Over his career, he’s had a lifetime, .300 batting average.

The guy wins the Gold Glove for SS and the first thing he hears from management is that they want to move him over to 3B.

The fact that Elvis Andrus—one of the pearls gleaned from the Braves’ farm system in exchange for Texieira in 2007—is considered MLB ready should put the Angels on notice. He is better offensively and rougher defensively than Aybar, but he’ll continue to improve. That the Rangers will ask their Gold Glove-winning SS to move over and make room for a rookie speaks volumes about what the Rangers think of Andrus.

especially considering that Texas would charge us an AL West rival tax.

if they eat a whole bunch of salary and they ask for next to nothing (Brown + Jepsen?) then yeah.

but… no.

I posted that this morning, and thought to myself, “Wow, Michael Young is available.” And previous to reading everyones comments on here, I began to have my doubts that he’d be worth what I offered… in that of Weaver and Brown. Looking over his numbers, I can’t help but think I was wrong. He’s been productive throughout his career but something tells me to stay away. His contract? His numbers in Anaheim? The fact that we already took a former Ranger and look how well that worked out for us?

So, in the end. You all are right. I am wrong. You are smart. I am not. You are all really good looking…. I am… not.

Truth be told, I’d take Josh Hamilton for John Lackey, today. While we’d still have time to sign a FA arm like Lowe or Sheets.

…from parallel-universe Texas blog Lone Star Ball.

Money quote:

This is just one more chapter in the embarrassing history of this organization. And as I said at the beginning, there’s no way for this to be resolved without besmirching everyone involved. The organization looks bad. Michael Young looks bad.

And really, management looks even more incompetent for handing out that huge contract extension before the 2007 season. It was widely criticized for being too much for a guy who simply wasn’t that good, but was justified from a p.r./marketing/soft factor standpoint. But if you are going to give out a huge contract because you don’t want to take the p.r. hit that would result from letting the guy go, if you are going to make him the Face of the Franchise and the center of what you are trying to do…

You can’t do that and then, less than two years later, before the contract has even kicked in, decide you made a huge mistake and try to dump him on whomever will take him, even if it means picking up a good chunk of his contract. That is, quite simply, utter incompetence, and it makes you wonder what happened, what the thought process was, that went from thinking 5 years, $80 million being a good idea in early 2007, to thinking it is a totally unpalatable, unmitigated disaster that is going to require subsidizing to get off the books less than two years later, the baseball equivalent of mortgage backed securities.