Crazy stuff.
I froze my tail off for two hours of a super-productive 9U baseball practice last night, a welcome break from the all-hours radio dedication on Tuesday to the 25th anniversary of the day Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys, launching a quarter-century trajectory that’s basically the antithesis of what the Texas Rangers have given us over those same 25.
What I needed yesterday, with temperatures dropping back into the bitter range, was a flurry of reports from Surprise, Arizona, not an outbreak of reflections from the football superconductor on those good old days that are now two decades in the rearview mirror.
Said Jones, regarding the last decade or so:
“Now for us not to having got it done during those years is a mess up.”
Aside from the part about that being a sentence that even Ron Washington would cringe at, the saddest thing about that Jones remark, if you’re a lifelong fan of that team like I am, is the blaring subtext.
More Jones:
“You got to get it when you’re high like that. When you’re high up on it. You can’t miss your bus when you got your quarterback and you got good talent around him and if you miss that bus in the NFL. When I look back on it, we probably paid some people that we probably would have been better off not paying.”
Ya think?
I got more personal mileage and adrenaline out of this Tuesday quote:
“He’s got some crazy stuff. He’s got some real, real good stuff. He’s got it all. If he can pitch the way he’s pitched and continue to grow and mature, he’s definitely got some of the best stuff I’ve ever caught.”
That was J.P. Arencibia, gushing about 22-year-old Martin Perez.
This quote, too, from Ozzie Smith, a veteran of 19 years in the big leagues and 17 years of watching baseball since his career ended, when asked yesterday to name the three greatest shortstops he’s seen play the game:
“Omar Vizquel, Elvis Andrus, and Andrelton Simmons.”
More of that, please.
Washington got his contract extension, and while it was only for one year (through 2015), that now mirrors Jon Daniels’s own contracted term, and there’s some sense in that when you’re an organization that would never have the owner select the bench coach.
Just because Washington’s extension guarantees only one extra year of pay, it doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t be here past 2015 — just as it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be here through 2015.
But both Daniels and Washington deserve to be here longer than that, and I expect both will.
And that they’ll win — I mean win — before the football team down the street.
It would be too much for one report to focus on both Jerry Jones and Josh Hamilton, so I’m not going to comment on Hamilton’s calf strain running the bases yesterday that put him on crutches, which will be supporting 28 more pounds than they would have at the end of the 2013 season, other than to note that it’s Josh: Gonna be something weird.
I’m not going to spend any time breaking down who threw a scoreless inning in one of the last two days’ intrasquad games on the south side of the Surprise complex, or who hit a bases-clearing double, but I did take note that, on both Monday and Tuesday, Michael Choice played center field, Engel Beltre played right field, and Brent Lillibridge played shortstop.
Those assignments obviously don’t have anything to do with Leonys Martin, Alex Rios, or one of Ozzie’s three favorites, but it sheds some light on some things the people in charge of providing Wash with 25 men might be considering.
Jason Parks pulled the curtain back on Baseball Prospectus’s farm system rankings this morning, tabbing Texas at number nine (Houston 5, Seattle 17, Oakland 28, Los Angeles 30 [for a second straight year]), suggesting that “[l]osing [Jurickson] Profar and Perez to the majors left a mark, and trading away Mike Olt and C.J. Edwards drew some blood, but the foundation of the system is still extremely strong because of the org’s ability to recognize and acquire high-ceiling talent in the amateur markets.”
I don’t want to see another Jerry Jones reminiscence quote.
Parks adds that the Rangers’ minor league trajectory is pointing up: “Jorge Alfaro is about to explode into a top-tier prospect in the game, and the stockpile of talent in the lower levels of the minors should start taking developmental steps forward. This should be a top 5 system next season.”
Maybe Arencibia will be around to help break Alfaro into the big leagues, when that awesome time comes.
Perez will be, for sure.
And by then Jones will probably be talking about 27 years at his helm, ranking the mess-up’s, and we’ll get to hear about it all day long on the radio when some of us would rather hear Alfaro talking about Marcos Diplan’s crazy stuff, Ron Washington’s latest contract extension, and the Rangers’ intent to defend the AL West throne that they’d busted their tails to reclaim.