Teixeira

[WDN]

1 year with him is better than the alternative bad move x10 for Rangers GM.
There better be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. When the chips are down lets dump our best players! Yeah great idea!!

It would be stupid for them to lose him for nothing and no team in baseball would just sit back and do that. It would be one thing if they had a realistic chance of signing him to another contract but he has made it very clear he was not going to sign with Texas again. It just would not be worth it at all just for one more year.

 

[Mavs Man]

Comparing Tex to Romo is not even close to being the same thing. Romo is a good team player. Tex for the past year has complained about the organization and increasingly called to be moved. Maybe it was warranted with the way the Rangers have managed the team the last ten years, but it is something you do not do publicly.

Also, he had little chance of coming back after next year - why not trade him now and get something in return?

 

[trickblue]

Tom Hicks is now reporting that he offered Tex a $140,000,000 contract extension this month which would have made him the fourth highest paid player in MLB.

Getting ANYTHING for him was a plus...

 

[Mavs Man]

From the DMN website:

Hicks: Teixeira rejected $140 million offer
Owner says deal would have kept star player with Rangers for eight more years

03:16 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
By EVAN GRANT / The Dallas Morning News
egrant@***BANNED-URL***

CLEVELAND – The Rangers did not let Mark Teixeira go to Atlanta without a fight, owner Tom Hicks said Tuesday as the seven-player deal with the Braves was completed.

Hicks confirmed the Rangers made Teixeira an official long-term contract proposal more than two weeks ago in a last-ditch effort to keep him. The proposal would have kept Teixeira in Texas for eight more seasons at a total for approximately $140 million. The deal would have included a mutually agreed figure for Teixeira's last year of salary arbitration in 2008 and another seven years worth $18 million per season.

Teixeira was making $9 million this season, the second year of a two-year deal with the Rangers. He is eligible for arbitration next season and is expected to receive between $12 million and $14 million per season.

"I've always loved Tex as a player," Hicks said Tuesday by phone from California. "I was personally involved in signing him and I wanted him to be a face of this organization, along with Michael Young, for the long term.

"I thought we made enough of an offer to keep him a Ranger for life. I'm disappointed he turned it down, but I think we did everything we could to keep him. Now, we've got some very good young players coming here and I feel with some good moves and free-agent signings, we can be a championship team."

Hicks said he met with Teixeira's agent Scott Boras two weeks ago when the club was in Anaheim and extended a formal offer within 48 hours of the meeting. The reply: Teixeira was not prepared to make a long-term commitment at the moment.

Only a week before the meeting, Teixeira had claimed the Rangers had never approached him about an extension. He reiterated that stance after the club left Anaheim and traveled to Oakland. A Rangers source, however, said the club had made "overtures" to Teixeira on at least three occasions.

On Tuesday, as Teixeira hastily checked out of the Rangers hotel in Cleveland to try and make a flight to Atlanta, he declined to comment on anything Rangers related. Asked if an extension proposal had ever been brought up to him, Teixeira said:

"I'm not talking about any of that. I'm an Atlanta Brave. That's done. I'm very happy. That's it."

In exchange for Teixeira and lefty Ron Mahay, the Rangers got catcher-first baseman Jarrod Saltalamacchia and four minor leaguers. Rangers medical officials had no issues with an MRI on left-hander Matt Harrison's shoulder and he was included along with 19-year-old right-hander Neftali Feliz and 18-year-old shortstop Elvis Andrus. Also, the Rangers will receive 20-year-old left-hander Beau Jones. Jones has split the season between low Class A Rome and high Class A Myrtle Beach.

Saltalamacchia, Andrus and Harrison were ranked as the Braves' top three prospects by Baseball America in its preseason prospect handbook. All three were also among the top 100 overall prospects in the minors. The Rangers had only one prospect, Eric Hurley, in the top 100.

 

[carphalen5150]

I think it is kind of stupid for Hicks to say the number of dollars he offered Texiera...

 

[WDN]

I think it is kind of stupid for Hicks to say the number of dollars he offered Texiera...

I think it is more for the fans than anything else. He needs to show that he is trying to keep him

 

[carphalen5150]

I think it is more for the fans than anything else. He needs to show that he is trying to keep him

Exactly...but everyone can see that. Not sure what is to gain from that. Looks like sour grapes more than anything. Maybe if they had not hired Washington things would be different, but that hiring set the team back a couple years.

 

[GTaylor]

There are two ways to spend your time and attention from April to August: obsess about the Dallas Cowboys during the NFL draft, training camp and preseason games, or give your heart to the Texas Rangers during an actual season of competition.

Trading an outstanding Mark Teixeira now for players who might be pretty good in a few years is just another reason to choose the former.

I will admit that baseball can be hard to follow, but nothing compares to the thrill and loss-of-productivity/life that following the minor leagues/prospects offer.

I can't help but ask, Does this trade make the Rangers a better ball club for the remainder of the year? For next year? For the year after that?
And I can't help but respond, Definitely not, No, and Probably not.

How long did it take Romo to be a solid, borderline stud QB? 3 years ago if I was to tell you that you can bundle Romo with say Crayton and Gurode in a trade for Culpepper would you have done it? I would have and you would too. Imagine how dumb we would have looked now had we followed through.

Before I start I do appreciate you're being more informed then 99% of fair-weather fans who are dumber than dumb "This trade sucks, they didn't get pitching!"...uhhhh, contenders don't trade major league pitching, pitching is more valuable than hitters, one good pitcher brings you 2 good hitters. One idiot on Hansen's show said they should have traded Young for Joe Saunders and Adenhart (Even if Daniels had compromising pictures of Schuerholz there's no way he'd do that trade), I almost ran off the road I was so stunned at the idiotcy of so-called fans.

Anyways, back to the post....

Mark Teixeira was not a prospect. He was a proven performer, a Gold Glover. He was young, too, and still improving as a player. Why in the world would you get rid of a guy like that?

(Because, some will answer, Teixeira didn't want to play here. And because he's expensive. Well, maybe he didn't want to play here because management traded away good players and overspent on bad ones? And as far as Tex's price tag goes -- he's good! If you win, and people fill your stadium and buy your merchandise, you recoup your investment and then some!)

Meet Scott Boras, he's Mark Teixeira's agent, he's what Drew Rosenhaus wishes he was, he's as good as Falk, Rosenhaus and Steinberg rolled into one, and is extremely vicious. He's known by Galloway as the "Great Satan", why? Because as he joked "Extension isn't a word I recognize". Want to know how he works? If Romo was represented by Boras he would not resign during the season nor would he negotiate. He would go into free agency and make you bid against every other team then shop around your offer to other teams, then come back when someone else beats your offer and get you to bump up your bid. Once you do he'll repeat the steps again, he's so good at this that teams intentionally avoid dealing with him knowing it can also hurt since he represents the best players.

Think it's bad dealing with him for free-agents, it's even more fun when he represents draft picks. We'll use Brady Quinn as an example, if Boras represents him then the Browns would expect to negotiate up until next October (That's next as in 2008, baseball drafts in June so I'm using the mid-season draft as an example). Baseball got so fed up with him that they changed the draft rules this year, even then some GMs expect him to find and exploit loopholes (Deadline is August 15th, stay tuned)

Now factor in no salary cap and of all the studs/HOFers/Superstars Boras had ONE client resign with their team. Care to wager on Tex resigning? I wouldn't bet on him resigning, even if he was traded to the hometown Orioles.

Now that you know this you'll have to look at your season and value, if you're contending you keep him. But if you're struggling you trade him when his value is at it's highest (Which is now), if you wait until the off-season or next July you won't get what you could now. And in July teams are in a playoff race, i.e. desperate, which is how you pull in what Daniels did for him.

BTW - Tex isn't worth $17.5 million a year, someone will pay it but I'm glad it's not us. I also have to question your tactic on winning breeds fans, Florida Marlins couldn't get 30,000 fans per game during their World Series runs.

Teixeira called out the management and challenged them to prove they were interested in winning now. This trade does the opposite.

Someone on a baseball forum had a great thread a while back using quotes from various Boras' players (Including Steven Drew) and they all had the same theme "I love it here but I want to win and this team doesn't care for that". This way when they leave they can look good while the team takes the heat from fans. Young made a quote a few days after Tex's rant and Jamey Newberg made a great comparison between Young being a leader and Tex acting selfish.

Note Tex didn't get along with tough Showalter and butted heads with player-friendly Washington, makes you wonder.

So... if you're Michael Young -- by far the most important part of the Texas Rangers now -- how are you supposed to believe in your front office's commitment to winning on your watch?

Better yet, if you're a high-quality starting pitcher looking for a new place to play, why would you think of moving to Arlington?

Pitchers have long been afraid to come here before the trade, reasons:
1) Ballpark is a hitter friendly place (To me this says more about the fragile psyche of the pitcher than it does the park. Millwood's best quote was that the other team has that disadvantage as well, he cares more about beating the other team than ERA)
2) AL - pitchers are afraid of the DH, but there are some that simply enjoy batting.
CJ Wilson offered the quote 'Free Agency is for hitters', you get pitchers in trades or develop. Going the free agent route is usually disasterous. See: Barry Zito, Adam Eaton, Kip Wells, Jared Weaver, etc.

What's Young to think? He signed a contract (For too much IMO) knowing what the team had to work with, but unlike Tex/A-Rod/Palmerio he's willing to work with the youngsters.

The Rangers have brought in high-priced free agents (Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano), regretted doing so, and dumped them. The Rangers have also developed talented young players (Chris Young, Adrian Gonzalez, and now Mark Teixeira) and sent them packing. They'll regret that, too. A whole lot of fans fans already do.

Soriano wasn't a free agent, he was brought in via trade for A-Rod (Who wanted out), Soriano is also very overrated. If you're a Cubs fan, I'm sorry you're stuck with him. No argument on the Young trade, hated it then and really hate it now.

I did like the Tex trade, it really was a great haul, Gagne trade was okay, Hicks sucks and is cheap, JD will be a good GM and I've done maybe 15 minutes of work this week while refreshing five baseball sites every 10 seconds, thank God the trade deadline is over!

 

[GTaylor]

I think it is kind of stupid for Hicks to say the number of dollars he offered Texiera...

Hicks' best and worst attribute is that he'll say whatever is on his mind without thinking it out.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

If the two pitching prospects are Harrison and Neftali Feliz as has been rumored, the Braves then got hosed.

Harrison and a lesser prospect wouldn't be bad, but to add someone like Feliz to the deal would be a HORRIBLE trade.

when you have the Braves scouts, you can afford to give up these prospects