Everyone knows who Josh Hamilton is. If you do not know who he is, lemme slap you first, then I will inform you of who this guy is and what he is doing this off-season. Josh Hamilton has played his way into people's homes across the country and has put the Texas Rangers on the list of elite teams in the American League. His quirky play style along with his straight-edge lifestyle has made many people hate him, and others adore him. One thing that can be agreed on between the fans and the haters is how explosive Hamilton is when he is playing his best. The question everyone is thinking about is whether the Rangers should give him the contract he wants.
He was recently said he is looking for a contract with 7 years at $175 million. For a 31 year-old former addict, that looks like a big gamble for teams across the league. The ironic thing about this whole situation is how different our views were at the beginning/middle of the season where Hamilton was pushing Triple Crown numbers. We all wanted him to stay with the Rangers, and we were willing to do whatever it took to keep him here and keep him happy. After how he finished the season, many fans want to just give him the boot and use that money on someone else.
If you look at his stats compared to someone who is getting close to his money, like Albert Pujols, then you should easily make a decision about whether or not to give him what he wants. Just with MVP votes, Pujols has been in the top 5 votes 10 out of the 12 seasons he has played. I mean come on, this guy was Rookie of the Year and finished 4th in the MVP race, only to lose to Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Luis Gonzales. This guy has been a workhorse for the past 12 years and when he signed that 10 year, $240 million contract, even though some said he was not worth $240 million, the stats could speak for themselves. A lifetime .325 hitter who has averaged over 40 home runs a season? Yeah, $240 million sounds like a good number to give him. But for a lifetime average of .304 and 35 home runs and has only played 5 years with a handful of injures and of the field incidents...I think I would go with a smaller contract. I mean, who in their right mind is still on the bandwagon of giving Hamilton $175 million?
My point is how that money could be divided up into giving more to the players who have actually made a difference on the team this past season. Also, there are some free agents that could replace Hamilton that has a cheaper price tag. Michael Bourn is a guy who could help produce runs and also come with a hot glove for center field. You could also help that bullpen, or even go out and get another pitcher that could help that rotation now that Colby Lewis is targeted for the All Star break to return to the lineup. Also, giving younger guys like Profar, Gentry, and Olt more opportunities to shine and also even bringing up some other guys from the farm system that this organization prides themselves in.
Josh Hamilton has made history here with the Texas Rangers. We will always remember the great moments on the field, but we will also remember the many bad memories he has given us, whether it be the throwing of the bats, or even the dropped routine fly ball in Oakland that could have wrapped up a playoff spot. Good luck Josh with getting 7 years, $175 million. Hopefully life in L.A., New York, or Boston will suit your straight-edge lifestyle better than Dallas-Fort Worth.
Showing posts with label Texas Rangers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas Rangers. Show all posts
Monday, November 5, 2012
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Texas Rangers...Trouble In Paradise?
After many years, the Texas Rangers have become a franchise that many respect and most fear. They took down the Yankees with ease in route to the 2010 World Series, as well as dominating the 2011 Playoffs. You had players like Elvis Andrus and Mike Napoli who before the magical run were no namers to many average fans. This season, Andrus was a prime target in the trade market and Napoli overcame a terrible first half of the season to be selected BY THE FANS as the starting catcher for the AL at the All-Star Game, only because of his performance on the biggest stage of them all, the 2011 World Series. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge Napoli fan, but with those stats being as low as they were (he hit .228 with 12 homers and 30 RBI's), he should have been at home working on that swing while Chicago White Sox's catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who batted .285 with 14 home runs and 45 RBI's, should have taken his spot.
With all that said, the Texas Rangers have made it to the top of the baseball world by showing teams and opposing fans they are not to be messed with. This season was supposed to be the one where they make it to the very top, by winning that championship! Little did we know, Hamilton would become the most hated on the team and the Rangers embarrassed themselves by blowing a 13 game lead at the end of the season, while looking like garbage in the first ever American League Wild Card game against the Baltimore Orioles.
Let's talk about every one's favorite individual, Josh Hamilton! Enough is enough, this man needs a new start and needs to go somewhere else. Is he really worth 6 years, $100 million? Two words people...HELL NO! This guy is not worth 5 years, not even 4! At this rate, I see 2 to 3 GOOD, PRIME years of his career, yet after that, he will become like anyone else past their prime, an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of this man. He has continually fought addiction with drugs and alcohol.. One thing that kept occurring this season was the excuse factor. He always had an excuse of something when he wasn't playing his best. Before the season started, he was caught at a Dallas Sherlock's pub relapsing with while hooking up with a random chick in the bathroom. At the start of the season, he couldn't hold on to his bat when swinging. Then it was his slump for a month when he said he was trying to quit chewing tobacco. AFTER THAT, he told everyone about his struggles with caffeine. I mean look...the guy is an amazing player. His 4 home run game against the Orioles was NUTS! For some reason, I just feel he makes too many excuses to get paid $100 million. Look at Adrian Beltre...he is making $96 million in 6 years and this guy makes NO EXCUSES! He forced Ron Washington to play him in games down the stretch where he was hurt, yet still managed to help the team with his bat and glove. That man deserves $96 million, Hamilton does not.
Now onto the Texas Rangers and their not so happy finish of the 2012 season. They finished with a 93 win season, which is definitely a successful season, yet in Ranger Nation, was a complete failure. Yes, Colby Lewis' departure in the middle of the season hurt them, and also other slumps with Young and Holland definitely did not help their case for another deep playoff run, but somehow they managed to pull off a good string of wins to be 13 games away from a third straight AL West pennant. They looked like they had home-field advantage locked up and were saving their strength for the playoffs. If only we thought it would be that easy. They managed to do something the Red Sox did a few years ago in BLOWING their lead and imploding by the end of the season. All they had to do was win one single game in Oakland, against an A's team who many wrote off even before the season began, yet they struggled in that series and got swept while losing their chance for home-field and the AL West title. If that wasn't enough, many fans saw Hamilton drop a routine fly ball, where some say that dropped ball swung the momentum all the way into Oakland's hands and killed everything the Rangers did in the 161 games before that. Many also saw Hamilton and Wash argue while in the dugout. The two men who you would NEVER think would yell or make a scene in a dugout did, and it looked ugly. That showed that the Rangers dominance, which was built in the playoffs of 2010, was over. I had a bad feeling going into the Wild Card game, and my gut was right. They played like little kids, missing routine plays and not succeeding on the Orioles mistakes. Some could say the Rangers played well, but the Orioles played better. With Hamilton going 0-4 and Napoli going 0-3, the Rangers had a rough night.
O's manager, Buck Showalter out managed Wash that night as well. He made smart decisions with his bullpen by putting in O'Day and Johnson at the right times, and it shut the offense of the Rangers down. We can only hope next season will not be as brutal at the end as this one was, as it was tough to swallow seeing those players leave before they even got to the ALDS.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as it was putting my thoughts down on a virtual notepad and please comment below so we can converse on the topic of the state of the Texas Rangers as well as Josh Hamilton.
Peace and Love!
D
With all that said, the Texas Rangers have made it to the top of the baseball world by showing teams and opposing fans they are not to be messed with. This season was supposed to be the one where they make it to the very top, by winning that championship! Little did we know, Hamilton would become the most hated on the team and the Rangers embarrassed themselves by blowing a 13 game lead at the end of the season, while looking like garbage in the first ever American League Wild Card game against the Baltimore Orioles.
Let's talk about every one's favorite individual, Josh Hamilton! Enough is enough, this man needs a new start and needs to go somewhere else. Is he really worth 6 years, $100 million? Two words people...HELL NO! This guy is not worth 5 years, not even 4! At this rate, I see 2 to 3 GOOD, PRIME years of his career, yet after that, he will become like anyone else past their prime, an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of this man. He has continually fought addiction with drugs and alcohol.. One thing that kept occurring this season was the excuse factor. He always had an excuse of something when he wasn't playing his best. Before the season started, he was caught at a Dallas Sherlock's pub relapsing with while hooking up with a random chick in the bathroom. At the start of the season, he couldn't hold on to his bat when swinging. Then it was his slump for a month when he said he was trying to quit chewing tobacco. AFTER THAT, he told everyone about his struggles with caffeine. I mean look...the guy is an amazing player. His 4 home run game against the Orioles was NUTS! For some reason, I just feel he makes too many excuses to get paid $100 million. Look at Adrian Beltre...he is making $96 million in 6 years and this guy makes NO EXCUSES! He forced Ron Washington to play him in games down the stretch where he was hurt, yet still managed to help the team with his bat and glove. That man deserves $96 million, Hamilton does not.
Now onto the Texas Rangers and their not so happy finish of the 2012 season. They finished with a 93 win season, which is definitely a successful season, yet in Ranger Nation, was a complete failure. Yes, Colby Lewis' departure in the middle of the season hurt them, and also other slumps with Young and Holland definitely did not help their case for another deep playoff run, but somehow they managed to pull off a good string of wins to be 13 games away from a third straight AL West pennant. They looked like they had home-field advantage locked up and were saving their strength for the playoffs. If only we thought it would be that easy. They managed to do something the Red Sox did a few years ago in BLOWING their lead and imploding by the end of the season. All they had to do was win one single game in Oakland, against an A's team who many wrote off even before the season began, yet they struggled in that series and got swept while losing their chance for home-field and the AL West title. If that wasn't enough, many fans saw Hamilton drop a routine fly ball, where some say that dropped ball swung the momentum all the way into Oakland's hands and killed everything the Rangers did in the 161 games before that. Many also saw Hamilton and Wash argue while in the dugout. The two men who you would NEVER think would yell or make a scene in a dugout did, and it looked ugly. That showed that the Rangers dominance, which was built in the playoffs of 2010, was over. I had a bad feeling going into the Wild Card game, and my gut was right. They played like little kids, missing routine plays and not succeeding on the Orioles mistakes. Some could say the Rangers played well, but the Orioles played better. With Hamilton going 0-4 and Napoli going 0-3, the Rangers had a rough night.
O's manager, Buck Showalter out managed Wash that night as well. He made smart decisions with his bullpen by putting in O'Day and Johnson at the right times, and it shut the offense of the Rangers down. We can only hope next season will not be as brutal at the end as this one was, as it was tough to swallow seeing those players leave before they even got to the ALDS.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as it was putting my thoughts down on a virtual notepad and please comment below so we can converse on the topic of the state of the Texas Rangers as well as Josh Hamilton.
Peace and Love!
D
Not Your Generic Introduction
Well folks, it is FINALLY HERE! The Dugout has come to blog form and will transform the virtual sports world forever! Hold on to your pants, because you are about to go on a magical journey with me, Derek Ficken, as I will talk about anything and everything there is to talk about with my two passions in life, music and sports! Are you excited? I sure am! HERE WE GO!
With this first post, I want to keep it basic and introduce myself if you do not know me. My name is Derek Ficken and I am a sports fanatic. I bleed for my teams, in every color they wear. I hate their rivals and I can be that guy that yells at the TV… sorry. I was born and raised in Fremont, California, which is a city close to the Bay Area. My dad raised me the right way in rooting for teams like the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, San Jose Sharks, and the Golden State Warriors. Unfortunately, I moved away at the age of 10 and moved to a little place named the DFW metroplex. Here, I started cheering for the Texas Rangers, Dallas Mavericks, and Dallas Stars. To this day, I will always hate the Dallas Cowboys. That will never change. My friends think I do it to spite them but in fact, I do it because I am a 49er fan for life. Even though for my hatred of the Cowboys, I plan to cover them and talk about their season as it progresses. As I grew up a sports fan, I learned of a new passion in the world, and that is music. I am a jazz musician as well as a music freak. I listen to bands like Muse and Radiohead while listening to artists such as Erykah Badu and John Coltrane. I am all over the place when it comes to music and I plan to talk about many things going on in the music world, whether its comments on new albums or whatever. I want you, the reader and my audience, to come away with a sense of knowledge on things you did not know before you started reading my posts. I also want you to be engaged with me in the comments section below. I want you to fight me in words on how stupid I am for criticizing Josh Hamilton (which you will see in the next post) or how you agree with my stance on Mike Napoli (which will also be in the next post).
Please help me become better as I hope I can bring new thoughts and ideas to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to check this out and be on the lookout for my next post!
Peace and Love!
D
With this first post, I want to keep it basic and introduce myself if you do not know me. My name is Derek Ficken and I am a sports fanatic. I bleed for my teams, in every color they wear. I hate their rivals and I can be that guy that yells at the TV… sorry. I was born and raised in Fremont, California, which is a city close to the Bay Area. My dad raised me the right way in rooting for teams like the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, San Jose Sharks, and the Golden State Warriors. Unfortunately, I moved away at the age of 10 and moved to a little place named the DFW metroplex. Here, I started cheering for the Texas Rangers, Dallas Mavericks, and Dallas Stars. To this day, I will always hate the Dallas Cowboys. That will never change. My friends think I do it to spite them but in fact, I do it because I am a 49er fan for life. Even though for my hatred of the Cowboys, I plan to cover them and talk about their season as it progresses. As I grew up a sports fan, I learned of a new passion in the world, and that is music. I am a jazz musician as well as a music freak. I listen to bands like Muse and Radiohead while listening to artists such as Erykah Badu and John Coltrane. I am all over the place when it comes to music and I plan to talk about many things going on in the music world, whether its comments on new albums or whatever. I want you, the reader and my audience, to come away with a sense of knowledge on things you did not know before you started reading my posts. I also want you to be engaged with me in the comments section below. I want you to fight me in words on how stupid I am for criticizing Josh Hamilton (which you will see in the next post) or how you agree with my stance on Mike Napoli (which will also be in the next post).
Please help me become better as I hope I can bring new thoughts and ideas to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to check this out and be on the lookout for my next post!
Peace and Love!
D
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