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2020 Texas Rangers Offseason


CowtownHorn

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Here’s a lot of words about him. 

https://www.lonestarball.com/2020/6/5/21280876/texas-rangers-2020-draft-preview-justin-foscue

 

This comment made me laugh. 

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From MLB.com pre-draft writeup

"Foscue plays a game that is somewhat reminiscent of Jeff Kent"

So he’s gonna be an MVP, 5x all-star, and worth 55 Wins Above Replacement, huh?

Or after he was taken the MLB scout said he’s Logan Forsythe. So somewhere between a top 25 all-time 2B and a NRI level IF. Gotcha.

 

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from MLB.com's prospect ratings

The 50/50/40/50/50/50 line would put him somewhere around the 5-8th best 2B prospect in baseball. Other players with a 50 overall grade: Nick Solak (TEX), Michael Busch (LAD), Aaron Bracho (CLE), and Chase Strumpf (CHC).

Of course, many future 2B are currently SS prospects who will eventually be moved to 2B. Still, if Foscue becomes Solak, Busch, Bracho, or Strumpf I’d feel pretty good about the pick.

https://www.mlb.com/prospects/2b/

 

See? More Solak. 

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Scott Lucas this morning, probably the most honest writer we have. 

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2B Justin Foscue (Mississippi State, 6’0”, 195, 21 / 3) – I’ve seen Foscue anywhere from 13th to outside the first round in mocks, and writeups vary just as much. He’s performed very well in an elite conference. Is he a safe, low-floor batter with the potential to play third? A pull-heavy batter who disappointed in a wood-bat league and might not stick in the infield?

 

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A lot of Ranger fans aren’t happy we didn’t take the Chicago SS that went to the Cubs two picks later. 

The Cubs got the best shortstop in the Draft in Howard, a local kid from a Chicago high school. He’s a smooth defender who undoubtedly will stay at the position, and I think his bat is a little underrated. I think he can hit for some power and average, and he has some solid speed as well.

RH bats without a position ain’t exactly rare. 

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When even Adam Morris can’t suck off our brain trust, you know it’s bad. 

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With their second round pick in the 2020 MLB Draft, the 50th overall choice, the Texas Rangers have selected Tennessee high school outfielder Evan Carter.

This is the weirdest pick of the draft so far. Carter isn’t on the Baseball America top 500 draft prospect list, and no one on the MLB Network seems to know who he is.

He is listed at 6’4”, 190 lbs., is a left handed hitter, and is one of the younger players in the draft, not turning 18 for another few months. He’s a Duke commit, but obviously won’t be going to Duke.

I’ve got nothing here. I don’t know why they took Carter here. I’m baffled.

 

Edited by ss13
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https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/steve-chapman/ct-column-texas-rangers-brutality-statue-chapman-20200617-bani5arbkfh67onjd6a6mdl36m-story.html?int=lat_digitaladshouse_bx-modal_acquisition-subscriber_ngux_display-ad-interstitial_bx-bonus-story_______

 

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Column: MLB’s Texas Rangers should give up their name, which honors police force with brutal, racist history

The injustices of the present are forcing a confrontation with our past — a past wreathed in nostalgia and myths that conceal grim realities. The Civil War ended 155 years ago, but only recently have Americans begun renouncing flags, statues and monuments paying homage to Southern traitors. Other symbols of racist oppression are also under attack.

Lately the movement has gained momentum. A committee in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted to strip the names of Confederate generals from Army bases. Protesters in Richmond, Virginia, pulled down statues of Jefferson Davis and Christopher Columbus. The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, removed a statue of a Spanish conquistador.

In Texas, the shift has put one of the world’s most storied law enforcement agencies under harsh scrutiny. Dallas city and airport officials recently removed a statue that had stood at Love Field since 1962 — of a Texas Ranger.

The Rangers have always been widely revered in my native state. We learned they were fearless guardians of civilization whose exploits went back to when settlers were fighting Comanche warriors.

 

They were immortalized in Larry McMurtry’s novel, “Lonesome Dove.” There was a TV series that starred Chuck Norris. The Major League Baseball team in Arlington is called the Texas Rangers.

The legends omit a lot of the reality. A magisterial new book by journalist Doug J. Swanson, “Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers,” lays bare their long record of savagery, lawlessness and racism.

“They burned peasant villages and slaughtered innocents,” he writes. “They committed war crimes. Their murders of Mexicans and Mexican Americans made them as feared on the border as the Ku Klux Klan in the South.”

A century ago, during the fighting that took place along the border during the Mexican Revolution, blood flowed like the Rio Grande. “The terms ‘death squads’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ would not enter common usage for another 60 years or so,” Swanson notes, “but that was what the Rangers were and what they did.”

Later, they were a bulwark acting to hold back racial equality. When black students tried to enroll in the segregated Texarkana Junior College in 1956, angry white people barred the way, hurling gravel and racial slurs and forcing the students to leave. The Rangers stood idly by.

The message to racists, said a member of the Texas Civil Rights Advisory Committee, was plain: “If you will only assemble a mob, or threaten to do so, the power of the Texas Rangers will be on your side to deny civil rights to school children.”

When farmworkers, most of them Mexican American, went on strike in 1966, some were beaten and arrested by Rangers. An old saying is, “Every Texas Ranger has Mexican blood. It’s on his boots.”

The revelations in Swanson’s book were the impetus to take down the Love Field statue. That decision is a good start in coming to grips with the Rangers’ poisonous past. But the baseball club still carries the name of an agency that struck terror in many nonwhites.

This is not, it turns out, a new issue. Domingo Garcia, a former Dallas City Council member who is national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, recalls that when the Washington Senators baseball franchise moved to Arlington after the 1971 season, the group held demonstrations to protest naming the team after the Rangers. “We’ve been the victims of Texas Ranger violence since the 1800s,” he told me.

Benjamin Johnson, a Texan and history professor at Loyola University Chicago, acknowledges that the Rangers no longer murder people or block integration. “But for most of their nearly 200 years of existence, they have been an instrument of white supremacy in Texas,” he says.

In light of all this, the name, like the Confederate names on Army bases, deserves to be relegated to the garbage dump of history. It’s an undeserved tribute that reflects a widespread ignorance, at best, of the Rangers’ malignant past.

It may be argued that the team name honors the current agency, not the worst elements of its history. But without the history and the legends, the franchise would not have adopted the name. No one would name a major league team “The Police” or “The Highway Patrol.”

The Rangers name is an affront to Hispanics, African Americans and anyone who favors racial equity. It should be an intolerable embarrassment to the owners and fans. Even Quaker Oats’ Aunt Jemima brand had to go. And Aunt Jemima never murdered anyone.

 

 

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Haven't seen much about Rangers UDFA signings, which is odd considering these should include a lot of pretty good prospects who would have been drafted as high as the 6th round.

Baseball American put up a top 20, showing the Phillies raking in a bunch of them, no sign of Rangers.

This is the most updated list I could find of Rangers post-draft rookie signings. I don't know squat about them.

Rangers
Fernando Amaro, C, PJ Education School, Cidra, P.R.
Nick Krauth, RHP, Connecticut
D.J. McCarty, RHP, Temescal Canyon (CA) HS
Connor Sechler, RHP, Drury
Brady Smith, C, Florida
Colton Snyder, RHP, Concordia
Josh Stephan, RHP, Grand Prairie (TX) HS
Justin Tejeda, OF, Central Pointe Christian Academy (FL)

 

 

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This was my favorite write-up. 

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Colton Snyder, RHP, Concordia University Irvine

He is a 6-foot-3 righty who pitched 16 innings over five appearances for Concordia this year, allowing eight runs on 15 hits and 10 walks with 11 strikeouts. He was followed by area scout Steve Flores, who called Snyder at 6 a.m. PT on Sunday, the official beginning of the signing period for undrafted free agents.

https://www.mlb.com/news/rangers-undrafted-free-agents

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Almost like fired on his day off. 

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Texas Rangers reliever Joely Rodriguez has a lat injury, per the beat guys on Twitter. The lefthanded relief pitcher suffered the injury in April.

Rodriguez is on the 40 man roster, having been signed to a major league deal this offseason. He put up a 1.85 ERA in 87.2 IP over 90 games for Chunichi in the Japanese League over the second half of 2018 and all of 2019, and upon deciding to return to the United States, he had several teams pursuing him, with the Rangers ultimately landing him on a 2 year, $5.5 million deal.

Rodriguez is reportedly expected to not be ready for the late-July start to the season, but is expected back before the end of the year. His absence potentially opens the door for Taylor Hearn or Joe Palumbo to have a meaningful role in the bullpen to start the year.

 

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This short season is actually good for us. Our top 4 SPs, if healthy, are fine. A team with relatively shitty depth will get exposed over 162, but you can kinda fake it through 60. We need to clean up against Sea, SF, & Col, then hold our own against the rest.

Of course we could also open 4-16 or some shit & be done by mid-August. Who the hell knows in this fucked up year. 

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On 6/19/2020 at 2:33 PM, Don Johnson said:

This makes me sad.  I have always loved the name, and felt it was one of the best among all the major sports.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I had no idea of the history of the organization for which the team was named.  If all of that is true (I have no reason to doubt any of it), then I would be all for changing the name.  I can't imagine calling them anything else.  I'm not feeling very creative at the moment.  "Texas Racists" probably isn't the way to go. 

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First base remains open, Woodward said. Ronald Guzmán and Greg Bird, both left-handed hitters, are competing for the spot, but Woodward brought up the possibility of third baseman Todd Frazier moving to first either part or full-time.

That would happen if Woodward feels Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Nick Solak or Matt Duffy have earned playing time at third. Switch-hitting Blake Swihart and Sam Travis, a right-handed hitter, remain wild cards.

Woodward said if someone like Solak or Kiner-Falefa comes out swinging, it will be hard to keep them out of the lineup. Danny Santana enters summer camp as the center fielder, but his versatility gives the Rangers options. So does veteran utility player Rob Refsnyder, another option that intrigues Woodward.

“The two things I look at are guys who are fearless when they are on the mound and on the field,” Woodward said. “If they are fearless and competitive, some of these guys are going to play bigger roles than you think. I'm excited to see some of those faces coming soon.”

 

Do not play Solak at 3B, jesus fuck. 

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The roster reminds me of the hodgepodge lineups of the late 80’s. Buncha nobodies with some washed up former all stars. Can win some games, but can’t compete for shit. Not this year, not next year, not year after that, or year after that. 

After some really fun years, I’m pretty down on this outfit. Gonna be a long time until they matter again. Stadium blows. Owners seem to have given up on the investment too. 

Hope I’m wrong. Hope I’m very wrong. 

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On 6/25/2020 at 10:58 AM, Gucci_Suit said:

I’m still angry about this:

 

EC7A8B35-5C30-474E-896A-935185A2F073.png

The exterior of this stadium is one of the worst in sports. Any sport. I put it on par with Tropicana Field in Tampa. I'm sure it will look fine inside but holy shit it looks like we play in a big barn.

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Long article from Grant on possible roster construction. 

https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/rangers/2020/06/27/rangers-spring-training-part-2-projecting-the-opening-day-30-man-roster-3-players-on-the-hot-seat-and-more/

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Roof open or not, it’s bound to get a little bit uncomfortable around Globe Life Field for these guys, who could see their roles change or their spots in jeopardy:

Rougned Odor: Manager Chris Woodward said he couldn’t afford to give players much slack in the restructured season. Back in February, he said Odor had less slack than ever before. Combine the two and it’s not a great situation for a guy with a .181/.249/.306/.555 slash line through the schedule’s first month over the last three seasons in which to find himself.

Jeff Mathis: If the season had gone off as planned, the Rangers could very well have moved on from Mathis by mid-July and created more opportunities for Jose Trevino. The same still applies. Only thing that’s different: The Rangers owe Mathis less now (just under $1 million) than they did. Easier to write off.

Elvis Andrus: It was hard to envision much weight behind the step-it-up-or-else ultimatum the Rangers handed him after last year. In a 162-game season because how are you going to bench a guy with a $15 million salary? Not so unrealistic for a 60-game stretch, though. And with only $5 million due to him this year? Third base isn’t the only spot where Isiah Kiner-Falefa is a threat; he might be the better-fielding shortstop too.

 

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I've been a fan of this team since they  moved to Arlington from DC, and probably still have a Dr. Pepper Jr. Rangers membership card and Jeff Burroughs signed mini-bat somewhere around here.  I have never given up on any team, always having been a "fan for life" person. 

That said, I find this team challenging my faith.  For the first time in my life, I am considering dumping a franchise from my lineup.  One would think that if I can put up with Jerry Jones for this long, I can tolerate anything.  Between a mascot that appears to be steeped in racism, to the fucking disaster that is the new stadium, to the complete lack of any discernible plan to improve the product on the field, to a roster that is devoid of role models and likeable personalities...there's nothing here to generate any optimism whatsoever. 

Maybe it's the age of COVID making it difficult to find excitement in anything right now, but fuck, this team is beating what little joy I have right out of me. 

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