Year 8 (2015)
Offseason
I'm going into this offseason eyes wide open for contract negotiations. I did a lot of socializing with agents and players this last year, and I've got a pretty good idea of what kind of offers are going to be out there if I opt for free agency. With the year I had, I'm expecting a max deal, and I won't settle for much less than that. I made $19.5 this year, so that's not unreasonable. Jacob convinced me that he's the guy to get me that deal, so I'm letting him handle the negotiations.
Un-believe-a-bul ....... Jacob met with Rangers management today, and dropped by to let me know that the team offered 1 year at $16.8 million. They want me to take a pay *cut* after the year I had? Jacob makes it known that he only negotiates once, so it was pretty much take it or leave it. But that didn't matter, I wouldn't have sent him back to negotiate regardless. I'm dumbfounded that the team would slap me in the face like that, even with how negotiations have gone in the past. But since I was mentally prepared, I didn't react emotionally at all to the news. Emma was far more upset than I was, I think she'd have choked the GM if he was in the room. I told Jacob to file my free agency papers.
As I expected, in free agency I got multiple max deal offers. The Phillies offered 6 years x $30 million, while the Reds and Orioles offered the same for 5 years. The Rangers upped their offer to 5 years x $28.5 million, and the Indians and Mets offered 6 years at $24-26 million per. Emma and I sat down and talked it over for a couple of days, weighing the option of taking more money and uprooting to another city, or taking less money to stay put. It was hard to get past being treated like crap by the Rangers management, and even though I'd be making a ton of money either way, I'd be leaving $7.5 mil on the table over the life of the contract. In the end the stumbling block was my bruised ego more than anything else. Emma and I finally decided that management aside, the reasons to stay far outweighed the reasons to leave, so I opted to take the Rangers offer. I told the GM at the contract signing that he should have saved everyone the time and just made a fair offer at the beginning. I also told him he'd better use the money the team save on my deal to fill in the gaps in the pitching staff since they let Dontrelle go to the Angels and we got by with a very sketchy bullpen last year.
Spring Training
There's been a lot of buzz around spring training about whether I can have the same type of year this year as I did last year, and whether some of the youngsters will be able to step up and replace longtime regulars that have moved on. Two important positions with an open competition are CF and SS, since both Coco Crisp and Michael Young retired this offseason. It looks like the team is looking at moving Cedeno over from 2B to SS, and playing a young guy named Vasquez at 2B. CF appears to be a mess, so far none of the young guys they've tried out there seem to be ready for the majors.
My scouting report this year looks like this:
The exhibition games went fine, I tried to talk to the manager and convince him that I'm working on things and that he shouldn't worry about the results, but he still gets nervous if I'm not getting multiple hits in every game. My motivation and mood was a bit flat at the start of spring, but I've been coming on later in the spring. I went 3-4 in the last exhibition game and am ready for business.
April
It took me awhile to really get going this season, one of the few years I've started slowly. My average has been good and I've gotten a lot of hits, but the ball isn't carrying well off my bat and I'm really struggling w/RISP.
In the third week of April I finally got it going, exploding for 7 homers in a week and picking up my first Player of the Week award of the season. The Player of the Month award went to A-Rod though. Looks like he's having a bit of a resurgence this year so far.
Our offense has been anemic most of the month, and for the first time in my career it feels like as I go, the offense goes. If I don't produce, usually no one else does either. Our starting pitching has been outstanding, with Hernandez, Peavy, and Cain off to fast starts, and newcomer Noah Lowry has been great. Ubaldo Jimenez hasn't had to pitch much as the 5th starter with all the early off-days, but he's been good when he's been out there. Unfortunately our bullpen doesn't look like it has improved any over last year, and Clay Meredith has been brutal at closer. We finished 16-10 for the month, but he has 5 blown saves.
May
"Hot" doesn't even begin to describe my month at the plate. I'm hitting homers in bunches, getting 2-3 homers a game several times a week. My motivation is riding high and it shows in my play. It's amazing that I don't get intentionally walked. I was talking to Lowry at dinner one night and he said other pitchers are intimidated when I'm at the plate, and they don't make as good of pitches to me as they do other hitters. Interesting.
I easily won the Player of the Month award after sweeping the weekly awards for the entire month. The team went 23-5 in the month to get a more solid hold on first place in the division.
June
I've come back to earth some, not hitting the ball as well. I only hit one homer in the last two weeks of June. Our offense is sputtering again, and we've been in a bunch of nail biters. It doesn't help that our closer isn't pitching with any confidence, and the guys don't have a lot of confidence in him. No one is saying anything to him about it, we all go through slumps, but we're getting frustrated because you have to be able to close out games to win when it counts.
The first few rounds of All-Star voting results came out, and I'm second behind David Freakin' Wright and ahead of A-Rod. That reminds me, when we played a series in Detroit last month they had Miguel Cabrerra playing SS! O.M.G. If I had been going like this month at the plate where I'm struggling, I'd have just flicked grounders past him for singles all day long. No wonder Detroit is in last place.
The team went 15-14 for the month. We're still in first, but whereas the last several years we've been up 20 games already, this year we finish June with a modest 6 game lead over the Angels.
July
A funny thing happened on the way to the All-Star game... Toronto traded David Freakin' Wright to the Dodgers for pitching, bumping me up into first place in the 3B voting. With A-Rod having had a couple of rough years prior to this, I think he fell off people's radars somewhat. He's won two Player of the Month awards so far this year, but I still finished more than a million votes ahead of him. Of course, if Wright was still around I'd have lost the vote to him again.
I've learned that when my motivation is going badly, I am better off not trying to hit the ball out of the park on a regular basis and just pick my spots and take what pitches give me. I've been able to raise my average to over .400 even though I didn't hit a homer until the 13th. I got my power game back on track after that, and went into the All-Star break riding a good power surge.
I went 2-4 in the All-Star game, with a single and a double. I struck out in my one shot with men on base, and the game MVP went to my teammate Matt Cain as the winning pitcher. He's been amazing this year.
The Player of the Month award went to a pair of Rangers starting pitchers, Cain and Hernandez. Our starting pitching has really carried the offense a lot this year. Though I've been absolutely torrid since the break, closing July with 63 homers. My record mark of 81 last year is likely to fall.
Before the trade deadline the team traded Jimenez to Florida for closer Bobby Jenks, and released Meredith.
August
My hot hitting continued over the first 3 weeks of the month, I'm just destroying the ball. The trajectory of the ball coming off my bat has changed, instead of the flight of the ball tending to have a smooth up and down arc, I'm hitting some real moon shots. I'm a little concerned because I've had some fly balls die at the track because they were hit too high. I've watched video on my swing and while it is more of a pure power hitter stroke than what it was in the past, it's solid with no holes in it.
My home run pace slowed down a bit late in the month, but I'm still going strong. I took home the Player of the Month award, and lead all of the triple crown categories. My stolen bases are down this year, in part because I'm not getting as many singles and doubles, and in part because Brian McCann in the 8th spot of the lineup gets a lot of singles and is a base clogger, as is Vasquez in the 9 hole.
Emma told me that she is pregnant! The doctor said her due date is 5/24 next year.
We went 23-6 for the month and wrapped up the division title on the 29th.
September
September callup time again, which has come to mean inconsistency. This month was no exception. I kept my spot in the lineup though, and continued to produce. I finished the season with a .420 average, with a mind boggling 107 homers, 179 RBI, 199 runs scored, and on the last at-bat of the season I singled for my 318th hit, breaking the single season record of 317 hits I set last year. I took home the Player of the Month award.
October
First up for us is the wildcard Tampa Rays. In the first game, Hernandez got knocked around early but the offense came back and we won 6-5 with Jenks nailing down the save. In game 2, Peavy dominated in a 5-0 win. In game 3, Hendrickson pitched 6 strong innings for us, but Shields was even better and the Rays won 2-1 to even up the series. I had chances to tie the game up twice, in the 7th I came up with the bases loaded and one out and grounded into an inning ending doubleplay, and in the 9th I came up with men on 1st and 2nd and grounded into a game ending 6-4-3. Total choke job. In game 4 in Tampa, the Rays battered Lowry, evening up the series with a 7-3 win. Even though the game wasn't close, I had a 6th inning at-bat with men on 2nd and 3rd with us down 6-1 where a hit would have gotten us closer and at least put some pressure on Tampa. But I hit a routine can of corn to center to end the inning. So just like that we went from the brink of advancing to the next round to facing an elimination game. Fortunately I redeemed myself in a big way in game 5, homering to lead off the game and going deep 3 times for 8 RBI in a 12-0 rout. Cain threw 7 shutout innings and the bullpen finished up.
In the LCS we got Cleveland, who had squeaked by New York in 5 games. In game 1, Hernandez was strong in a 9-2 win. I led off the game with a homer, and went 4-5. Peavy continued his great year, throwing a complete game 3-0 shutout. We didn't cool off any going to Cleveland, despite the frigid wet weather. We took games 3 and 4 to close out the series sweep.
The World Series matchup was the Dodgers, who got past Milwaukee in the NLCS. We shutout the Dodgers in the World Series ... the entire series. Cain, Hernandez, Peavy, and Lowry all dominated their starts, with Cain and Peavy going the distance. Jenks closed out the non-save situations in the other two games, as we won 5-0, 7-0, 2-0, and 10-0. Champs again!
I won the WS MVP award, the league MVP award for an unprecedented 5th consecutive time, as well as the Hank Aaron and Hitter of the Year awards. At the Championship Trophy and MVP award presentation after the game 4 win, after the commissioner presented me with the World Series MVP award I called our 5 starting pitchers up to the stage and presented the MVP trophy to them as a group, telling them what an amazing job they did all season in getting us to the championship. And their performance in the World Series was simply legendary.
