FanHouse JOn Daniels

In a letter to his mailbag on Thursday morning, Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram fielded a question from a reader who hoped the Rangers would sit Kevin Millwood down for the rest of the regular season to save $12 million. The question came from Bob from Plano, Texas, who is either not a Rangers fan or a pseudonym for team owner Tom Hicks.

There's not much other explanation for why you'd want Millwood to finish short of the 180-inning mark that triggers his option for the 2010 season. The team is two games behind the Red Sox for the wild card and Millwood is one of their five best starters. You don't play games in that situation, and the Rangers said Thursday that they weren't considering turfing Millwood.

Piecing together parts and sellers at the trade deadline can sometimes be easy. We know the Blue Jays are willing to explore trade options for Roy Halladay. We also know the Texas Rangers need pitching and that they have a farm system that's brimming with talent. So if we do the math here, it's not surprising to hear that the Rangers have inquired about Halladay.

According to the story, the Blue Jays are demanding Justin Smoak, maybe the best hitting prospect in the minor leagues right now, and two "good young starting pitchers" to go with him. Presumably, at least one of those two pitchers is either Neftali Feliz or Derek Holland. That's an awfully steep asking price that I'm not sure Rangers' GM Jon Daniels would be willing to pay, which is likely why the Rangers are still classified as "dark horses."

So far this season it seems like the Chicago White Sox have been trying to go back in time. After getting off to a bad start to the 2009 campaign, the Sox went out and signed Scott Podsednik to a minor-league deal -- even though most scouts would have told you he was done. Well, it's worked out pretty nicelyl for Chicago as Podsednik is back on top of their lineup and playing surprisingly well.

Then, this week the White Sox signed another player from their 2005 team who most people think is washed up: Freddy Garcia. It seems like the team thinks if they get as many players as they can from 2005 they'll win another World Series. Which is why it's too bad that the Rangers had to go and destroy Chicago's "brilliant" plan.

BALTIMORE – The Texas Rangers are changing. The arrival of 22-year-old left-handed pitcher Derek Holland in the majors is merely one of the first signs.

You wouldn't know changes are afoot on a steamy Monday night as Texas wraps up a four-game series against the Orioles. It is hot – game-time temperature at Camden Yards is 89 degrees – but not especially humid. In other words, it is only a small taste of what awaits Rangers pitchers this summer in Arlington, where the heat on the field for a day game often hits triple digits.

The Rangers are already pitching like it is the middle of summer. They are surrendering home runs at a breakneck pace, and Monday night's starter Matt Harrison allows four runs in the first two innings before the Texas lineup, as it has proven so capable of doing, hits him out of trouble.

When Andruw Jones turned down the New York Yankees offer of a minor-league contract because he was holding out for a team to give him a Major League contract, it seemed a bit laughable. After all, for the last year the only thing anybody has said about Jones is that he's fat and no longer good at baseball. Claims that can be backed up by the Dodgers paying him money to just go away and the fact that his winter league team cut him.

Well, it appears as though Jones may get the last laugh on all of us. Word out of Texas is that the Rangers are seriously considering giving Andruw a shot at centerfield.

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

Michael Young's time with the Texas Rangers has been punctuated by him making personal sacrifices to help better the team. After years as a good second baseman for the team with both the stick and the glove, he didn't have a problem when he was asked to move to shortstop in the wake of the Alex Rodriguez trade and the subsequent arrival of Alfonso Soriano. Sure, Young's offensive numbers didn't quite stand out at short quite like they did at second base, but it was about the team, not Michael Young

Since his move he's won a Gold Glove and has been named to the AL All-Star team five times. Well, now the Rangers would like him to make another sacrifice and move from shortstop to third base so they can make room for prospect Elvis Andrus. Only this time Young isn't down, and he's told the Rangers he's stood all he can stand and that he can't stand no more. He wants to be traded.

So where are the Rangers going to send him?

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

When you're the Texas Rangers, and you have a grand total of one playoff win in 47 years of existence, there's little place to go but up. Thanks to GM Jon Daniels' dilligent work in the draft and in last year's Mark Teixeira and Eric Gagne deals, that's just the direction in which they're headed.

There are a lot of things to feel good about in Arlington these days, actually. The Rangers had the best offense in the American League last year and could conceivably be better in 2009. The farm system is overflowing with talent and almost certainly one of the five best in the game. There's even optimism about the return of Nolan Ryan as the team's president.

If you're looking for a club that could make a Rays-like rise in the near future, the Rangers might be the best candidate. The question isn't if, but when they make their presence felt, and the answer to that query will determine in part how aggressive Texas is this winter.

The Texas Rangers are getting ready to finish another season in which they failed to make the playoffs, but the end of the season for the players will mark the beginning of the 2009 season for Nolan Ryan. Nolan took over the job as King of the Rangers before the season started, but for the most part this year, he kind of stayed in the shadows observing what he had to work with.

That all should change once the season ends, as apparently Nolan didn't like what he saw all that much, and he plans on making some changes this offseason.

For those of us who think it also should be firing time in Texas, all Ryan would say Thursday was, "I'm currently formulating a plan for next season, and once the final decision has been made, we will move forward from that."

"I can guarantee one thing. We are going to change the way things have been done around here."

That can't sound too comforting for both general manager Jon Daniels and manager Ron Washington. If Nolan wants to start building the Rangers in his own image, he's probably going to want to bring in his own general manager and manager, and Daniels and Washington aren't those guys.

Good pitching is hard to come by these days -- and if you're the Rangers, merely adequate pitching is just as rare. Nevertheless, GM Jon Daniels considered Sidney Ponson such a distraction that not even Ponson's 3.88 ERA could save him from being released. That should set off a few red flags, no? Apparently not in Houston. From Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle:

[A] few Astros players asked me to strongly encourage the Astros to sign Ponson. I don't usually like to do the players' bidding, but heck, I need a blog entry. So here we go.

"We need that guy," one friend of Ponson's said. "We could use him. He's a good teammate."

Would you mind if the Astros signed Ponson? Keep in mind that he must have really, really screwed up for the Rangers to designate him for assignment. [...] But if Ed Wade or Drayton McLane or Cecil Cooper polled their clubhouse, they'd find some guys who would offer huge endorsements for Ponson as a player, a competitor and even as a person.

Yes, that's right: "Ponson" and "good teammate" were used in the same sentence, and apparently not in an ironic manner. Is he worth the risk?

When Rangers third baseman Hank Blalock went on the disabled list back on April 29th, not much was going right in Arlington. The Rangers were 9-18 in last place of the AL West, there were rumors beginning to swirl that manager Ron Washington was on the verge of losing his job, and Blalock's injury was just another indicator that it was going to be a long season for the Rangers.

Then the Rangers won 13 of their next 18 games without Blalock to improve to 22-23, and are now only 3.5 games out of first place. Having a front row seat for those games, Hank saw first hand the improved play and chemistry his team was showing, and he doesn't want to mess it up. That's why when he returns from the DL, he'll be playing first base.

The two-time All-Star third baseman figured the best way to help a lineup that has clicked in his absence was to switch to first base, where production has been a problem for the Rangers since Mark Teixeira's departure last July. So Blalock made the suggestion to Ron Washington on Friday, and general manager Jon Daniels agreed it was a good idea.

"I'm not doing anything to benefit myself here," Blalock said. "It's a new position for me, so I'm not sure how I'll do over there. Just watching the guys and how well we were playing, it crossed my mind."