KT 90 said:

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Rangers Sign Diego Castillo To Minor League Deal https://t.co/eIQlbScDpa pic.twitter.com/LPjLVeyWkD

— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) December 26, 2023

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He was good for about 5 years and then fell off last year (only 8 games pitched?) anyone have the story here?

No idea. He's a sinkerball pitcher though, and usually what happens to those guys when they have problems is they lose the sinking action on their pitches and start leaving stuff up in the zone. Might be a mechanical fix, might be problematic. Regardless, it's a minor league deal so it's low risk/potentially high reward. Good flyer taken IMO

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Regardless, it's a minor league deal so it's low risk/potentially high reward. Good flyer taken IMO

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The brief info I read didn't have anything injury related, just that he was good for several years and lost it a bit. So maybe he can recapture that, maybe not, but worth a shot on a minor league deal. Need Maddux to probably spend some extra time with him during Spring Training to see what we have.

I expect more of these kinds of signings:

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but presumably include an invite to big league Spring Training.

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With these type Ps:

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Castillo owned a solid 28.5% strikeout rate against a walk rate of 8.6% with an impressive 51.8% groundball rate. Among all relievers with at least 100 innings of work across the 2018-19 seasons, only Luke Jackson, Jace Fry and Ryan Pressly struck out more batters while posting a groundball rate north of 50%.

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Swing and miss groundball pitchers.

I wonder if the pitching clock got him.

Interestingly, his splits for his 2 full seasons in Seattle are:
'21:
Home: 1.98
Away: 3.48
'22:
Home: 4.91
Away: 2.16

Worthwhile salvage yard heap pickup.

Evan Grants HOF ballot below, with his followup explanation tweet. Who would yall have voted for given these candidates?

I’ll make it clear as I do every year: Suspension over PED use is my red line. Players always push for an edge. Once it was determined that edge was a punishable offense, guys who violated the policy, for me, nullified the eligibility under “integrity.” That simple. https://t.co/sAjpyTEAHo

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) December 26, 2023

And didn't Andy Pettite use PEDs? Not following his logic

Andy Pettite did get busted. I think it gets forgotten because when he got caught he owned it and didn't come up with some bs story like Clemens.

Pettitte and Buehrle are probably the two guys I'd have to really think hard about. Everyone else on Grant's ballot I would've voted for as well.

“It’s yours…from Shohei.”

Shohei gifted Joe Kelly’s wife Ashley with a new car for her Ohtake17 campaign. 🥹 pic.twitter.com/Vsb3PqMthF

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) December 24, 2023

KT 90 said:

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Evan Grants HOF ballot below, with his followup explanation tweet. Who would yall have voted for given these candidates?

I’ll make it clear as I do every year: Suspension over PED use is my red line. Players always push for an edge. Once it was determined that edge was a punishable offense, guys who violated the policy, for me, nullified the eligibility under “integrity.” That simple. https://t.co/sAjpyTEAHo

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) December 26, 2023

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My ballot this year have been Beltre and Mauer. I'm a small hall guy. You could maybe convince me to vote for Andruw Jones and Wagner but in reality, if I have to be convinced, I probably wouldn't vote for them.

Josh Hader to the Rangers per si.com

Doesn't seem to be quite official yet. Fingers crossed.

Where are you seeing this?

It's a clickbait article that says "Rangers add Hader", then the body of the article is just saying it would benefit the Rangers to sign him.

chick79 said:

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Doesn't seem to be quite official yet. Fingers crossed.

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Are you referring to the SI article?

https://www.si.com/mlb/rangers/news/texas-rangers-strengthen-repeat-chances-signing-josh-hader-rumor


If so, you read wrong.

The SI headline is misleading

How does that even become the headline for that article, wow

SI got busted for generating fake accounts and using ChatGPT to generate content.

That article reads like something ChatGPT generated. Having said that, here is the author:

https://www.si.com/mlb/rangers/author/cole-thompson
https://www.si.com/college/tamu/author/cole-thompson

Seems to write weekly articles on A&M and the Rangers.

AgBQ-00 said:

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Smile!! Adolis is still Mayor of Swamptown

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Reminds me a lot of Ron Gant. Gant coud wait on a hanger and uppercut it to LF, or ambush a letter high fastball and hit a liner out.

cmiller00 said:

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SI seems to just regurgitate articles and tweets now. Sad I remember being excited when the magazine came in the mail.

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Yeah, well, who, ahem, wasn't?

For those in the Waco area, looks like the Trophy is making an appearance at the first pitch luncheon next week at the sports hall of fame.... not that i wanna spend 75 a ticket but still

Thank you for posting, I had the game off and on for a bit and I did not catch that one.

Interesting article from post-2022 about Seager. I would say it aged well...

https://theathletic.com/3755538/2022/11/07/rangers-positional-review-corey-seager/

At first I was against banning the shift, but then I thought about how much more it was penalizing lefties, and I was in favor of the ban. I'm sure if you went back 75 years, nobody would have wanted to see Ted Williams hit .250.

Interesting also to note that Semien was killed by the shift as well, but not nearly to the extent of Seager. Obviously you can't play your SS in LF or you'd never throw anybody out (well, except Heim could still GIDP...)

Evan Grants early on roster projection. Dropping hints that Lankford could be on it, also dropping more than a hint that the plan is to not go over the luxury tax threshold (at least to start the season). So basically he is saying unless the mess with Bally/Daimond Sports gets resolved soon, forget about bringing Montgomery back or signing Hader.

https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/rangers/2023/12/28/a-way-too-early-2024-texas-rangers-roster-projection/?sailthru_id=6268110a4f757f64badd17d2&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningRoundup_12282023&utm_term=Morning%20Roundup%20with%20Start%20Exclusion

Or maybe you just let him go, and then you go look for a defense-first pinch running outfielder for less than $2M/year. Wait, we already have one of those...