Sunday: Rangers Recap

It's roughly 24 hours until the first pitch of the 2009 season, and the past week has been filled with anticipation and excitement. Perhaps the most important thing to happen this past week while the final Spring Training games winded down was the finalizing of the Opening Day roster. Things are finally starting to pick up for the baseball season, so buckle your seat belts.

It appears that things are also picking up a bit here at HWC. More people are visiting the site and commenting on our articles--a very encouraging sign to those of us who write them (please continue do so!). Additionally, we have our own changes coming on Opening Day: a new blog design (which will be revealed at 12:00 am tonight). While you can always find the same quality analysis here at HWC, our hope is that this new design will fit our blog a little bit better and hopefully attract more readers.

Now, let's look at what we were busy writing about (and reading about) this past week:

Sunday's Post #1: Last Week's Rangers Recap (by John Paul)
Sunday's Post #2: New Format, New Schedule, New Writers (by John Paul)
Monday Movie: Field of Dreams (by Thomas)
Monday's Post: The Departed (by Thomas)
Tuesday's Post: The Curious Case of Michael Young, Part II (by John Paul)
Wednesday's Post: Catching Up (by Thomas)
Thursday's Post: Andruw Jones and the Rangers of the Lost Spark (by John Paul)
Friday Foto: A Tribute to Frankie the Cat (by John Paul)
Saturday's Post: The AL West: Previewing the Competition (by Jon)

Be sure to catch up on any posts that you may have missed over the course of your busy week. This is the schedule that you can expect to see every week from here on out. If you follow a particular writer more so than the blog, here is the schedule, itemized by person:

John Paul posts on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays
Thomas posts on Mondays and Wednesdays
Jon (a.k.a lonestarJon) posts on Saturdays

Thanks for stopping by this week. We have a great week ahead of us, for sure. Remember to check back here to see our "fancy" new format change tonight at midnight!

Go Rangers!

John Paul

Sunday: Rangers Recap

Here we are, a week away from Opening Day. Though we all may be growing tired of Spring Training, it is offset by the ever-increasing excitement for the start of the actual season. Luckily for those of us who write about the Rangers, this means there isn't a shortage of topics to write about as there might have been in the dark, cold offesason. Let's take a look at what we've discussed this past week:

Sunday: Back in the Saddle Again
Monday Movie: The Natural
Tuesday Trivia: Trading for and trading away Jose Canseco
Wednesday: Baseball Prospectus Scouting Reports in Review (by John Paul)
Thursday: From Washington to Washington (by Thomas)
Friday: The Curious Case of Michael Young (by John Paul)
Saturday: Andruw Jones: Fourth Outfielder? (by Jon)

And here is this week's Friday Foto, a day or two late:

Pudge is becoming quite the journeyman, it seems . . . . .

Weekend Recap: Leading off

Well, first of all I should probably say hi. Second, I should probably thank John Paul for the lead-in yesterday, and for the opportunity to write here in his absence. As you already know if you read the post below, I'm Jon, and (along with my promising rookie co-writer, Thomas) I'm going to be holding the fort down this week while John Paul goes backpacking through the desolate wastelands of Utah.

First of all, a little background on me (for those that might be wondering): the Rangers have been a building obsession for me since 2004. Once I discovered the impressive, and seemingly ever-growing Ranger Internet community in 2007, I became pretty much consumed. Yes, I did run my own blog for awhile, which John Paul kindly plugged yesterday despite the fact that it's been on hiatus since last August. Someday I'm going to get back to that, but for now, this temporary gig will have to do. As far as my writing goes, I mostly specialize in game reports - largely due to the fact that I'm not half as creative as our overlord here at HWC.

The plan for the coming week: Thomas and I have agreed to a tentative schedule of alternating days, but don't be surprised to see us both posting on any given day this week, so there should be cause to check back frequently. Myself, I'll probably be fulfilling most of my obligation by doing a game report for as many games as are played this week, and since I'm scheduled to post something on Monday as well (which is an off day), hopefully at least one in depth/original article as well. John Paul has also asked us to keep the basic everyday structure around here intact, so the traditional Monday Movie Clip, Tuesday Trivia, Friday Foto and weekend Rangers Recap will all be coming your way as scheduled. Speaking of which, since it is Saturday...

...It's probably time to take a look at what John Paul had for us this past week.

Sunday: Milestone alert: 1,000 pageviews. Woot!
Monday: Commentator Query
Wednesday: The not-so-likely way to win a free Honda
Friday: Guest Writers

And the traditions:

Monday Movie: Your worst fear
Tuesday Trivia
Friday Foto: Speed Zone

So, now that we've got the formalities (and the weekend recap) out of the way, I'll invite you to check back later this evening for my first game report - Matt Harrison will be taking on former Ranger prospect John Danks and the White Sox at 3:05 CT at Camelback Ranch-Glendale, with Derrick Turnbow, Josh Rupe, CJ Wilson and Jason Jennings set to follow him on the mound.

Weekend: Rangers Recap

Been a pretty busy week . . . . just got back from Surprise and plan to write about my adventures there as soon as I get some time. In the meantime, here's what happened on this site in the last week:

To recap the week:

Monday: K% and BB%

Tuesday: Home/Road Splits (Hitters)

Wednesday: Royals Blogger Lashes Out Against BABIP

Thursday: At Spring Training!

Friday: At Spring Training!


Weekly Traditions:

Monday Movie Clip: The Sandlot

Tuesday Trivia: Question about Bobby Witt

Friday Foto: Texas Rangers: The Movie


Here's to another good week . . . Go Rangers!

Rangers Recap: Week of Feb 22-28

This week has been the first week that I've written completely original posts, straying from what I did in the first few weeks of this blog's existence (where I mostly recapped the baseball events of the previous 24 hours).

I'm going to start doing a weekend recap to review the posts of the previous week. Here we go . . .

To recap the week:

Sunday: Did You Know . . . ? Kris Benson Edition

Monday: On Andruw Jones

Tuesday: Fun with Similarity Scores

Wednesday: Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP)

Thursday: BABIP Revisited

Friday: Welcome Back, Baseball

I am also starting the following weekly "traditions", mostly for the sake of entertainment and alliteration:

Monday Movie Clip (this week's was George Carlin)

Tuesday Trivia (no trivial this week, since I just started it)

Friday Foto (this week's was the Stottlemyre Family)

Rangers Recap (this post!)

If you can think of any cool phrases involving alliteration for Wednesday or Thursday, then please post the ideas in the comments section!

Thanks to all who have visited so far. I hope you like what you have been reading.


Go Rangers!