Saturday a.m. Rangers things

So, the big news of yesterday in MLB was that there will be a second Wild Card team added for 2012. And Scott Lucas has a post showing how the Law of Unintended Consequences could end up making MLB's second Wild Card system look bad this October.

I can't get real passionate about this one way or the other. It may be that I grew up rooting for a team that never seemed to have a shot at the playoffs...I didn't see my favorite team make the playoffs until I was 25 years old. As a kid, I would have been fired up about the idea of more teams getting in, because it would have meant the Rangers' chances of making the playoffs would have gone from "snowball's chance in hell" to "remote." And the grown-up me has a hard time shaking that sort of ingrained mindset.

Adding a fifth team reduces the likelihood of the best team making the World Series, and that's a bad thing. But if you wanted to do that, you'd eliminate divisions, have two fifteen team leagues, and have one round of playoffs -- the World Series -- just like there was before 1969. I don't want to do that, either. Having five teams make the playoffs in a fifteen team league, when two of those five are basically playing a playoff game, doesn't offend me.

I'm sure if the Rangers gets screwed under this sort of scenario, though, I'll decide I hate it.

Evan Grant has a recap of yesterday's intrasquad game up here. Richard Durrett has one here.

Behind the paywall, Grant writes about Yu Darvish's debut. Richard Durrett writes about Darvish's inning of work. So does T.R. Sullivan.

In the S-T's notes about spring training, there's info about Neil Ramirez deciding he needed to bulk up for this season, and what he did to get to 215 lbs. from the 195 lbs. he ended last season at.

In the S-T's regular notes, there's talk about Brad Hawpe, Nelson Cruz, Adrian Beltre, and another intrasquad game on Monday.

Evan Grant writes that Neal Cotts, a lefty reliever originally drafted by the A's in 2001 who hasn't pitched since 2009, is impressing the Rangers early on in camp.

Mike Olt is getting some time at first base, but not much...Olt says it is about 90% third base this spring, 10% first base.

Durrett has his "Surprise Six" from yesterday.

Sullivan's notes talk about Hawpe, Cotts, Leonys Martin, Julio Borbon, and other stuff.