Well, at least he didn’t call him Hatchet-Face.

Bautista looked at strike one, tried to check his swing but couldn’t on strike two then swung at strike 3 in the dirt. After he swung at strike three he had a few choice words for the home plate umpire. He then tossed his bat, helmet and elbow pad on the field in protest before leaving.

Once Bautista was thrown out, Grieve had this to say…

“You turn into a cry baby when you act like that. Go sit down and look at the pitch and then apologize to ...

Flink: People here seem to hate Josh Hamilton. That replaces Alex Rodriguez, who also put up huge numbers for fans here only to get booed mercifully. Is this an odd current phenomenon?

Tim Cowlinshaw: The booing for A-Rod and for Josh exists for very different reasons. With A-Rod, it’s entirely with his persona. He’s really an insufferable human being and, in many cases, completely phony. Josh is not that. Josh is honest. Josh speaks from the hip. He doesn’t measure his words and he certainly ...

Looks like Jason Giambi has outlasted the next Jason Giambi.

Mark Teahen’s 2013 baseball odyssey took another turn Monday, as the Yucaipa High product was released by the Round Rock Express, triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers.

Teahen batted .171 (6 for 35) with two RBIs in 10 games this season with Round Rock. The Rangers signed him and assigned him to Round Rock on May 23, four days after he was released by Arizona. He batted .211 in 22 games with the Diamondbacks’ triple-A team in ...

One of the most formidable tools in a pro baseball pitcher’s arsenal is the consistency of pitching motion when throwing different kinds of pitches. If your delivery looks the same to an opposing batter when throwing a 95-mph fastball, a 80-mph curve, and a 85-mph change-up, well, you’ve really got something there. Texas pitcher Yu Darvish is ripping up the AL this year with a 4-1 record, 1.65 ERA, and 49 strikeouts, which prompted Drew Sheppard to layer five of Darvish’s pitches on top ...

Rangers fans still stung by Josh Hamilton’s off-season jab at Dallas-Fort Worth not being a “baseball town” might have been tickled to see a sparse crowd on hand at the start of the Rangers-Angels game in Anaheim on Monday.

SportsDay’s Evan Grant posted a Vine from the press box showing a sparsely populated Angels Stadium as the home team took the field. The lower bowl seemed about half full, while the upper deck was mostly empty.

Official attendance for the game was announced at 36,192.

Somebody is going to get traded eventually. When you have surplus in one area and a shortage in another, it’s the only sensible thing to do.

“I understand why people connect the shortstop-outfielder and on a low level find a way for that to help both teams,” Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said Friday. “But the reality is we have just gotten to the point we wanted with our farm system — with more elite talent back and set to contribute to the major-league club. I’m not in the ...

Don’t Grieve! Anything you lose comes round in another form!

Well, during the bottom of the fifth inning of the Rangers’ game at Seattle on Thursday night, Rangers television play-by-play announcer Steve Busby went to Fox Sports Southwest’s Dana Larson for an update on the Oakland-Angels game in Anaheim.

Larson reported that the A’s were leading the Angels, currently in last place in the American League West, 3-1.

Larson threw it back upstairs to Busby and Rangers’ color analyst Tom ...

The Rangers announced Wednesday that CEO Nolan Ryan will remain with the club, ending a six-week drama in which he considered leaving because he was uncertain of his role going forward after the promotion of Jon Daniels to general manager/president of baseball operations.

“After productive discussions the last several weeks with Ray Davis and Bob Simpson about the structure of our organization, together we are moving forward. In my role as CEO, I am focused on working closely with ownership ...

Violent Is Not the Word for Joe.

Joe Nathan picked up his 300th save on Monday night in the Rangers’ 5-4 win over Tampa Bay.

Well, there was a little more to it than that.

Nathan, who became the 24th all-time member of the 300-save club, may be the first guy to do it on what everybody – even the umpire who initially called it a strike – knew to be a walk.

Home plate umpire Marty Foster called an 82-mph curve ball on the low and outside part of the plate a strike on left-handed ...

Subtract one Vernon Wells, add one Josh Hamilton. It’s all about balance.

So, how did Hamilton respond to being challenged by his former team? Not so well:

First and second with two outs in the second: Three-pitch strikeout.
First and second with two outs in the fourth: Three-pitch strikeout.
First and second with one out in the eighth: First-pitch fly out to left.

Hamilton, 31, went 0 for 4 with a walk, a run scored and two strikeouts in the game, dropping his season batting line to ...

Yu Darvish saw the ball skip between his shins, dashing his chance at perfection. Immediately, several Texas Rangers came to the mound to console him.
“I think my teammates were more disappointed than I was,” he said through a translator.

Darvish was one out from a perfect game when Marwin Gonzalez grounded a clean single through the pitcher’s legs, and Texas beat the Houston Astros 7-0 on Tuesday night.

The celebrated right-hander from Japan struck out a career-high 14 and was in complete ...

No foolin’?

CBSSports.com’s Jon Heyman reports that the Rangers and shortstop Elvis Andrus have agreed to an eight-year, $120 million extension.
Andrus’ current contract ran through 2014, so the extension locks him up through 2022. Heyman reports that the combined remaining value of the current contract and the extension means the Rangers are committed to paying Andrus $131 million over the next 10 years.

Apologies to Gamingboy for stealing his thunder…

They’re in far different places, the Rangers and Astros, these two franchises that will open the 2013 Major League Baseball season Sunday night at Minute Maid Park at 8:05 ET on ESPN. The Rangers are constructed for the short term, hoping to win now and knowing that anything short of another World Series would be a bitter disappointment. Life is really simple for the Rangers in that way.

Even after an offseason in which Josh Hamilton and others ...

Jack Morris…screwed again!

Rodriguez on the five starting pitchers from any era that he’d pick for his starting rotation:

Nolan Ryan, Justin Verlander, Stephen Strasburg, Randy Johnson and David Cone.

Rodriguez on Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS when Cubs fan Steve Bartman attempted to snag a foul ball that prevented Cubs left fielder Moises Alou from making the grab for the second out of the eighth inning:

“That wasn’t the game there. … Chicago fans always think that it was his fault. For ...

We’ll be together forever…forever and ever more Angels fans…

Jimmy Sanderson, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University, and Elizabeth Emmons, a doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama set out to examine forgiveness within Parasocial interaction. Using Hamilton’s situation as an example, the two researchers analyzed 474 fan comments featured on a Texas Ranger forum.

“Josh Hamilton is a ...

In the 11 days since someone in Ryan’s camp leaked to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram his dissatisfaction with the Rangers’ new power structure that took away his title of team president, all Ryan has mustered publicly is a statement that said absolutely nothing, a hubristic response unbecoming a CEO whose organization is in crisis mode. Meanwhile, ownership has bowed to the altar of his Nolan Ryanness, saying pretty, pretty please stick around. President of baseball operations Jon Daniels, who ...

If you’ve seen one Q-switched laser shot you’ve seen them all.

Let’s start with what’s not so crazy. A semi-healthy Berkman is not so different from the semi-healthy Hamilton this team has featured.

Over the last five seasons, Berkman’s OPS (on base-plus slugging — the single most defining offensive stat in the game) was .913. Sixth in the majors.

Hamilton’s .912 over that span ranked eighth.

While Hamilton hit for more power (142 home runs to Berkman’s 101), playing home games ...

WARNING: YOU MAY NOT WALK AWAY FROM THIS ONE!...As Twitcher of the Death Nerve Strikes Again!

This is the problem plaguing our game. I have all the respect in the world for these young front office people that come out of Harvard or Yale — or in Daniels’ case, Cornell. I respect them when they know what they are good at: business, finance, or organizational skills — those sorts of things.

Where I tend to lose respect for them is when they decide they know how to evaluate baseball ...

Practiced grill masters can tell how done meat is by pressing with their middle finger.

Yes, there’s been a shift of power in Arlington, which may or may not be the same as a power struggle, but the end result is the same.

Either way, Jon Daniels wins and a guy named Rick George wins, because the ownership group of the Texas Rangers decided that was the direction to go.

And the loser in all this?

Nolan Ryan.

All the above is a surprising development, and a risky development — I also ...

Breaking news: The Rockies, Astros, and Rangers are not interested in me either. Well, the Astros might be if I’m willing to play for less tha minimum wage.

A source has told CLNS Radio that 9-time All-Star Vladimir Guerrero is attempting to make a comeback to the major leagues, and is currently in the process of reaching out to many teams to see if they are interested in him.

Guerrero, 38,  has sent a video of a recent workout to many teams, and will continue to reach out to teams ...

Haven’t seen such pained expression over a tattoo since Serafina Delle Rose.

The odd injury train keeps rolling on. Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News reported earlier today that Texas Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus was scratched from the lineup today because of a new tattoo that was apparently still very sensitive and creating some issues in regards to comfort.

Andrus posted a picture on Twitter of his newly-inked left arm last evening, featuring his deceased father along with some ...

Daniels: Sourced from a single barrel…

Payroll wise, how are you doing this year? Have you been told to expect a jump in the payroll budget as the new TV deal kicks in, or are the owners subsidizing the budget until the deal starts (and therefore the budget remains in the area it currently is)?

Our payroll will be up from where it was last year. We had approval from ownership to take it further than where it currently sits, but we didn’t find the right situations to extend ourselves on. The ...

They mean an actual horror movie, not a comeback with the current Royals.

Former Royals outfielder and Blue Springs High School graduate Brian McRae is set to appear in a horror movie called “Gravedigger.”

Couldn’t be that Brian McRae, right? The International Movie Database (imdb.com) cast list includes that McRae, who played for the Royals from 1990-94, before going to the Cubs, Mets, Rockies and Blue Jays.

McRae won’t be the only former major leaguer in the flick. Billy Sample, ...

Not quite as funny as Howard Stern cutting Soupy Sales’ piano wires though. (number one in the cars!)

Whether he’s a master self-promoter or just a kind-hearted soul who won’t refuse a request for his time, Holland has been told to try toning down the act and to put more attention on baseball.

The left-hander has bought in, and is trying to do his best to just say no more often.

“It’s less of the interviews and those kinds of things,” Holland said. “It’s taking a different approach to it, ...

As Aristotal Baseball points out…“No one loves the ballplayer whom he fears”

On if he’s every had a run-in with A.J. Pierzynski:

I’ve never had a run-in with him. The first time that I saw him, he was catching for the Minnesota Twins and I fell in love with him. … I like his attitude, I like the edge that he brings, I like the fact that he upsets the opposing team with the way that he goes about his business. But it’s all about one thing: winning ballgames. That’s what we’re about ...