To counteract the sucky Beltre news, I'd like to bring it to your attention that the Rangers have moved Neftali Feliz to the bullpen. That's the 21 year old flamethrowing Neftali Feliz, arguably the top pitching prospect in all of baseball. Said Jon Daniels:
"We'd like to see if he's an option to help the Major League club in that role," general manager Jon Daniels said. "He's scheduled to throw an inning [in AAA] tomorrow. We still feel he may start for us in the future but we're going down that road first."
There's no indication that this is 100% permanent, but Daniels' quote is vague and troublesome. "May start for us in the future"? Feliz is a phenom whose secondary stuff still needs a hell of a lot of work. Bumping him into short relief and throwing him into the Majors is hardly going to get him to focus on developing his changeup and curveball into ML-caliber pitches. I could be misreading this, but the whole idea seems incredibly short-sighted. Yeah, Feliz will probably be able to help out a disaster of a bullpen, but at what long term cost?
I feel like we had a guy like this once.