6oct Happy birthday to the former Ranger great Ruben Sierra, who had 20 years in the major leagues, 1986-2006, with 9 teams, including 3 hitches with the Rangers and 2 with NYY…the Rangers were his first and he broke in as a highly-touted prospect at the age of 20 in 1986…we’d heard great things about the willowy Puerto Rican OF and it took almost no time for us to see that greatness was inevitable…he debuted on 1June and even while finding his way for the rest of that season, you could see the immense talent he possessed, even if the numbers weren’t immediately great…power developed the next year, as he hit a career-high 30 HR with 109 RBI…he hit .263, 1 point less than he’d hit the year before, and had an OPS of .771…if that’s not enough of a breakout for you, look at what he did in 1989: .306/.347/.543 for an OPS of .889…that .543 led the American League in slug…he also had 29 HR and a league-leading 119 RBI; 14 triples led the league, as did 344 total bases…and he also played the full 162 and made his first of 4 trips to the All-Star game and was runner-up for MVP…but new stardom had its effect on him and it was not real positive…the next year, while good, was down some and relations between him and club were already starting to deteriorate…he had a real nice bounce back year in 1991…but 1992 was not going real well; it was contract time and the Rangers were in a quandary on how to play this because they knew he would not handle big money well and they had grown tired of him…on the last day of August 1992 the solution appeared in a shocking trade with Oak: Ruben, Jeff Russell, Bobby Witt and cash for Jose Canseco….he spent the rest of that year and the next 2 with Oak and then he was traded to NYY in 1995 and commenced a career of bouncing around…somewhere in there with the Rangers he’d showed up for spring training all big and muscled instead of willowy and sinewy…nobody knew what to make of it; everyone thought he’d just been working out like crazy, and maybe he had been…but there was something else that was already starting to show up in this game and down on the islands of the Carribean, it was easy to get…nobody in the game seemed to know much if anything about it…anyway, from 1995-1998 he played with 6 teams and got into over 100 games only once, as his new physique was always breaking down, as will happen with those who mess around with things…between his inability to stay out there, his lack of production when he was out there, and the fact that he was a pain in the ass wherever he went, he reached a point where nobody wanted him…and in 1999 he found himself playing indy league baseball, then in Mexico the next year…the Rangers came to his rescue and gave him a shot in 2000, bringing him out of Mexico for 20 games…and they found a changed man…he was humble, said to be very easy to deal with, very eager to help young players and willing to do whatever anyone wanted him to and anything necessary to win…they brought him back the next year and were rewarded with an excellent year in 94 games, when he put up an OPS of .884, 23 HR and 67 RBI…he spent the next year with Sea then came back for 2003, getting into 43 games…his last year was 2006 with Minn…it was something less than storybook but in his day—for fans, anyway--watching El Caballo do his thing was mesmerizing and he was a very special talent who went down the wrong road…he’s 49…another 20-year guy with serious Ranger ties is Darren Oliver, who was around from 1986-2006 with 9 teams, including 3 stints with the Rangers; in fact he spent half of those 20 years with the Rangers, breaking in with them in 1993 and staying through part of 1998…from 1996 through 2003 he was almost exclusively a starter…that timeframe includes his first two terms with the Rangers…he broke out in 1994 as a bullpen hand and went 4-0, 3.42 with 2 saves in 43 games…by ’96 he was in the rotation and his first year there was good for a 14-6 record, despite a high ERA, a lot of hits and HR and a high WHIP…results diminished over the next 2 years and in 1998 at the trade deadline he was sent to StL along with Fernando Tatis and a PTBNL who turned out to be Mark Little for Todd Stottlemyre and Royce Clayton…he stayed there through ’99 and then came back to the Rangers as a free agent…over the next 2 years he got into 42 games, starting 37 and the results were mixed at best…after 2001 he was traded to Bos for Carl Everett…the next 3 years were spent bouncing through the organizations of Colo, Fla, and Hou and there were hits, HR, walks, high numbers and he seemed on the verge of falling out of the picture altogether…in 2004 the Astros started using him out of the bullpen and the results were better, but he spent 2005 out of the game after not making Colo in spring training…he came back with NYM in 2006 as a reliever and was very useful, going 4-1, 3.44 and turning in a 6-inning relief performance in the NLCS and his career was revived…the next year he went to LAD at the age of 36 and rolled through several low-ERA years, becoming more a matchup lefthander as he went…he spent 3 years with LAA and then signed with the Rangers for a third time, staying 2 years with excellent results…after 2011 he wrapped things up with 2 years with Tor…he spent this last year as a special assistant to Jon Daniels and working with Ranger minor league pitchers…he’s a good guy who found a way to keep on keepin’ on and he helped out most of the teams he was with…he’s 44…Benji Gil had 8 years in the big leagues, spanning 1993-2003, with 2 teams; the Rangers were his first…he was their first round draft pick, 19th overall, in 1991, out of high school in Chula Vista, CA…there was some controversy over whether to make him a SS or a pitcher…they decided on SS and 2 years after being drafted he made his major league debut but hit only .123; he was clearly not ready…he spent the next year at AAA and was not that great and it was becoming apparent that this was not going to be a real good draft pick…they force-fed him 130 games as the primary SS in 1995 and he hit .219…2 years later he got 110 games and after that season, 1997, the Rangers traded him to CWS for Al Levine and Larry Thomas…he never played a game with them and was taken in the 1998 draft by Fla but also never played with them, either…Ana signed him as a free agent and he stayed with them from 2000-2003…in 2001 there was a sprig of hope..in 104 games he hit .296/.330/.407 for an OPS of .807, with 8 HR and 39 RBI…the next year wasn’t horrible but after 2003 he was done in the bigs but as recently as 2012 he was still playing with the Ft. Worth Cats after several years in Mexico…today he’s 42…Dennis ‘Oil Can’ Boyd had 10 years in the majors, 1982-1991, with 3 teams; the Rangers were his last…his first 8 years were spent with Bos and he had some good ones; from ’84-’86 he won 12,15, and 16 games…but in 1987 things started to get weird around him…it was obvious that he was high on something or other…he lost effectiveness and the Red Sox cut him loose after 1989…he signed with Mon…he went 10-6, 3.31 in 1990 with the Expos but he was too weird for them and the next year he was traded to the Rangers, desperate for pitching…they gave up 3 minor leaguers, Jonathan Hurst, Joey Eischen, and Travis Buckley…he was a disaster here, going 2-7, 6.68…the Rangers let him go free at season’s end but he was too hot to handle for everyone by then and never played in the majors again…he later admitted that he used cocaine just about daily during his career, including before and during games…that came as no surprise to most…he’s 55…Gene Clines was an outfielder who spent 10 years in the majors, 1970-1979, with 4 teams; the Rangers were his third…a multi-tooled hot prospect when he broke in with Pitt in 1970, he hit .308 in 300 PA in 1971 and .334 in 334 PA in 1972…he couldn’t sustain those results, though, and he was traded to NYM after 1974…he spent 1 year with them and before 1975 they traded him to the Rangers for Joe Lovitto…he got into 116 games with the 1976 Rangers, most in his career, and hit .276/.304/.316 for a powerless OPS of .620 in 480 PA…prior to the 1977 the Rangers made a trade with CC for Darold Knowles, giving up a PTBNL…10 days after that trade the PTBNL was announced and it was Clines…he spent 3 years with them, the last being 1979 and today he’s 68.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:43:21 +0000
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