A year ago today.

While my days are a series of a whole lot more “tons I’d like to write about but can I find the time?” than “feel like writing today but what is there to say?,” that stretch between the Winter Meetings and Pitchers & Catchers is always relatively slow, and sometimes content is more of a reach, a written foot-tap or knee-bounce that says “man, I really need baseball to start up again” without really advancing the conversation otherwise.

Today is that.

There’s just not that much to say yet about the Rangers’ arbitration cases, four of which have settled (Tom Wilhelmsen, Robinson Chirinos, Tanner Scheppers, Jurickson Profar), leaving three (Mitch Moreland, Shawn Tolleson, Jake Diekman) positioned — at least for now — for February arbitration hearings.

There are some in the national media devoting tweets and columns to the idea of Texas signing Justin Upton to a short-term deal or trading for Milwaukee catcher Jonathan Lucroy. OK. Both seem unlikely.

Part of me wants to write about catcher Vin DiFazio, playing nothing but indie league ball since finishing his run in the Rangers system in 2012, signing a minor league deal this weekend with the Dodgers, but it just didn’t seem ripe for a few hundred words.

Facebook has this feature that gathers things you posted on this date the last few years, and two of my posts from January 17, 2015 jumped out at me this morning.

One of them: “Just saw Luis Sardinas shopping at a Dick’s Sporting Goods in Frisco. Tick tock.”

Two days later, Texas traded Sardinas in the deal to get Brewers righthander Yovani Gallardo.

The other: A link to that morning’s Newberg Report, titled “You’re Philadelphia.”

The premise was that Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. needed to decide whether the time was right to trade Cole Hamels, and if so, to get the trade right if he was going to be able to save his job.

In that article, I wrote this, on the idea of the Rangers trading for Hamels:

“It’s reasonable to assume that the Phillies, if [CSN Philly writer Jim] Salisbury’s note on [Joey] Gallo and [Nomar] Mazara was triggered by some intel that any talks between the clubs have moved beyond those two, would expect [Jorge] Alfaro to be paired with either [Jake] Thompson or Chi Chi Gonzalez, and then another player or two from the tier that includes pitchers Luke Jackson, Luis Ortiz (as a player to be named later), Andrew Faulkner, Jerad Eickhoff, Alec Asher, Corey Knebel, Keone Kela, and Marcos Diplan, and hitters Lewis Brinson, Nick Williams, Ronald Guzman, Ryan Cordell, Travis Demeritte, and Jairo Beras.”

And:

“If the offer were, say, Alfaro and Gonzalez and Eickhoff and Williams — which would surprise me — I would expect the Rangers to insist on a tremendous cash infusion from the Phillies, turning Hamels into something along the lines of a $15-17 million pitcher annually (with most of the subsidy front-loaded), rather than one toting the $24 million AAV that his contract guarantees.”

A little less than 200 days later, I was surprised.

(It was Thompson instead of Gonzalez, of course, and Asher and Matt Harrison were added on the Texas side, while Diekman was included on Philadelphia’s side.)

Surprised, and fired up.

Though the Phillies had (and have) to be as thrilled with the outcome of that deal as Texas was (and is), Amaro didn’t keep his job. He’ll be coaching first base for the Red Sox when they visit Arlington late in June to face Hamels and Diekman and the Rangers.

By then, Eickhoff and Asher could be regulars in the Phillies rotation, and maybe even Thompson, too, with Williams roaming left field. Alfaro is less likely to be in the big leagues the first half of this season, and the same can probably be said about Harrison.

Maybe Upton is manning left field in a Rangers uniform that weekend, and maybe Lucroy is behind the plate, but neither of those longshot situations seems ripe for a “tick tock” reference that Facebook will trigger a look back at a year from today.

So, uh. Yeah.

That’s all I got today.

#foot-tapping