The Latin American Talent Market: Financial Shadows Lurk As Rangers Ink Jurickson Profar
Baseball Time in Arlington — As an ever-expanding firestorm of controversy continued to surround the Texas Rangers in light of media reports shedding new light on the nature of the ballclub's acceptance of financial assistance from Major League Baseball, one of baseball's most formidable appropriators of amateur talent affirmed its intention to stay the course by investing millions of dollars into Latin America at the dawn of baseball's international signing period. According to a major league source with "direct knowledge of the situation (via Gordon Edes of Yahoo! Sports), Major League Baseball did indeed advance Hicks Sports Group millions of dollars within the last week -- ...

Rangers Ink More International FA's
MLB Rumors - MLBTradeRumors.com — We learned yesterday that the Rangers signed two top international free agents, and MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan has a few more for us that were made official today. In addition to Venezuelan SS Luis Sardinas and SS Jurickson Profar of Curacao, the Rangers added LHP Daniel De La Torre of Mexico, outfielder Chris Garia of Curacao and shortstop Luis Mendez of Venezuela. Sullivan tells us Garia is speedster who was clocked in at 6.2 seconds for the 60-yard dash, but "not a big prospect." There's some video of Profar here. Both of the Curacao natives played in ...

Evaluating The Texas Rangers' Class Of 2009
Baseball Time in Arlington — Many organizations fail with the "build from within" strategy that the Rangers adopted in 2007 due to an inability to continually add and develop talented young players who can supplement and replace the veterans on the major league team. Thanks to several nifty trades, three strong drafts, and a few very good signings from Latin America, the Rangers are set up for a nice run over the next five-plus years. But as the Indians organization can tell you, a talented young team can quickly get off the tracks if the minor league system is not continually re-stocked with players who can fill the gaps that invariably happen on the major league roster. The Rule 4 ...