey Wright's situation and Akinori Otsuka scrapping his new delivery.
Tim Cowlishaw discusses the big picture as it involves Mark Teixeira. His feelings on Tex kind of mirror the way I felt about extending Michael Young, specifically that it might be the best idea to just let some more time pass and see how things play out.
Randy Galloway's column today lauds Otsuka's balanced attitude in regard to being "demoted".
Chris Kline has a BA subscriber piece
on how difficult it is to find and develop catchers and what a dicey proposition it is to draft them, especially catchers of the high school variety. The Rangers, at least at this point, don't have any elite catching prospects, but I think that they could find themselves in a very good position, much like their position with nice pitching depth. Behind Gerald Laird, who is still a few years away from free agency, they have newly acquired Chris Stewart, Emerson Frostad, Chad Tracy and Taylor Teagarden in the higher levels. And lower down they have a handful of fairly to very interesting guys, in Cristian Santana, Manuel Pina, Alberto Martinez and Billy Killian (Santana and Pina in particular). They've already used Mike Nickeas to pick up a right handed OF bat in Victor Diaz, and if they can have a little better fortune with injuries they could have the ability to deal from a very appealing strength.