Evan Grant writes that the Rangers have put Vicente Padilla on outright waivers. I am guessing this is in the hope that some team claims him and takes on his whole salary...Grant indicates that the Rangers are in the market to try to make some moves to add to their roster, but they have to clear salary first, because of the ownership situation.
So I'm guessing that if anyone wants Padilla, or possibly Hank Blalock, for free, they can have him, and the Rangers would dump one or both of those guys so that they could try to go after someone later in the year.
It is unfortunate that we're in a situation where the Rangers can't add salary without shedding salary, given that the team's payroll is already pretty low to start with...but on the plus side, it looks like Tom Hicks won't be owning the team much longer anyway, and hopefully, whoever buys from him will have the cash flow that will allow him to maintain a more respectable payroll.
UPDATE -- As a point of clarification, the way I read this is NOT that the Rangers are releasing him...rather, it is that they are putting him on waivers in the hopes that someone will claim him. If he goes unclaimed, then the Rangers would keep him, the same way they would with all the players that get put on waivers on August 2 of each year that go unclaimed.