I hope everyone had a happy and safe veterans day, and God bless our veterans. My dad and my father in law are both vets and I am grateful for their service and for the service of all of you veterans out there. Thank you from all of us here.
Now that the election is over, we can talk about important stuff again like baseball.
1. What Will Happen to Josh? Josh Hamilton wants 7 years and $175 million. Not going to happen anywhere, but neither is the Rangers offer of no more than 3 years. He will sign somewhere else in the middle of 3 and 7 years (most likely a 5 year deal). As I wrote in my Yahoo! article, he
will be missed but it is time for the Rangers to move on. Internally they have Craig Gentry and Leyons Martin. Both have potential, Martin is higher paid and they think has a higher ceiling, but Gentry had a pretty good season in 2012 hitting .343 with a .425 on base percentage against left-handed pitching and .277 with a .325 on base percentage against righties. (TexasRangers.com). They are not sure if Martin is ready for the full-time job yet. I would not be surprise at all if the Rangers look elsewhere for centerfield help. We have all heard the names like one of the Upton brothers or I have even heard the name Jacoby Ellsbury thrown out there. Personally I think Gentry and Martin deserve a shot.
2. Power Hitter. With Josh moving on and Napoli possibly moving on as well, the Rangers are 
going to need to replace some of the 67 home runs and 184 rbi the two combined for in 2012 (Baseball Refrence). The Rangers are not going to find another Josh Hamilton as far as production goes (43 hr and 128 rbi), but they can find a couple guys to do that. There has been talk about Nick Swisher coming to Texas (a guy I do not like very much), Justin Upton (as mentioned), also free agents are Torii Hunter, Josh Willingham and others. None of those guys are Hamilton, but we need to start somewhere.
3. Catching. The market is not exactly flooded with high quality catchers this off-season, but the Rangers need something. Re-signing Napoli for one year should be a priority, he will have something to prove to try to get a long-term deal somewhere and the Rangers need a catcher. I have heard Joe Mauer’s name floated out there, but I am not sure how longer he will be a catcher. I expect the Rangers to move quickly on this one because they need to get something done before we have only Geo as a catcher.
4. Pitching – Zack Greinke, Jake Peavy, Dan Haren, Kyle Lohse, Edwin Jackson and Anibal Sanchez are just a few names of starting pitcher free agents. Out of those guys, the Rangers are really only linked to Greinke. But we all know that the Rangers like to keep their talks close to the vest so they could be after any one of those guys. As of right now the rotation is Darvish, Harrison, Holland and Ogando. Lewis and Feliz will be back at some point in the 2013 season, but I believe that Feliz will go back to the pen. The Rangers proved last season that you can never have enough starting pitching. Dempster and Oswalt are not coming back, by the way.
The pen will be without Mark Lowe or Yoshi Tatyama. No problems there. They could put Martin Perez there to start the season. We will have to wait and see. Also I think they will re-sign Mike Adams. Right now they show the bull pen to be Nathan, Scheppers, Ross, Kirkman, Font, Grimm, Feliz and Hottovy (TR). Trust me, that will change.
5. Other Questions -What to do with Profar? Should he get a chance to play every day and if so what do the Rangers do with Kinsler or Elvis?
Is Mitch Moreland the 1st baseman of the future? The Rangers need to decide that quick.
If they don’t think they will be able to keep Michael Young, Nelson Cruz and Elvis Andrus, should they go ahead and trade one or all of them before 2013 starts?
I can’t wait till some of these questions get answered.
