Rangers Take a Right Turnbow | Lone Star Brevity

Surprising even myself, I find the Derrick Turnbow signing to be a great move by the Rangers. We need good veteran pitching to fill the gaps between the banged up pitching staff of today and the young arms of tomorrow who are hurling away in our farm system right now.

I know what the most critical of fans are going to say as i said it myself. We need to stop going after broken down veterans who are coming off of bad years with shoulder injuries! It's burned us with Jason Jennings. It burned us when we traded John Danks for Brandon McCarthy because he had slightly more big league experience. He has spent the majority of his time on the DL since coming here for everything from shoulder problems to finger blisters.

Considering the amount of money Rangers management is givin to work with, this is a great pickup. We get a veteran arm for one year for less than 1 million dollars on a minor league contract. He is coming off of an awful year but has definitely proven himself in the past to be a real competitor from the back of the bullpen.

If he can get his shoulder problems straightened out in spring training or during a little time in the minors then we get a dominant veteran arm in the back of our bullpen for almost nothing. If it turns out that he cannot shake this shoulder thing and acquires another 15+ ERA in the minors or it turns out he requires surgery then we don't lose hardly any money on him.

I know Derrick would like to return to his former, dominant form so will work really hard to get to the big club even before the season begins. Now that we have a pitching coach that I can actually trust and, one that Turnbow has actually worked with in the past and is comfortable with, I am pretty hopeful that he'll make this a great deal.

The rest of my Rangers wish list isn't looking so hot, however. The Cubs are now close to signing Milton Bradley who was absolutely one of my favorite players on our club last year. Nothing will be able to replace his clubhouse presence that helped our youngs guys so much. The talks with Ben Sheets and his agent are either really quiet or have hit a brick wall. I don't think we'll have the money for him unless we salary dump Millwood or Padilla.....I'd be down for both. Trade them to a team who needs some veterans at that back of their order for some pitching prospects and our future will look that much more bright. Give the kids who can do all they can do in AAA some big league time and watch and see.

The rest of the free-agent relief pitching is underwhelming. Sure lots of those guys are technically better than what we have now and would come relatively cheap but they won't figure into our long term plans or short term plans any more than the guys we already have.

Just please....PLEASE no more give-away trades like the Laird for broken kids trade.