It's Time.

It makes me very sad that I had no confidence with Josh Hamilton – Josh HAMILTON – at the plate with a two-run deficit and a man on second with one out to go yesterday. You know I'm a glass-half-full guy, but with two outs in the ninth and Hamilton stepping in against Jason Frasor as the tying run, it felt as if we were seven runs down. His rollover bouncer to second barely registered with me. I hate that. Ron Washington, acknowledging that he gave Hamilton most of the day off Thursday because he's been "out of whack" and had "lost his rhythm," said the left fielder will be back in the lineup tonight against Seattle lefthander Jason Vargas, off of whom he's a career 1 for 5 with a strikeout. Through three games, the Texas Rangers are hitting .168/.248/.316 as a team. Only Houston's offense is OPS'ing less. Take Vladimir Guerrero (7 for 11 with a home run) out of the mix, and the club sits at .107/.194/.238 as a group. Against Toronto hurlers Shaun Marcum, Scott Downs, Frasor, Brian Tallet, Kevin Gregg, Ricky Romero, and Casey Janssen. Not anything approaching a Roy Halladay in the bunch. The mid-'90s Braves they are not. The good news? I got chills at times watching C.J. Wilson pitch. Think of all the frontline starting pitchers the Rangers have had in however long you want to go back. Since Nolan Ryan and Kevin Brown and Kenny Rogers, name all of them who were four for four in these categories: stuff, location, reserve, and moxie. It was just one day – maybe a few days if you count spring training – but Wilson was an absolute four for four. Could he be Rogers? The only other time in the last three seasons that a Texas starter took a no-decision after throwing at least seven shutout innings was Kevin Millwood, who did so last April 12. Entrusted with a 4-0 lead after seven, the Rangers bullpen couldn't hold on, giving up six runs in the Detroit eighth. All six runs were credited to Wilson. He'll get the Tigers again two weekends from now (after starting in Cleveland and Boston). The way Wilson looked today, it won't surprise me if he's facing Detroit hitters in the eighth inning again. Sure hope Ian Kinsler is back by that second homestand (Detroit/Chicago, April 23-29). His timetable is a bit of a moving target, and so far it's only moving in one direction. This Jarrod Saltalamacchia story isn't over. It's now not only about his inability to get settled physically. When the manager is calling a young player out publically for "put[ting] us in a bad situation" and "need[ing] to mature" – "I'm not disappointed in him for being hurt – that happens; I'm disappointed in how he has handled it" – and that young player plays a position at which maturity and dependability and team-first thinking are key, it doesn't bode well. (By the way, thanks to a several of you who emailed to point out that Saltalamacchia's last baseball activity was not his Opening Day walkoff single but instead a ninth-inning pinch-hit appearance on Wednesday. In that at-bat he took ball one and then left the bat on his shoulder watching three straight Frasor fastballs get called for strikes.) Before you assume that the signals Nelson Cruz is taking that next step could put him line for a long-term extension, realize that he'll be 30 years old at mid-season. For that reason and not necessarily any others, he'll be motivated to capitalize on what could conceivably be his only shot at multi-year security, but how many years will the Rangers be willing to go? He's under team control (via arbitration) for another three years after this one. And on a related subject, a callback to something I wrote on March 26: Prediction: This is Frankie Francisco's final season in Texas. If he pitches well, maybe the club approaches him this summer with a two-year offer, but he'll want a three-year deal as he heads into free agency for the first time. The Rangers won't want to commit that long, given his relatively short track record closing games and the presence of Neftali Feliz, Chris Ray, Tanner Scheppers, and Alexi Ogando as conceivable candidates for the ninth inning (not to mention C.J. Wilson, under control through 2011, if the rotation thing falters), and they'll probably just take the compensatory first-round pick and let Francisco move on. And if he doesn't pitch particularly well, then of course the club probably cuts ties for a different reason. This is not a knee jerk after yesterday's ninth: Francisco is going to be somewhere else in 2011. Who closes here next year? If Feliz sustains even moderate command of his secondaries like he did yesterday, isn't he the most plausible answer? This isn't the time to be thinking about a ninth-inning transition. But tuck it away. Derek Holland, Blake Beavan, Wilfredo Boscan, and Joe Wieland in the Rangers' four minor league openers last night: 2.35 ERA, 16 strikeouts and three walks in 23 innings, 1.5 groundout-to-flyout rate. Stay tuned for Scott Lucas's complete game recaps in your mailbox later today. Baseball America tabs Frisco's rotation (featuring Beavan, Martin Perez, Scheppers [though he probably won't start at the outset], Ogando [though he'll eventually relieve], and Kasey Kiker) as the third prospect-i-est in the minor leagues. Perez is the youngest player in the Texas League by six months. Outfielder Engel Beltre is third youngest, Beavan is sixth, and infielder-outfielder Marcus Lemon is eighth. Hickory infielder Leury Garcia is eighth youngest in the South Atlantic League. BA suggested before the NCAA season that LSU righthander Anthony Ranaudo would be the first college pitcher drafted this June (that may change due to recent elbow issues). Yesterday BA named Mississippi lefthander Drew Pomeranz its Midseason College Player of the Year. Ranaudo (11th round) and Pomeranz (12th round) were chosen by the Rangers in the 2007 draft (which included Julio Borbon, Tommy Hunter, Beavan, Michael Main, Neil Ramirez, Mitch Moreland, and Tim Smith, to name a few) but opted not to sign. Someone said the link in last night's email pointing to the first 2010 installment of my weekly column for www.texasrangers.com was broken. This week's entry ranks the top 10 right-handed starting pitcher prospects in the Rangers' farm system – and includes some Tanner Scheppers video. If this link doesn't send you there – http://dwarfurl.com/e4ce8 – then copy and paste this one into your browser: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100408&content_id=9136090&vkey=news_tex&fext=.jsp&c_id=tex&partnerId=rss_tex Pittsburgh released infielder Ramon Vazquez. Mike Lamb earned a spot on the Marlins' bench. Hank Blalock accepted his assignment to Tampa Bay's AAA affiliate, the Durham Bulls (and reached safely four times in five plate appearances [two singles, intentional walk, E-3, flyout to left] as the third baseman and cleanup hitter in a 5-3 win over Norfolk last night). Jason Botts signed with the Camden Riversharks of the independent Atlantic League. Blalock's Bulls debut was also righthander Joaquin Benoit's. Pitching the sixth and seventh, he recorded all six of his outs on strikes (mixing in a single and a walk). So Toronto gets out of town with a series win (and very nearly a series sweep), making it 10 years out of the last 11 that the Rangers have lost the season's opening series (last year's sweep of Cleveland is the exception). Enough of that. It's just a couple losses, it's just April, it's just a game. But is it fair to suggest, maybe a little pointedly, that It's Time? Thursday Kinsler got One more shot in the ankle: A shot in the arm? =========================================================== To join the free Newberg Report mailing list so you can get e-mail deliveries of every edition of the newsletter, daily minor league game recaps, and frequent Newberg Report News Flashes, go to www.newbergreport.com and click the "Mailing List" link on the top menu bar. (c) Jamey Newberg http://www.newbergreport.com Twitter @newbergreport