Well, it's the Rangers preview and I'm feeling cheeky. Here goes...
THE TEXAS RANGERS
Pitching: How Kevin Millwood and Vicente Padilla won 31 combined games last year is beyond me. Neither are terrible pitchers but neither are great ones. And this is the bedrock of pitching staff that plays in a bandbox ballpark. No thank you. They're followed by Brandom McCarthy, a 23-year-old with one and a half years of major league experience who was quizzically traded to them this offseason from the Chicago White Sox, and the Robinson Tejeda/Bruce Chen/Kameron Loe/Jamey Wright four-headed monster at the back end of the rotation. Somewhere it's written that if Bruce Chen is logging innings for you it's time to pack it in for the season. I should know. Yes, I know the Red Sox made the ALCS that year, but sometimes jokes are allowed to supercede actual fact. Bullpen: The Eric Gagne experiment is underway and as fascinating as ever. Why a team like Texas would spend $6 million on a risky closer when they had a perfectly capable guy already and a rotation desperately in need of help at the back end is frankly none of my business so I'm going to stay out of it. Oh, and woman-beating, chair-throwing, Zen master Frank Francisco is still hanging around waiting for a female fan to enrage him sufficiently. An exercise in logic: Let's take as given that only professional wrestlers hit people with folding chairs and that all professional wrestlers are on steroids. If Frank Francisco threw a folding chair then it follows logically that Frank Francisco is a professional wrestler who is on steroids and should be suspended. You're welcome, Mr. Selig (note that THIS came up under a google image search for Bud Selig. Does that make Gene Orza Dudley Do-Right?)
Hitting: Instead of even pretending to properly address their hitting, I'm just going to rail on Texas for trading Chris Young and Adrian Gonzalez for Adam Eaton some more. What a horrible deal. The Rangers could have Young as their number 2 right now with Gonzalez DH'ing instead of overpaying Vicente Padilla and playing Russian roulette with Frank Catalanotto and Sammy Sosa. And speaking of Sosa, at some point this season two third of the Rangers outfield could be Kenny Lofton and Slammin' Sammy. Get Jon Daniels on the phone, I want to tell him it's not 1998. Oh, and the third third is Brad Wilkerson. This could be the least potent outfield in the American League even with Sammy's elephantine supply of HGH. Bright spots: Michael Young and Mark Teixeira are still Studly Studlersons. Semi-bright spots: 26-year-old Nelson Cruz will probably start the season in right field and 25-year-old Ian Kinsler is starting his second full season as the Rangers second baseman. Not-bright-at-all spot: Hank Blalock continues to descend into fantasy baseball irrelevance.
Miscellaneous: I don't think I would call the Rangers front office stupid, persay. They do a great job of player development, their entire infield is homegrown and they've churned out some pretty solid pitching prospects. But when it comes to making trades or decisions on the free agent market they're pretty f**king stupid. It's like Rain Man. He can count cards like a champion but ask him to talk to a waitress and he stares at his shoes and fidgets. Only Rain Man would pay the richest franchise in baseball, the Yankees, to take A-Rod off their hands and manage to only get a few seasons of Alfonso Soriano and Brad Wilkerson out of it. Think about it: Tom Hicks is responsible for $21 million of A-Rod's salary over the next three years. He could have bought a whole bunch of cowboy hats with that money.
Rangers-related Ridiculous Proposition Bet: N/A, they suck too much.
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