Jon Daniels clearly identified the Rangers’ approach at the start of the offseason: they wanted pitching, and a lot of it. The team couldn’t reel in its leviathan (Shohei Otani), but today they added another arm that was once almost as highly-regarded. The Rangers have traded minor league pitchers Sam Wolff and Israel Cruz to […]
Furniture, Pete Incaviglia, and the Ohtani Splitter: the Incredible Odyssey of Chris Martin
December 11th, 2017: The MLB backdrop at the ballroom on the second floor of the Swan and Dolphin—hung this morning behind Alan Trammell and Jack Morris—has been taken down. In its place, a Yankees backdrop has been raised. Giancarlo Stanton is receiving his #27 jersey from the Yankees and taking questions from the media. Meanwhile, […]
Winter Meetings Day Five: Rule Five.
“I have forgotten the sun,” one team official texted yesterday from a secluded suite high above the sprawling central Florida complex “where dreams come true”. So have the rest of us—Florida has spent the Winter Meetings trying to freeze us into skepticism about its nickname. Now it is Thursday morning. Team officials and media and […]
Scouting report: Carlos Tocci, Rangers’ Rule Five Addition
With the fourth pick in the Rule 5 Draft, the Chicago White Sox selected Phillies outfield prospect Carlos Tocci. We learned a few minutes later that Tocci was actually being selected by the Rangers, who had purchased Tocci’s rights for yet-to-be-disclosed cash considerations. Despite being a name prospect since shortly after he signed with the […]
Winter Meetings Day 4: On Being and Nothingness
If I properly understood the premise, Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that nothingness was not simply the absence of something, but a something unto itself. When you are aware of loss, it is more tangible than simply the acknowledgement that something or someone is no longer in your presence. The hole ripped in your being by their […]
The Zack Greinke Recon Mission
Approximately thirteen seconds after posting my article about yesterday’s comments by Chris Gimenez, the news cycle nodded politely and moved on to bigger things: Zack Greinke might be moving eastward. I spent the evening in the hotel lobby asking new friends what they were hearing. One guy with ties to the Diamondbacks front office told me […]