Texas Rangers

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Rangers adjust to prep for Rule 5 Draft

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Yesterday, the Rangers made the following roster moves to protect players from the Rule 5 Draft:

• Sold RHP Kameron Loe, 27, to the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks
• Designated RHP Wes Littleton, 26, for assignment
• Purchased the contract of RHP Willie Eyre, 30
• Purchased the contract of INF Jose Vallejo
• Purchased the contract of RHP John Bannister
• Purchased the contract of RHP Omar Poveda

They also traded John Mayberry Jr. for CF Greg Golson from the Phillies organization. These moves brought the 40 Man Roster to its full 40.

The two transactions I have the most issue with are the designation of Littleton for assignment so they could take him off the 40 Man Roster. He's been healthy and a good to average reliever for this team and a viable candidate for the bullpen. It seems they made this move to add Willie Eyre to the 40 Man Roster. Eyre missed all of last season due to Tommy John surgery. He's 30 years old and playing in the Arizona Fall League sporting a 6.49 ERA against mostly High A and AA players who are in their early 20's. Coming off Tommy John surgery and being 30, he probably wouldn't have been drafted by another team. I wouldn't be surprised if we lose Littleton for a guy not ready to pitch in the Majors and who could have been stashed on the AAA roster.

I would assume they left Pedro Strop off the 40 Man because he's also coming off a season ending injury and won't be ready to pitch at the start of the season. But, he's much younger than Eyre and more likely to be picked in the Rule 5 Draft. The stipulation for players selected is that they have to stay on the 25 Man Roster all season. In his case, a team could select him, add him to the 25 Man Roster, then put him on the Disabled List until they have a spot to stash him on the active roster but not have to pitch him except in blowout situations.

If one of Texas' Rule 5 eligibles is selected for the $50,000 draft price and is not maintained on the active roster/disabled list all season, the drafting team has to sell him back to the Rangers for $25,000 unless the Rangers decide they don't want him back, in which case they can make a trade agreement.

Greg Golson is another player from the state of Texas that the Rangers seem to be stockpiling. He went to high school in Austin and was a University of Texas signee before accepting his Philadelphia pro contract. He is considered a five-tool player, with a powerful arm and excellent range in center field. He's also another speed guy who has been successful on 78 percent of his stolen base attempts. His hitting line leaves something to be desired but so did Mayberry's. Golson is a career .265/.309/.406 hitter compared to Mayberry's .255/.330/.472. He also has high strikeout numbers so that speed won't translate into a top of the order hitter. The key to the trade is the position difference. Good defense at the Ballpark in Arlington requires a CF'er who can track down balls in the expansive outfield. Supposedly Golson can do that. Mayberry was a college first baseman who transitioned to RF. I wish Mayberry the best because he did nothing to alienate the Ranger organization. He just didn't produce like you'd want your 1st rounder to do. I'm assuming Golson will start out at Oklahoma, keeping Julio Borbon at Frisco to at least start the season. Of course, it could also be a move to strengthen Texas' ability to consummate a trade with its now plentiful list of Major League capable OF'ers. I'll be interested to see what this does to the overall outfield depth of the organization because Texas left of OF Ben Harrison who is Rule 5 eligible. He put up good numbers last year at AA/AAA but is kind of old (27) to be considered a prospect. Dustin Majewski is another older (27) OF'er who could figure into the Oklahoma OF mix if he stays with the organization. Mayberry's former teammate Stephen Murphy is another Rule 5 eligible that was left off. He showed good power this year with a suspect OBP. There's also the overmatched Brandon Boggs who will probably start out at AAA as well.

Now, lets see what pitching we can get via free agency or trade along with finding any team to take DH/1B/LF Frank Catalanotto off our hands so we can use his roster spot as well.

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According to MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan, the Texas Rangers have purchased the contracts of right-handers John Bannister, Willie Eyre and Omar Poveda, as well as that of infielder Jose Vallejo, and have added all four players to their now-full 40-man roster.

Right-handers Wes Littleton and Kameron Loe have been designated for assignment, though the latter transaction was little more than a formality given that Loe is ostensibly Japan-bound.

The addition of Bannister is a bit surprising, but defensible (his control and velocity both measurably improved as the 2008 season dragged on), and we already talked about the Latin American duo of Poveda and Vallejo at length this morning. I'm not quite sure what the organization sees (or thinks it sees) in Eyre, who doesn't really amount to much more than a guy you can stash at the back of your bullpen and allow to soak up innings in blowout losses, who wasn't a very good pitcher for Texas in 2007 even before he succumbed to Tommy John surgery in August, and who is on the wrong side of 30; in any event, I'll be moderately shocked if he's on the 25-man roster come Opening Day 2009.

Exposing Strop to the Rule 5 Draft is a calculated risk on the part of the Rangers (though, once again, they're exposing him for the sake of Willie Eyre), and the line of thought must be that his injury will ward off any legitimate interest. Hopefully that assessment of the market is correct, because general manager Jon Daniels and company stand to take a lot of likely deserved criticism if Strop is drafted because the club decided it just had to protect Willie Eyre.

There's a reasonable chance that Texas will manage to slide Littleton through league-wide waivers and outright the optionless sidewinder to Triple-A Oklahoma City, who cannot decline such an assignment by virtue of not having previously been outrighted in his career. Still, a convincing argument can be made that retaining Willie Eyre over Littleton is misguided in and of itself.

Willie Eyre?

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Happy trails, Junior Mayberry.

Multiple local media sources, including Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, are reporting tonight that the Texas Rangers have completed a swap of disappointing first-round picks with the Philadelphia Phillies, shipping minor league outfielder John Mayberry (Jr.) to the City of Brotherly Love in exchange for the Phillies' 2004 first-round pick, outfielder Greg Golson.

With less than six hours to go until tonight's 11:00 p.m. 40-man roster finalization deadline, it would at first glance appear that this deal was made with the intention of giving Texas some wiggle room, but not so much: Golson's contract was purchased by Philadelphia on September 1st, and he'll be directly placed on the Rangers' 40-man roster, so there's no relief for Texas in that area.

We already know more or less everything there is to know about Mayberry (and if you don't, do yourself a favor and read Jason Parks' excellent July assessment of the 19th-overall pick in the 2005 MLB First-Year Player Draft), so let's aim the bulk of our attention towards Golson in the form of some quick bullet points:

● A lifetime .265/.310/.406 batting line compiled over the span of 2,102 minor league at-bats (and five minor league seasons) makes the 23-year-old Austin, Texas native look a bit worse with the lumber than he actually is; after a horrific .242/.255/.359 campaign (153 AB) at Double-A Reading in 2007, Golson repeated the Eastern League in 2008 to the tune of a far more palatable .282/.333/.434, blasting 13 home runs in 426 at-bats and swiping 23 bases in 28 attempts.

That said, his plate discipline remains undeniably suspect. Golson drew just two walks at Reading in 2007 (majorly contributing to an almost unfathomable walks-to-strikeouts ratio of 0.04), though he did bump his walk rate from 1.3 percent in 2007 to 7.4 percent in 2008, suggesting that the jump widely regarded as perhaps the most difficult to successfully complete in all of professional baseball -- that is, the one from A-ball to AA-ball -- confounded him in a big way last year, and all he needed was a requisite adjustment period. Nonetheless, his walks-to-strikeouts ratio of 0.26 in 2008 was the third-worst among 25 qualifying Eastern League outfielders, and he played half his games in a relatively hitter-friendly park, so that's definitely something worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Regarded as an athlete more so than as a baseball player, Golson possesses impressive raw tools in the form of excellent speed, a powerful arm and legitimate raw power that has yet to translate into sustainable results; Parks, who has seen Golson in action several times, dutifully notes that he "makes easy plays look hard and hard plays look easy."

Now, on to the outside assessments:

● Industry publication Baseball America deemed Golson the Phillies' seventh-best prospect going into the 2008 season, identifying him as the system's best power hitter, defensive outfielder and all-around athlete and bestowing top recognition upon his speed on the basepaths and outfield arm:

Strengths: Golson's five-tool package makes him the system's top athlete. His plus-plus speed stands out the most, as he can get from the right side of the plate to first base in less than 4.0 seconds. He also provides above-average raw power, center-field defense and arm strength.

Weaknesses: Golson's ability to recognize pitches remains his biggest liability. He especially struggles with breaking balls, and tends to get tangled up thinking about what he should do at the plate rather than just seeing the ball and cutting loose. His 49-2 strikeout-walk ratio in Double-A is indicative of his problems, and he led the minors with 173 strikeouts.

The Future: Golson possesses the tools of a young Ron Gant, but he'll need to show he can make consistent hard contact and take pitches if he's going to move beyond Double-A. The Phillies think he can play a big league center field right now, and if everything clicks offensively, he could move extremely fast.

● When asked by Jay LeBlanc of the Washington Times earlier this year to describe his approach at the plate, Golson replied thusly: "For the most past it's just reacting, trying to let the ball get deeper - it keeps me from swinging at bad pitches. But for the most part, I try to hit the ball deep and see it good."

Well, okay.

● One veteran National League scout said during the 2007 Fall Instructional League that Golson's arm and speed were both clear 80s on the 20-to-80 scouting scale, labeled him as a potential "late bloomer" and submitted that "if he leaves his brain in the clubhouse and just goes out there and reacts, he's one of the best prospects in the game."

● Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus tabbed Golson as Philadelphia's 10th-best prospect before the 2007 season, pointing out that "on pure athleticism, nobody in the Phillies organization matches him, and few players in the minors can equal his potential as a power/speed combination, as Golson is a plus-plus runner with the bat speed and raw strength to hit for power." On the flip side, Goldstein suggested Golson's approach at the plate was "non-existent," and criticized his sloppy swing mechanics while noting that "his swing has a loop in it that prevents the bat from getting through the zone on a single plane."

Golson did not register on Goldstein's 2008 list, though he was apparently ranked in the number 11 to 13 range.

Richard Durrett of the Dallas Morning News implies that the Rangers see Golson as a center fielder more so than as a corner outfielder, though the current big league outfield logjam probably precludes a legitimate push by Golson to make the team next spring unless some sort of trade is consummated that removes Marlon Byrd, Brandon Boggs, Nelson Cruz or David Murphy from the picture. It's unlikely this move was made in a complete vacuum, however.

This isn't over.

but still unacceptable...

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