The Depot: Rangers-Angels Live Game Blog, News, Notes And Main Street Electrical Parade!

8:24: Don’t just dip your toes in the home run pool; dive in.

8:30: The Rangers say it wasn’t just the beanballs that drove them to cut ties with Vicente Padilla. There was other stuff involved, but mostly it was the beanballs.  Oh, and Frankie Francisco will close games again.

8:33: In case, the Padilla stuff and the bullpen shuffling wasn’t enough, I’d like remind you the Rangers begin a pretty big series tonight. They will once again rely on the red hot Michael Young to lead them. But Young isn’t the only story; there are lots of other interesting subplots.

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In Other Rangers News: Francisco To Close Again

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Rangers manager Ron Washington said Friday afternoon that bidding farewell to RHP Vicente Padilla wasn’t the only pitching-staff news of the day.

Also: RHP Frank Francisco will return to closing duties immediately; LHP C.J. Wilson will go back to working the eighth inning and, when needed, at least part of the seventh.

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Rangers Have Seen Last Of Vicente Padilla

UPDATED, 6:58 p.m. CDT

ANAHEIM, Calif. – The Rangers on Friday decided that 49 times was enough.

Just 48 hours after Vicente Padilla hit Kurt Suzuki with a first-inning pitch that resulted in retaliation aimed at Michael Young, the team finally cut ties with the volatile right-handed pitcher. After 49 hit batters over three plus seasons, Padilla was designated for assignment. The team has 10 days to trade or release him. General manager Jon Daniels made it clear the Rangers are through with him.

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TGIHRP: Thank Goodness It’s The Home Run Pool

Here is your home run pool for the opening game of the big Rangers-Angels AL West Showdown:

The Rangers will go with: 2B Omar Vizquel, 3B Michael Young, CF Marlon Byrd, DH Andruw Jones, RF Josh Hamilton, 1B Hank Blalock, LF David Murphy, C Taylor Teagarden, SS Elvis Andrus and pitching for the Rangers … RHP Scott Feldman.

Most interesting thing about this lineup to me is dropping of Murphy to seventh. It gives Rangers three straight right-handed hitters (Young-Byrd-Jones) at the top of the order and three lefties (Hamilton-Blalock-Murphy) in the bottom half.

Keys, Please: A Look At Five Important Aspects of Rangers-Angels AL West Showdown Series

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Before we begin this look at some of the potential story lines of this weekend, vote in our little poll, please. And while looking at the simplistic question consider all the reasons there might be some doubt about which game this weekend is the most important. I’ll provide my own answer and reasoning in The Depot.

The Rangers head into yet edition of MOST IMPORTANT SERIES OF THE SEASON, but this three-game set against the AL West-leading Angels does have real meaning since it comes with less than 60 games to go in the season, a point that marks the start of the real pennant race. And while  the Rangers are dueling with the Angels, wild-card leading Boston will be hosting the New York Yankees. So, there is baseball of importance to the Rangers playoff chances on both coasts.

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Series Preview: Rangers at Angels

Even if they don’t own the ML’s best record, it’s hard to deny what the Angels have been saying for two months. They’re the best team in baseball. Los Angeles is 35-13 since June 12, a record made all the more unfathomable when you consider the club is 27th 26th in the majors in ERA. The normally pitching-heavy Angels have had to do it with an offense that has been without their big guns for a while. Losing Vlad Guerrero, Juan Rivera, and All-Star Torii Hunter took some pop out of a lineup already lacking power, but L.A. has parlayed a .289 team batting average into 5.71 runs per game, both ML-bests.

Erick Aybar hit .414 for the month of July. Bobby Abreu wasn’t far behind at .380.  Kendry Morales just took home AL Player of the Week honors, and Abreu one-upped him by claiming the Player of the Month title. Vlad is back (again) and Mike Napoli is embracing his role as a DH. Things are going so well in L.A. that Gary Matthews Jr. feels validated by the .668 OPS he’s posted since replacing Hunter in July. Maybe a tad premature.

But the Rangers will still have their hands full with a three-game series at Angel Stadium, and by Sunday night, Texas could be as close as 1.5 games and as far as 7.5 games from the AL West lead.

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Young Shall Lead Them: Heading Into AL West Showdown, Rangers Michael Young Is Scorching

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Once before Marlon Byrd has seen this look. It happened in 2003 when Byrd and the Phillies were in a playoff race. The eyes of veteran teammate Jim Thome became narrowed, squinty, extremely focused. His bat became a lethal weapon. And he nearly single-handedly carried Philadelphia to the postseason to end a decade-long playoff drought.

That is the look Byrd now sees on the face of Michael Young. And the results he sees coming off Young’s bat.

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Previewing UFC 101

In a busy week of blogging, allow me to make sure I remind the readers about UFC 101, tomorrow night from Philadelphia. UFC 101 is surely not the quality of UFC 100 last month, but with Anderson Silva vs. Forrest Griffin and BJ Penn vs Kenny Florian, we clearly have 2 fights up top that should be excellent.

Obviously, with UFC 103 on September 19, the PPV’s are coming fast and furious. It is clear that Dana White is not worried about over-exposure and is laughing at the premise that “less is more”. As long as people like me keep buying PPV’s, they will continue to make more. $54 bucks every 3 weeks? I wonder where it hits a point of too many. Perhaps a few of these shows on free tv is a good idea, right?

Anyway, If you have never seen Anderson “The Spider” Silva, then you owe it to yourself to check this monster out. He is so confident and dangerous in the octagon that despite knowing nobody is invincible, he seems very, very close to being just that.

My fun fact for the very dangerous Kenny Florian, is that he is the MMA fighter who most resembles Ben Stiller. Not sure if that will help you much, but I just had to share that with you.

As is our habit on the UFC PPV’s, Greg Garcia, the Dallas Examiner’s MMA writer, sends me some questions and I send him back answers. Here you go for UFC 101 – my answers are in bold:

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Cowboys Camp Mailbag

Since this is the last day of training camp that I am spending in San Antonio, I thought I might work my way through some reader emails and elaborate a bit more on some various items that are on your sports minds as we enter the week of the first preseason game.

Training camp has an interesting feel to it this year, and I feel like the Cowboys are set up to have a reasonable season that will allow some of them to redeem their good names on a national level. What that means in terms of wins is something we will only know as the season develops. I think “flying under the radar” suits them, and I think they actually enjoy the fact that they are picked to finish 3rd in their division this season.

Anyway, let’s take a look at some email:

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Cowboys ’08 – Week 12 vs San Francisco

Here is Part 11 of our 16-part series of looking back at the 2008 Dallas Cowboys season.  Hopefully, sorting through the details of last season, you are better prepared for battle when the games of the 2009 season get going again.   The preseason opener is next Thursday at Oakland.

Week 12, game 11 brought a visit from the San Francisco 49ers.  This was the Sunday game before Thanksgiving, and with Seattle on the holiday, the Cowboys had a real chance to run their record to 8-4 and to be sitting pretty as the calendar turned to December.

As you will see, much of the story again was the post-Washington-game interview he did with Deion Sanders.  Things were never the same after that.

From November 23, 2008, the notes from the Cowboys 35-22 win over San Francisco:

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Road To Arlington: Rangers Farm Report (8/7)

2008 second rounder Robbie Ross has now made 10 professional starts, all in the Northwest League where the average age is over 22. Ross turned 20 five weeks ago. Through his first three starts, Ross had given up four homers. In his last seven, none. Through his first three starts, NWL opponents hit .279 with a .541 slugging percentage. In the last seven, they are hitting .228 with a .291 slugging percentage.

Ross, who leads the NWL in strikeouts with 59 in 49.1 innings, has a K/9 of 10.76 … and a G/F ratio of 5.69. I can’t even get my head around that combo of numbers.

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Rangers Post Game Notes

OAKLAND, Calif. – DH Andruw Jones surgically repaired knee is holding up just fine, thanks.

His hamstring, not so much.

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