Back into a tie for the Wild Card lead.
Anthony Andro says the Rangers pitchers were due to have a bad night, and it happened last night, with Scott Feldman and Jason Jennings both struggling.
It put a damper on the return of Pudge Rodriguez, who is apparently going to start tonight. I suspect the ovation when he comes to the plate for the first time will be one of the loudest that TBIA has ever heard.
Also in Andro's notes are updates on Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who won't need surgery and who hopes to return this season, and Jason Grilli, who is going on a rehab assignment this week and hopes to be activated this weekend.
Pudge coming to Texas means Kevin Richardson heads back to the minors, although Richardson says he understands that getting Pudge improves the team, and that's what it is about.
Kevin Sherrington says the Rangers blew it with Matthew Purke, that a team just can't afford not to sign its first round pick.
Mike Heika writes that Tom Hicks has until August 1, 2010, to satisfy creditors, rather than the October 1 date initially thought, so while the Rangers still apparently are likely to be sold, it isn't likely to happen until farther into the offseason.
Randy Galloway has a pretty remarkable column, stating that Matt Purke didn't sign with the Rangers because MLB wouldn't let it happen:
As of Tuesday, Purke was being hammered by some team apologists, and called greedy for going to TCU after reportedly turning down $4 million from the Rangers. And there are also organizational voices talking bad about him and his father, attempting to save their own butts. Not any of those voices, not that I heard, belonged to anyone on the Rangers’ baseball side. They know the truth.
The Rangers did make a $4 million offer to Purke, but without the approval of MLB. When the final word came down from MLB, the Rangers were told they could not pay the kid more than $2.3 million. Period.
Since Hicks no longer has the purse to control the purse strings, he has no say. And he also asked Tuesday not to be quoted publicly on any of this stuff, although his paid mouthpiece blogged in sympathy for Tom.
But even if the $4 million offer to Purke had been valid, it was a grandstanding gesture.
Purke was going to TCU, unless the team that drafted him paid in the $6 mil range. That was understood in June. If you don’t like it, don’t draft him.
There's also some stuff in there about the sale of the team, with Galloway saying both Hicks and MLB are insisting on $600 million (MLB doesn't want the price to go down and hurt the value of the other teams), and indicating that David McDavid is out and there appear to be no other interested groups on the horizon at that price, meaning that the Rangers would be a ward of MLB through next year.