February 7 - Alejandro's Alternative Almanac: Looking Forward To Seeing The White Tank Mountains

Since Toby is busy on tour helping T.R. promote his new book,  we’ve awakened our friend Alejandro the Armadillo from a deep winter sleep to browse through another page of his almanac.

Alejandro ascends from digging beneath the gardens and front lawns of your friends and neighbors to take look at the eve of 2008 Spring Training.

The week ahead:  The equipment truck left Arlington for Surprise on Monday the 4th. Several players including the likes of Jason Botts and Ian Kinsler are in transit and will arrive in Arizona this weekend.  Pitchers, catchers, the owner, the new president, the GM , assorted front office types, a few hearty fans as well as the hordes of media officially report one week from today.  To badly paraphrase the prolific Paul Simon:  Spring Training is only a moment away.

To err is human, to forgive is divine:  Marla was wrong about Nolan Ryan and the Rangers on the last blog entry. Here’s hoping Mr. Hicks has an epiphany, steps out of the picture and allows Nolan and JD to do their jobs. 

Who were those guys?: Last week’s Name Those Former Rangers Prospects picture was correctly identified early on by Hefe300 as Jason Botts, Laynce Nix and Jose Morban. As everyone should know by now, Jason Botts just completed a very successful stint in the Mexican Winter League where he helped Obregon win the Mexican League Winter Championship. By the way, Scott Lucas has a sequence of pictures of Jason hitting a HR for Obregon on his website, scroll down to the 1/27/08 entry.

Laynce Nix remains with the Milwaukee Brewers organization where he’ll be competing with former Ranger heart throb Gabe Kapler as well as Corey Hart and his sunglasses for a spot on the 25 man roster this spring.   

After being picked by Baltimore in the 2002 Rule V draft, Morban was sent back to the minor leagues in 2004 playing for Baltimore, Cleveland, Seattle and returned for a very short stint with the Rangers at AAA OKC last season.  Jose was last seen playing with Aguilas this winter in the Dominican Republic.

Name That Former Prospect #4:  Alejandro knew last week’s picture was too easy, he dug deep – something he’s an expert at – to find this week’s prospect pictured on the left.

More Prospecting: Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus and Keith Law at ESPN.com both published their Top 100 Prospect Lists. There were seven Ranger prospects on each list, only Tampa Bay and the Red Sox had more.  But none of the Rangers prospects were ranked in the top 10.  RHP Neftali Feliz, who is only 20 years old, came in at #30 on BP’s list, while  another 20 year old - IF Elvis Andrus - ranked #31 on the ESPN list. Both players were acquired from Atlanta in the Mark Teixeira trade.   

Respected minor league evaluator John Sickels has two top prospect lists: 50 position players and 50 pitchers. Three Ranger position players and pitchers made his lists with RHP Eric Hurley at #12 on the pitchers list and C Taylor Teagarden at #15 on the position player list.  Baseball America also published its top 10 list of Ranger prospects this week with Elvis Andrus in #1 spot. 

However, Alejandro’s preferred list is from someone who invests more time in actually watching Ranger prospects than national writers, and includes better humorous references like the one in Wilmer Font’s profile. The one, the only Mike Hindman’s Top 20 Ranger Prospect list:( Part 1 and Part 2 )on his Rangers Farm Report Blog.

The Oracle of Bell Rd: "If our guys stay healthy, everybody has a chance to put us in a position to win on a nightly basis," Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said. "But health is going to be a big key."

Ranger Fans Are Not The Only Malcontents:  The Toronto Blue Jays front office's annual State of the Team meeting with season ticket holders was reportedly lively and at times rancorous.  The Blue Jays fans are restless, not having seen a playoff game since the 1980’s.   Manager John Gibbons was one of the main targets of criticism – prompting GM JP Riccardi to respond this way to one of the jibes: "We were built to have good years the last two years and we got decimated by injuries," he said. "If you brought Connie Mack back, he wouldn't get you 100 wins with those types of injuries. ... We have a lot of faith in John and I have a lot of faith in John and, obviously, you and I disagree, which is fine."

Cautionary Tale: SI’s Tom Verducci wrote an interesting article about pushing young pitchers, injuries, and protecting their arms.   He listed seven young pitchers who he thinks are at risk for injury this season. Of course, if Tom had read Will Carroll’s "Saving The Pitcher" first published in 2004 (now available in paperback) he’d have known about these issues 4 years ago.

Odds and Ends: In the one non-baseball note of the week: the Super Bowl game was actually more interesting than most of the commercials this year – although the Audi commercial was genius and probably only understood by viewers of a certain age…as mentioned last week our friend T.R. Sullivan has written a book with Mel Didier on Mel’s long and colorful career, you can read all about it on Monday's Postcards From Elysian Fields as well as place an order for the book which is now listed with MLB.com … Terry Francona on Johan Santana going to the Mets: "That ain't bad. I wish every pitcher would go to the National League," he said . "I can't lie about it. You don't want to face him five times."…Rangers OF Nelson Cruz playing for the Dominican Republic Licey Tigers in the Carribean World Series hit a game winning HR on Tuesday. Nelson’s overall winter league stats: .314 BA, .383 OBP, .476 SLG, 4 HR, 17 RBI’s… Fellow MLB Blogger Tim Kuda will interview Rangers broadcaster Tom Grieve on his sports talk show on Thursday February 14th ...Baseball America named the Rangers farm system as the #4 overall. That’s an enormous jump from last year when it was one of the worst at #28 out of 30 teams… from the Rangers press release on Nolan Ryan’s new job: “Ryan is the first Hall of Fame player named President of a Major League franchise since Christy Mathewson served as President of the Boston Braves in 1925. Ryan becomes just the third Hall of Fame Team President in Major League History, joining John Montgomery Ward (Boston-NL, 1912) and Christy Mathewson (Boston-NL, 1923 and 1925).” ...and finally thanks to Lisa Winston for mentioning us on her blog. We're a huge fan of her MLB Blog ATM: He Said - She Said as well as her work on MiLB.com

Birthdays:  Turning the page in the book of life this week:  current Ranger Scott Feldman is 25, once and future Ranger Jon Leicester is 29.  Rangers nemesis Vlad Guerrero turns 32 while Marla’s all-time favorite Ranger Pete O’Brien celebrates his 50th.  Ranger IF prospect Marcus Lemon’s dad Chet Lemon turns 53. One of the best names ever in baseball – Mookie Wilson - is 52 and “The Governor” Jerry Browne turns 42 - how many of you really know what Mark Holtz was referencing with that nickname?  Baseball's ultimate showman: the late, great, Bill Veeck was born in 1914 this week and former Yankee prospect Drew Henson is 28 – didn’t he have another job around here at some point?

Last Call: "What if I told you I've got interviews today at Home Depot and Bed, Bath and Beyond? I heard they've got guys from the Olympics working at Home Depot. So I was, like, 'Dude, I can carry a safe.' I have to believe I'd be one of the more agile people working there."  --Yankees non-roster invitee IF Morgan Ensberg

Da mihi sis cerevisiam dilutam (even Alejandro speaks Latin) -- Alejandro and Marla Hooch