Batter up: Texas Rangers

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a baseball team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things that are tangentially about each team. At bat: The Texas Rangers.

1. Owner Tom Hicks says it's a "non-event" that he didn't make a payment on a $525-million US loan and it's all part of a negotiating strategy. Please don't try this at home if you have student loans with a Canadian bank; they'll take your thumbs. Hicks, according to ever-reliable Phil Rogers, might sell 49 per cent of the Rangers.
   
   
2. Josh Hamilton's 130-RBI season was well-earned; his quote, unquote RBI percentage of 20.7% was second in the majors to Kansas City's David DeJesus, of all people. Your guess is as a good as any as to what Hamilton will do for a follow-up.
   
   
3. There is a lot to like about the Rangers, but probably not this summer. Their farm system is deep. It's just a matter of when righty Neftali Feliz and lefty Derek Holland become a 1-2 punch par excellence, like Edinson Volquez and John Danks might have been if Texas hadn't traded each of them.
   
   
4. There will be a good game of Guess The Attendance come July and August when the Rangers are out of contention, the NFL's Cowboys are in training camp and the U.S. economy is still going the way it's going.
   
   
5. Twenty-year-old Elvis Andrus is opening the season as the starting shortstop. It seems a bit much to expect him to hit much this season.
   
   
6. Michael Young won a Gold Glove and was bumped from short to third base, but it's pretty standard knowledge it was a bad pick. Even Derek Jeter had a higher UZR, for pity's sake.
   
   
7. In a world gone mad, you need immutables, like knowing the Rangers are usually a good bet to have the worst team ERA in the majors (5.37 last season).
   
   
8. Ian Kinsler, who hit .319/.375/.517 and scored 102 runs during an all-star season in '08, is continuing a noble tradition of productive second basemen who came to play, not to stay. The Rangers have had some heavy hitters play second, such as Young, Julio Franco and Alfonso Soriano, but the franchise leader in games played at the position is Bump Wills. Kinsler, going by his UZR, might have to be bumped to another position.
   
   
9. More than one Texas media outlet has reported the Rangers play nine of their first 12 games against teams which were below .500 last season, implying they'll get on a roll and contend all season. Urgent, much?
   
   
10. Finding out DH Hank Blalock is only 28 brings to mind those college basketball players who seem like they've been around for eight years. His stats from the past two seasons (.290/.347/.524, 35 doubles, 22 homers in 466 at-bats) suggest he can still contribute if his surgically repaired shoulder allows him.
    
    
11. Leftfielder David Murphy absolutely raked when he came up in late 2007, which might have created unrealistically high expectations. His batting average on balls in play after he joined the Rangers was above .400 (the mean is around .290; everyone finds it eventually).
    
    
12. Neftali Feliz was the highest-ranked right-handed pitcher in The Baseball Prospectus Top 100 Prospects, coming in at No. 6 on the overall list. He gets some good leg drive, doesn't he?
    
    
    
    
    
    
13. Vicente Padilla was the team leader in ERA last season at 4.74. His runs average was 5.26 (some sources are realizing it's a silly tradition to let the pitcher totally off the hook for runs that were scored thanks to fielders' errors).
    
    This will be a good point of reference when Feliz and Holland are blowing away the competition in a few seasons.
    
    
14. Rightfielder Nelson Cruz will probably put up some Texas-sized counting stats over the next few years, although the era of foolish franchises overpaying for that kind of player are over.
    
    
15. Catcher Taylor Teagarden is not related to Aimee Teegarden (Friday Night Lights' Julie Taylor), insofar as they spell their names differently.
    
    The stock line with Teagarden is Mickey Tettleton with Gold Glove catching and throwing skills (yep, Baseball Prospectus again, like Stone Phillips, there's nothing they don't know).
    
    
16. By The Beep's reckoning, their starting rotation has ranked 12th, 13th, or 14th in the AL for 10 years throwing. That's mediocrity you can set your watch to (and it's also exactly the same as No. 7, so don't bother pointing that out).
    
    
17. Their Double-A team is the Frisco RoughRiders, which means there is yet another way to spell that name.
    
    
18. They once had an owner, Eddie Chiles, who was noted for the slogan for his energy supply company: "If you don't have an oil well, get one!"
    
    
19. Manager Ron Washington reportedly does not have the authority to pick his coaching staff, which doesn't augur well for his long-term employment.
    
    
20. Hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo was the first recipient of Baseball America's Major League Coach of the Year award. Rebuilding Andruw Jones' swing (not to mention his strike-zone judgment) would be his greatest project.
    
    
21. Derrick Turnbow, who was at one-time a lights-out closer for the Brewers, is somewhere in the recesses of Texas' farm system. He was named in the Mitchell Report, which does make one wonder how much eagerness there is to bring him back up.
    


22. Omar Vizquel, at 42 years old, is twice starting shortstop Elvis Andrus' age. A big yes-but whenever someone argues the 11-time Gold Glove winner should be in the Hall of Fame is that he only received one MVP vote his entire career.
    
    Someone somewhere thought Vizquel was the eighth-best player in the AL in 1999. Matt Stairs got a ninth-place vote that season, for Pete's sake.
    
    Ozzie Smith got into Cooperstown primarily on his fielding work, but he collected MVP votes in six seasons and was runner-up once.
    
    
23. You can't talk about the Rangers without talking about the Cowboys, who dominate the sporting interesting in Dallas/Fort Worth. The scoreboards at the new Cowboys stadium, will cost more than it did to build their old stadium in 1971. They'll measure 160 by 71 feet and be suspended over the field. It's either disgusting or it's nirvana.
    
    
24. Dubious Rangers trivia: The franchise has been around since 1961 and has not been in the World Series; they also have the longest post-season losing streak at nine games, dating back to October 1996.
    
    
25. You're not ready for ball season until you listen to Brad Holman, a pitching coach in the Rangers system, perform The Loyal Fan. You're just not.
    
    
    
    

The real loser in potential Habs sale? Montreal soccer fans

Huge news today that Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett is officially trying to offload at least a portion of the team [Sean Gordon, The Globe and Mail]. The timing's certainly unfortunate for the Canadiens, given their recent struggles and coaching turnover in the midst of what was supposed to be a glorious centennial season. It's likely that the sale won't matter all that much for Montreal hockey in the end, though; this is the league's most storied franchise and one that successfully dominates not just its local market, but its entire province. The idea of moving the team can't be in the cards, unless the dealer is an absolute moron.

The real potential losers here are Montreal soccer fans. Keep in mind that Gillett was responsible for much of the money backstopping the Montreal Impact's bid for MLS status. Given that the Globe story mentions that Gillett may also be looking to offload his interests in Liverpool FC and NASCAR, it's hard to see him having an interest in supplying the financing for Montreal to make another run at one of the 2012 expansion slots.

That's too bad, as the Impact will need all the money they can get. As the Canadian Guys pointed out on the weekend, Stade Saputo is not an acceptable MLS stadium in its current 13,000 seat incarnation. Renovations to make it a 20,000-seater were discussed this fall, but they're going to be expensive. Although Joey Saputo stated firmly after Montreal's withdrawal that the partnership "never, at any point, had any trouble whatsoever financing its bid," it's looking more and more like that may not have been the case; Gillett's troubles with Liverpool were in full swing by that point, and the economy was already in the tank. Of course, Saputo's words may well be technically correct; they may not have ever had trouble financing their proposal of $43 million Canadian (as reported by Ben Knight back in his Globe days), including construction costs, but it seems that they were unwilling or unable to come up with the $40 million U.S. franchise fee. You have to wonder if part of that was perhaps due to Gillett becoming uneasy about investing more in sports at a time when he was already facing a cash crunch at Liverpool.

This is not meant to paint Gillett as a villain. In fact, as portrayed in Stephen Brunt's columns, he comes off as the sort of man you'd want as an owner; not stingy with the wages or the stadium expansions and respectful of cherished traditions. His Liverpool counterpart Tom Hicks is quite a different story, but Gillett seems to care about sports and to do so for the right reasons. Obviously I can't know his motivation for trying to sell his sports interests now, but given the global economic turmoil, the possibility exists that it might not have been his choice under better circumstances. He was a great owner for the Canadiens, and he should be remembered as such; he also supported the idea of MLS soccer in Montreal and he deserves praise for that.

The question for any future Montreal bid for MLS status is if they can find someone willing to take Gillett's place, and they'll have to do it soon. As Ives reported, MLS wants to add two more teams in 2012. If we presume the same two-year gap between expansion announcements and starting play, that would mean that the next two cities would be decided about a year from now. That's not a lot of time for Montreal to find an investor willing to pony up the cash for stadium renovations and the full franchise fee. Plus, it may even be more expensive this time. Yes, Vancouver got in for $35 million in the end, but they had significant leverage on their side; there weren't a lot of promising bids left at that point, and as Marc Weber of the Vancouver Province pointed out, there's quite a difference between his estimate of the $24 million that Montreal offered (which may even be generous considering construction costs in Montreal) as a franchise fee and the $35 million the Whitecaps paid. Montreal has no such leverage, and they may even be starting from less than zero given the ugly public ending to their last MLS bid.

Meanwhile, the USL is looking less and less attractive for Montreal. Seattle's already left, and Vancouver and Portland are soon to follow suit; there go three of the marquee teams. Plus, Vancouver in MLS means there will be less Canadian media coverage of Montreal and the USL; they'll probably still get local write-ups, but the national soccer narrative is likely to focus on the MLS teams (especially if they get a good national TV deal). That doesn't mean that the USL won't still be viable, but it's going to look more and more small-time down the road. If I was a Montreal soccer fan, I would be hoping like hell that the Impact find a wealthy investor to replace Gillett and get a solid bid together for the 2012 round of expansion. If they don't, soccer in Canada may pass them by.

More details on Montreal emerge

Further information on the no-MLS-for-Montreal situation has come out since my last post on the subject, thanks once again to Ben Knight of The Globe and Mail's On Soccer blog. The devil may be in the details, and if so, he's hiding after the jump.

First, some quotes from Impact owner Joey Saputo at his aforementioned press conference Monday:

“First: Montreal never at any point withdrew its bid from the process. We were rather informed that our bid was not retained.
Second: The Montreal partnership never, at any point, had any trouble whatsoever financing its bid.
Third: There was never any question of using public funds to finance this project.”

The second point is the most interesting new information here. My earlier speculation was that this might have been due to financial struggles on the part of George Gillett, Saputo's partner in the bid and the owner of the Montreal Canadians and co-owner of Liverpool FC (which is having financial problems of its own [Roy Collins, The Times of London]. Basically, what Saputo's saying here is that the amount Montreal was willing to pay was sustainable and did not change; what changed was the league's willingness to consider it (and also the drop in the Canadian dollar, which made the Saputo/Gillett bid worth a lot less).

On the financial details front, the league asked for expansion fees of $40 million U.S. Montreal apparently offered $43 million Canadian, including stadium renovations. Considering that the Canadian dollar was reasonably close to par at this point, this was probably a reasonable offer; not quite what the league was looking for, but close enough that they might have been able to work something out.

The Canadian dollar has tanked since then, though, losing close to a fifth of its value. As Knight writes, "That effectively means the Impact were bidding about $34.4-million (U.S.), minus whatever rebuilding a stadium costs in a town where construction expenses are – at best and most charitable – imprecise."

Look under "Stadium, Olympic" if you want an example of that imprecision. Presuming that the other cities were ponying up the asked-for $40 million franchise fee in addition to stadium costs, it's not hard to see why MLS would drop Montreal from consideration. It's interesting that they did so publicly, though; might it not have made better business sense to have everyone think that Montreal still had pole position in the expansion race, compelling them to sweeten their own bids? This also looks bad on Saputo and Gillett, as they're now seen somewhat as cheapskates who didn't want to pay the required price. It would have been a better situation for MLS commissioner Don Garber to quietly tell the Montreal guys that their bid wasn't sufficient at its current level, but then have both sides keep that information under wraps and just announce that Montreal wasn't one of the selected cities when the decision was eventually made. That way, both sides save face.

Knight argues that this makes some sense for Montreal, and I tend to agree. As I wrote back in September, their current situation is pretty good. Not joining MLS may hurt them in the long term, but unlike many of the cities in this expansion race, they have a very tenable fallback position. This position is certainly strengthened by their success in the CONCACAF Champions League; they've proved they can play with bigger clubs, and they can offer potential players a large and supportive crowd and a chance to play international soccer. MLS would be great for Montreal and great for the Impact, but they aren't compelled to try and get in at any price.

However, I'm not sure that the MLS expansion fees are as ludicrous as Saputo seems to be claiming. Perhaps $40 million plus stadium building/renovations is too steep in this economic climate, but there are six cities that seem willing to pay that (and the majority, if not the entirety, would likely face steeper stadium costs than Montreal). It's supply and demand, and MLS is in a very good position here; they have several strong bids to consider for only a couple of slots, so they can play the cities off against each other and force them to keep raising the stakes. Montreal wasn't interested in that game, and that's fine; they have less to lose than any of these other cities, given their existing stadium, strong supporter base and CONCACAF success. The long-term viability of the USL is in no way assured, though, particularly if some of the stronger franchises like Vancouver and Portland jump to the MLS.

It's going to be tough to evaluate this decision exhaustively at the moment, as we don't know what will happen. MLS could bring in two to four other franchises, halt expansion and take off in popularity; Montreal would then be left on the outside looking in. If Vancouver and/or Ottawa get into MLS, that will also hurt the Impact; it will be tougher to sell the USL when there's a national alternative league, rather than just one franchise in Toronto. Alternatively, the other cities may overpay and struggle financially, and the league may lose popularity. The USL might even mount a challenge to MLS. There could be a mix of the two scenarios as well, where Montreal stays in the USL for a few more years and then jumps to the MLS later on. My feeling is that MLS expansion prices are going to rise, not fall, but you never know what will happen. Regardless of what eventually comes of this, though, this is a significant move for both Montreal and Canadian soccer. We'll see if it's remembered as a smart business decision or as a missed opportunity.

Was Montreal's bid axed by MLS?

Yes, the Grey Cup's set to kick off in a few hours (and I'll have a full preview up shortly), but that's not the only subject making news in Montreal. On Friday night, Duane and I both wrote here about how Montreal had seemingly dropped its bid for an MLS franchise, which seemed curious to say the least. New information has now arisen that muddies the situation further. Ben Knight of the excellent On Soccer blog over at The Globe and Mail has dug up a really interesting press release, presumably from the Montreal Impact, which suggests that they wanted to keep the bid alive but it was axed by MLS commissioner Don Garber. The release is after the jump.


Here's the release:

"RECTIFICATION REGARDING MONTREAL'S BID FOR MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER

Following MLS Commissioner Don Garber's statements regarding Montreal's bid, the Montreal partnership group would like to bring one important rectification:

Montreal did not withdrew its bid from Major League Soccer but was informed that the league did not retain its bid. Out of respect for the Grey Cup festivities, the partnership group will not make any additional statements over the weekend. However, the President of the Montreal Impact [and] Saputo Stadium, Mr. Joey Saputo, who is spearheading Montreal's MLS bid, will meet the media: Monday, November 24, 2008, 10:30 am, Saputo Stadium, 4750 Sherbrooke Street, Montreal."

That's fascinating. According to this release, it wasn't that Montreal backed out; MLS decided not to consider their application. It's hard to imagine why at first, especially considering that most observers thought Montreal had the strongest bid of any city and was pretty much a lock. However, there could be concerns with the financial health of George Gillett's sporting empire, especially considering Liverpool's troubles [Ian Herbert and Andrew Warshaw, The Independent]. Joey Saputo, the owner of the Impact and Gillett's partner in the MLS bid, has also brought up the notion of staying in the USL, so perhaps Garber was concerned about Montreal's commitment to MLS.

We have conflicting statements, though. From the AP story with Garber's comments:

"Garber said that Montreal's delegation — led by Joey Saputo and George Gillett, who owns Liverpool FC in England's Premier League and the NHL's Montreal Canadiens — had informed him within the past week of possible trouble.

'Montreal has had to evaluate what kinds of private capital they needed to refinance their stadium to fund the expansion fee, and what kind of public support would be available,' Garber said. 'I'm not sure they were able to come to terms in this economic environment.'"

Garber doesn't directly say that Montreal withdrew their bid on their own, but that's certainly the logical inference, and it's the one the unnamed AP writer drew; his lede reads "Montreal withdrew its bid for a Major League Soccer expansion team, commissioner Don Garber said Friday in his state-of-the-league address."

Garber and Saputo (or whoever wrote the Impact's press release) could both telling the truth, though. Garber never said that Montreal abandoned their bid, even though he implied it. It's possible Saputo and Gillett wanted to keep the bid alive despite financial trouble, but Garber canned it after seeing the numbers.

Still, kicking Montreal of the bid process seems rather unusual, especially given the strength of their bid. Even if the league had already decided to go with a different franchises, retaining Montreal as an option would force the other markets to up the ante of their bids in an attempt to compete. If the press release is accurate, this decision doesn't seem to make business sense for MLS on the surface; less markets under consideration means less competition for the limited expansion slots, and more complaining about and reluctance to pay the sky-high expansion fees sure to be required. You have to wonder if there's more going on here. Monday's press conference will surely be illuminating.

(Cross-posted to Sporting Madness.)

Montreal pulls out of MLS expansion

Update: Great (or not-so-great) minds thought alike here: Duane wrote about this at the same time I did. Check out his post below for more thoughts on the matter.

With all the focus on Canadian football this weekend, the interesting news tonight on that other kind of football (European, not American) might be overlooked. According to The Associated Press (via The Globe and Mail), Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber announced Friday that Montreal has officially dropped out of the crowded field of entrants trying to get a MLS franchise. Some of Garber's quotes and an analysis of what this could mean for the other Canadian franchise bids follow after the jump.

From the story:

Garber said that Montreal's delegation — led by Joey Saputo and George Gillett, who owns Liverpool FC in England's Premier League and the NHL's Montreal Canadiens — had informed him within the past week of possible trouble.

"Montreal has had to evaluate what kinds of private capital they needed to refinance their stadium to fund the expansion fee, and what kind of public support would be available," Garber said. "I'm not sure they were able to come to terms in this economic environment." ...

"They're out for the next round of expansion," Garber said. "I don't think it's gone forever but it's gone for now."

This is a pretty big shocker. Duane ranked Montreal as 90 per cent likely to get in his initial evaluation of the bids, and many others, including famed American analyst Yves Galarcep, concurred. In fact, it was even speculated for a while that Montreal would jump the queue entirely and replace Philadelphia as a franchise entering in 2010 instead of in 2011. Thus, this is a dramatic twist worthy of a daytime soap opera, and also perhaps one of the first real quantifiable effects of the economic crisis on sports.*

*Interestingly, Gillett was on Prime Time Sports for almost an hour today and discussed how the economic crisis might affect sports for a good part of that, but never once mentioned soccer. The focus was on the Canadiens. Keep in mind that he's facing massive debt issues in England with regards to Liverpool that could result in fire sales of players [James Ducker, The Times of London] or even the team [Ian Herbert and Andrew Warshaw, The Independent]. If things are in that bad shape over there, you can bet he has no money to pay a high Montreal expansion fee and renovate their stadium, especially with the hits his investments have likely taken recently (if his stocks are like anyone else's). It would have been nice to see Bob McCown and Stephen Brunt ask him about Liverpool's troubles, especially with the economic focus of their show; that was probably nixed by McCown's hatred for all things soccer, though. It's too bad; he might have landed a nice scoop on the Impact.

Keep in mind that this didn't come completely out of the blue, though. Back in September, there were musings and rumours floating around about how the club might decide to stay in the USL. I saw where the club was coming from, but ultimately concluded that MLS is a much better long-term solution for them. Duane was less gentle. Remember that they do have a very strong and high-profile USL franchise, though, and a nice new stadium that's USL-suitable, but would need significant expensive upgrades to be MLS-ready. If they can't pull off the MLS expansion at the moment, it may hurt them down the road, but they'll still be successful in the USL for the immediate future, and they may get another shot at MLS once the economic situation improves.

Paradoxically, though, what's bad for Canada in one way may be good for the country in another. It's obviously disappointing that the Impact won't be playing in MLS in the near future; they're a great team, and they already have a good rivalry with Toronto, plus their success in the CONCACAF Champions League seemed a natural foundation on which to create a strong MLS franchise. However, Montreal's loss could be a gain for Vancouver and Ottawa. Montreal had the best of the Canadian bids by many evaluations; with them out of the picture, the other two cities look better by comparision. This is especially important considering that Garber added that the Canadian bids are strong, but "expanding into Canada might jeopardize the growth of the sport in the United States" (the AP writer's words, not Garber's).

"We don't have a lot of commercial businesses in Canada today," Garber said of league sponsorships. "The more teams we add there, the more it takes away out from growing our footprint and our television ratings in the United States."

With comments like that, it seems likely that MLS would have been hesistant to expand by only two Canadian teams even if Montreal and Vancouver had the best bids. Thus, if the league decideds they're going to stick with the quota of only allowing two teams to join in 2011 and will only include one Canadian team in that, Vancouver's chances look a lot better all of a sudden. Again, Duane's a much bigger Vancouver skeptic than many thanks to the stadium issue, and he had them ranked third in the initial list behind only Montreal and St. Louis.

Garber also had some very positive things to say about Vancouver, as the AP story goes on to show. "Garber called Vancouver's presentation "one of the best I've ever seen, and I was involved in sports expansion in (the NFL)," he said." That's some high praise right there. Furthermore, the man is smart; he endorsed the rivalry concept I've been promoting for quite a while. Rivalries are what sell, especially in sports that aren't necessarily as popular, and soccer has a better tradition of fierce rivalries than almost anyone else. There's a long-established rivalry on the West Coast between the USL versions of the Vancouver Whitecaps, Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers; bringing them all into MLS gives the league a strong West Coast presence and a great way to sell those games to fans, advertisers and television networks. Vancouver-Toronto would be a similarly great rivalry to sell to Canadian television and marketers.

Ottawa's bid, which seemed somewhat ridiculous at first, also seems to be growing stronger.

Ottawa blew us away," Garber said. "They do give a very focused plan as to where they'd build the stadium. Their presentation was not just about how they were going to build the stadium but how they were going to build the sport."

That's good to hear, but a presentation can only do so much. Ottawa may still be a longer-term project, and there are also issues with their bid coming into conflict with the CFL plan. What could help them is if rather than limiting expansion to two teams, the league goes ahead with four or five and brings in both Vancouver and Ottawa to strengthen the Canadian part of MLS and try and pick up a lucrative national television deal. Ottawa isn't as helpful as Montreal in that regard, but it's still something. Still, when you look at the other bids and how they're shaping up (especially with Albert Pujols buying in in St. Louis), Ottawa seems to come up a bit short.

We'll see what becomes of this, but this decision could substantially change the MLS expansion discussion. The favourites are out, and that will make room for some of the challengers. The question is if Vancouver and Ottawa will be in that group.