Anthony Andro has some notes up in the S-T, that touch on a variety of items, including Clay Rapada being released and John Rhadigan likely taking over as the Rangers play-by-play man for television.
Kevin Sherrington has a column on Manny Ramirez which doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. First of all, he says that the only reason that the Rangers should consider signing Manny Ramirez is because he has 29 postseason home runs, and the Ranger offense "wilted" in the World Series.
That ignores, though, that the Rangers scored 59 runs in the 11 games of the ALDS and ALCS. The Rangers offensed "wilted" in the World Series, it seems, because they ran into a San Francisco Giants team whose pitching staff was performing at an unbelievably high level for a period of two months. Manny Ramirez being on the Rangers in October wouldn't have changed the results of the World Series.
Second, Sherrington says that the Rangers need to sign Ramirez because he could take over as DH if Nelson Cruz or Ian Kinsler or Josh Hamilton misses significant time because of injury. He acknowledges that David Murphy is already here to fill that role, but says that Murphy really doesn't work because Ron Washington is big on players who have a "presence" in the lineup.
So Sherrington seems to be arguing that the Rangers should sign someone like Manny, who wants a big check and to play every day, so that he can sit on the bench and wait for someone to get hurt, despite the fact that you've already got a very good fourth outfielder in David Murphy.
It just doesn't add up, to me.
Look, if your position is that the Rangers can't go into the season with Mitch Moreland as the everyday first baseman, that they need depth and he should start the season in AAA with someone more experienced and reliable as the DH or 1B, that's understandable.
But then the solution is to sign Manny or someone like that to be the DH, make him the everyday DH, make Michael Young the everyday first baseman, and go back to the situation we had last year where your DH is a guy who will never play the field. It means that you can't use the DH to rotate players in and out of the lineup, and it means making Young a regular 1B rather than the super-utility guy he's been pitched as since Adrian Beltre signed, but that trade-off is worthwhile if the player being signed is good enough.
But it doesn't make sense to say, well, we need depth, so we're going to pay a guy several million dollars to come to Texas, but he isn't going to play every day, and he isn't ever going to play in the field. And we need to sign him because we need depth, because if Nelson Cruz or someone gets hurt, then David Murphy would be in the starting lineup, and he's not good enough.
And it made even less sense when the guy filling that role was someone like Jim Thome, who was lefthanded, just like Mitch Moreland and David Murphy and Julio Borbon, the guys who are most likely to lose playing time to this part-time sort-of DH.