After losing out on Matt Morris to the Giants, the Rangers went out and acquired Vicente Padilla from the Philadelphia Phillies for a PTBNL.
Padilla isn't exactly the ace that Texas was looking for. He had a 9-12 record last year with a 1.50 WHIP and 4.71 ERA. He also had 74 walks to only 103 strikeouts. Not a good ratio.
Here is what ESPN says about Padilla:
Sometimes Padilla looks like the All-Star he was in 2002. Sometimes he looks ordinary at best. At the top of his game he throws a heavy, boring fastball that sits comfortably at 96 MPH, a breaking ball that hits 94 MPH, a biting slider and an effective changeup. There are games, however, when he throws in the 87-88 MPH range for the first couple of innings for no apparent reason. There are other times when he stubbornly insists on throwing almost all fastballs, and games when his concentration seems to wander. He's not the kind of pitcher hitters feel comfortable facing-even though, as often as not, they can beat him in the end.
The truth is that the Rangers might not be able to ever get that dominant starter until they figure out how to keep baseballs in that ballpark.
The one possible exception? Roger Clemens, whose splitter could likely make that irrelevant. Let's just hope he doesn't like the park.
