Major League Baseball’s best individual blogger, Jamey Newberg (yes, he’s a registered Bauxite), the widely-acknowleged #1 fan of the Texas Rangers, took a day off from his daily Newberg Report e-mail updates this week, a breather after what was an admittedly crushing World Series dominance by the San Francisco Giants. There’s already a lot on the off-season table for the Rangers – who catches if Molina retires? Does Guerrero come back? Can Josh Hamilton stay healthy? And, oh by the way, how far north of $150 million is the new Greenberg/Ryan ownership group willing to go to hang on to ohmigod-we-have-an-ace-for-the-first-time-since-Fergie free agent lefty Cliff Lee?

But – wait on all that for a second. The Texas Rangers played in the World Series???

What follows is Jamey’s final screed on the 2010 season – warning, it’s 2,800 words long of passion-meets-brutal-logic, exactly what you’d expect from a brilliant corporate attorney like Newberg. It covers the Series, Lee and much more. If you want to see other Newberg Report archives or even subscribe to that e-newsletter (I do), information on how to do that is at the bottom of this post

Read on, Macduff. It’s worth your time!

Jonny German lays it all out for us. I love looking at stuff like this.

This is meant to be a debate, a beer-driven barroom discussion, a starting point for conversation; it’s an old argument, “who are the greatest players in MLB history?” – but  here, it’s divided into three sub-arguments:

·         Who are the greatest players ever at each position?

·         Who are the greatest players of my (your) lifetime at each position?

·         Who are the greatest active players at each position?

Note, “my lifetime” began in 1966, so for instance, I could technically slot Sandy Koufax into the LHSP position, but I am roughly defining that column (see table, next page) as “guys I remember." Define that differently for yourself if you like, but post your parameters so we know what they are.)

Now, onward to the projected lineup cards; although this is a matter of opinion, so you can’t technically tell me I’m “wrong” about any of these selections, please do let me know who you think I missed or overrated, or whatever …

Time for a new thread, hey? Let's mix it up a little with a Question of the Day spun from a comment posted in the original "at 3" thread by long-time and valued Bauxite 92-93:

" ... the Jays would look mighty impressive if they could pull off a way to acquire [Zack Greinke] without giving up Snider, Drabek, Marcum, Cecil, Romero, or Morrow.

That list of six names includes no less than (the magic number of) five starting pitchers. So think this through and answer as if we're heading into the 2014 season:

Drabek, Marcum, Cecil, Romero, Morrow

• Is this your '14 Jay rotation?
• If so, in what order are they slotted into, 1-5?
• If not, who's not in the rotational plans any more, and who has stepped up to fill (or take) that spot?
  

It's been a bit over a week since we last looked at what's been going on with the Peoria Javelinas, the Jays' shared AFL team.

The Blue Jays have scheduled a press conference for today at 3pm, presumably to introduce their new manager, John Farrell.  Even though the Jays have said nothing about the hire, the news flow out of Boston has been enough to take away the surprise from today's announcement.

We have our league champions. Rooting interests?

Ladies and Gentlemen of Batter's Box .... fans of the improbably unlikely ....

The Texas Rangers ... the Texas Rangers ...

{{choke}} (hang on, give me a sec ...)

The long-suffering, never-won-a-postseason-series-before-this-year Texas Rangers ...

... are going to the World Series. There are no further words.

 

John Farrell. DeMarlo Hale. Brian Buttefield. Sandy Alomar Jr. It is clear that the next manager will be one of these four men, but it is still not clear who. Farrell seems like the favourite, but this can be traced primarily to a Peter Gammons tweet which he has recently admitted was not as definitive as it originally appeared.

Though he was probably never a serious candidate for the Jay job, cross the name Eric Wedge off the lsit of potential new skippers in TO. The 101-loss Mariners tabbed the ex-Indian chief (Har!) for their club's managerial post today, one former backup backstop (Wedge) to replace another (Don Wakamatsu). Good hire?

UPDATE: The Cubs have retained Mike Quade as manager, dropping the "interim" tag from his title after he took over a 51-74 team and took them to a 24-13 finish in 2010.

Quade was never a candidate in the Jay search. But ... Ryne Sandberg, anyone?

Been wondering how the Jays' AFL players have been doing?

Bob Elliot has posted a helpful article detailing the over 20 names that the Jays have already or will be interviewing to be the team’s manager in 2011.

Okay, we here at Da Box -- for good reason -- have not posted a "Game Thread" since the Canada/South Africa World Cup game in March 2006. The last major league game thread was in May 2005. So let's see how this goes.

The Yankees are in the ALCS, and I take it as a given that every Bauxite here (except me) wants them to lose horribly and tragically. They're playing the (holy crap!) Rangers, my hometown team. For the record -- no, I haven't actually decided to root for one or the other, but rather will be in the awkward fan position of wanting both teams to do well. Hometown vs. long-time favorite? That's a no-lose, and I will definitely have a dog in this year's World Series hunt.

Most of the expert projections I have heard and read so far lean to the Yankees, giving them a position-by-position edge pretty much everywhere except CF (Hamilton over Granderson), RF (Cruz over Swisher) abd DH (Vlad over anyone the Yankees toss out there). Everyone gives bullpen and bench to the Yankees, and most give rotation that direction, too. I might disagree at shortstop, catcher (Posada has really fallen off a cliff, and I don't mean Lee, but speaking of Lee), maybe about the rotation too.

A final question -- and I don't know the answer or have any idea how to look it up. Tonight's starting pitching matchup, initially speaking, pits C.C. Sabathia against C. J. Wilson. Is this the first time in baseball history that a post-season game has posted two double-initial monikered guys against each other? Magpie, any thoughts?

Personal projection: the Rangers run wild on Posada, get two wins from Lee and one each from WIlson and Colby Lewis, and the Rangers advance to sure annihilation by the Phillies. (Can't quite break the long North Texas haseball habit of gloom and doom ...)

It's that time of year again... the time when I discover Da Box readers are way smarter than me so what am I doing writing anything.

Dane Johnson is a regular visitor with us here at Batters Box.  We last talked with Dane in June and while Dane was in town recently for the end-of-season awards we sat down with him to talk about the 2010 season.