He Makes Us New!

Has it really only been a week since the Super Bowl? That was a sad night indeed (that's me consoling Big Ben in the picture). Oh well. Life goes on and I’ve got 6 Super Bowl trophies to cry on.

This past week has felt like forever. I finished my first unit of online Spanish, started working more as a manager at Coldstone, applied for LT for the summer, played a lot of racquetball on the weekend and got closer to a lot of my boys/girls from the Mark Twain Canvas Group (represent!). It’s been a lot of fun.

I’ve done a lot of hanging out with Mark Twain peeps this semester, mainly because God made it clear to me towards the end of last semester that I was spending far too much time focused on journalism, internships, and stuff related to my hopeful future career. The idol of success had been grabbing a hold of me and I needed to get God back in the place he deserves: First.

I’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping myself around God-like people for the first month of 2011, so it’s been a really encouraging semester for me so far. My core group has been awesome this year, I’ve been going to church instead of basketball games (say whaaaaaaa?) and I have been putting more of my daily focus on Him.

All this is really good for me. It’s fun and important to hang out and fellowship with other people of faith, but the thing that needs to come from that is growth in the Lord.

I think that’s been happening in the first month I’ve been back in good ‘ol CoMo. Putting yourself in good situations with people of the Lord helps you to always think of Him and your developing relationship with Him.

A song we sung at the Rock last night (“Beautiful Things”) really got me thinking at the end of the night. Here’s part of the pretty simple song:

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

Obviously these 4 lines (the main part of the chorus) are powerful. All we have and all we have become is because of Him.

But it’s the last part of this song that got me thinking.

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

Isn’t it crazy that no matter who we are or where we are at in our walks with Christ, we are always being made new by God!? Even if we think we are in a good place with Him, He can reveal something about Himself that we had never thought of before or have neglected to think about for a while.

Some things get stale, but our relationships with God can never get stale if we do our part. God is always doing his part. He’s always trying to make us new. We’ve just gotta accept it and become what He wants us to be.

I had spent the first couple of years of college not allowing myself to be made new by God. He was presenting me with opportunities to be more like Him, but I turned away in order to find “happiness” elsewhere.

Now that I recognize it, I’m doing my best to follow the path God has for me because He knows what he’s doing, right? He’s always making us new! PTL! (i this acronym)

Texas Rangers Off-Season Review: Recovering from an early failure

Coming off an unprecedented year of success, it looked like the Texas Rangers would go about their business quietly in the 2010 off-season, with the exception of chasing Cliff Lee at all costs.

The Rangers did end up doing all they could to keep Cliff Lee in Texas, making multiple trips to his home in Arkansas, but that pursuit came up short. Even though they missed out on the biggest piece of the off-season and the piece they focused all their attention on, Jon Daniels and company did make some pretty good additions to a team that was going to make the playoffs even before they traded for Cliff Lee last July.

That's not to say everything else went smoothly this off-season. Michael Young made sure of that. But we'll get to that mess later. Let's start with the biggest story of the off-season: the failure to sign Cliff Lee.

1. Missing out on Cliff Lee
32-year old ace Cliff Lee was the prized target of the off-season for any team needing an absolute stud for the top of their rotation (that's every single team in baseball, right?). The Rangers made a deal for him in July and significantly increased their chances of re-signing him by making an improbable run to the World Series. Still, after an extended battle with the Yankees for his services, the Phillies came in at the last minute and screwed it all up by bringing him back only a year after trading him away for Roy Halladay.

When looking at this move, it's an obvious disappointment that the Rangers couldn't re-sign the first true ace they have had since Kevin Brown in 1992, but let's look at the big picture of this deal. The Phillies signed Lee to a 5-year, $107.5 million with a $27.5 million dollar option for a 6th year or a $12.5 million buyout.

I know the Rangers have a newfound financial prowess under new owner Chuck Greenberg, but giving a 32-year old finesse pitcher 6 years and at least $120 million could look like a pretty dumb idea in 4 or 5 years. Cliff Lee is great and will probably be himself for at least the next 2 or 3 years, but when he reaches his decline phase at about age 34 or 35, what will he be then? It would have been a risky contract and the Rangers may look back at it and smile in a couple of years.

That's not to say I was relieved when I heard Lee was headed to Philadelphia. I was livid. The Rangers finally had a bona fide ace but they could only keep him for 4 months. If the Rangers re-signed Lee and he led them to a World Championship in the next couple of seasons, it would have been much easier to swallow the last 2 or 3 years of his large contract. The risk was worth the potential reward, so I would have preferred to overpay for a much better shot at a championship.

Still, missing out on Lee isn't entirely bad, so let's try and keep a level head. The Rangers saved some cash and were able to improve their team in other ways this off-season. Let's take a look at the moves Texas did make.

2. Signed C Yorvit Torreabla to a 2 year, $6.25 million deal

The first semi-major move that Texas made this winter was the signing of 32-year old catcher Yorvit Torreabla. The catching position gave the Rangers a lot of fits last year to say the least, so it was a good idea to bring in a fairly proven catcher in to produce 80-100 games better than the combo of Bengie Molina, Taylor Teagarden and Max Ramirez did in 2010.

Jon Daniels said that he would like to see Torreabla catch 100 games for the defending AL champs this year, something he has never done before. Coming off a 2010 where he hit .271/.343/.378 (somewhat inflated by a .321 BABIP), the Rangers could do a lot worse at catcher for next year.

Don’t expect Torreabla to excite many fans headed into the 2011 season, but I’m actually very happy with this signing. He’s got a fairly good defensive reputation and has shown he can hit in any ballpark in baseball (Colorado and San Diego). You aren’t going to find many catchers who are going to set the world on fire with their bats, and considering how bad the catchers were for the Rangers last year, this is a solid move from Jon Daniels and co.

3. Signed SP Brandon Webb to a 1 year, $3 million, incentive-laden deal

This is a move I had been in favor of since the beginning of the 2009 off-season. Coming off a shoulder injury that has cost him almost all of the last two seasons, Webb was looking for an incentive-laden deal and the Rangers smartly provided one for him.

I don’t know if the Rangers are counting on Webb re-gaining his Cy Young winning stuff, but if he is even at 80% of his old self, he will be a really big piece to a rotation searching for top end talent. It also helps that Webb doesn’t really rely on velocity to succeed. I know he can’t throw meatballs up there and expect success, but if he has a fair amount of sink remaining on his sinker, he will be able to get ground balls and let his new, spectacular infield defense #dowork.

It hasn’t been said if Webb has been promised a rotation spot by anyone in upper management, but I imagine if he doesn’t get blown up in Spring Training, he’ll enter the season as the #3 pitcher, slotted behind C.J. Wilson and Colby Lewis. I’ll leave you with this quote he had a couple of weeks ago on ESPN 103.3.

“I've made some dramatic strides," said Webb. "If anybody had been around me for the past month or so since I've been throwing, it's been awesome. I don't think they have to be too patient. I think I should be totally ready to go in spring training, jumping right in with the guys and just carrying on like a normal spring training for myself."

4. Signed LHP Arthur Rhodes to a 1 year, $3.9 million deal with a vesting option for a 2nd year

Another move that kind of came out of nowhere this off-season was the signing of the ageless wonder, Arthur Rhodes. An All-Star in 2010, Rhodes faded down the stretch last season, but could be good in a tandem with fellow ageless wonder Darren Oliver. Oliver had the same problems that Rhodes had late in the season last year, so if they can be used in the same situations but not as frequently (both appeared in about 65 games last year), it could preserve them for another playoff run.

5. Made pitching depth signings (RP Yoshinori Tateyama and SP Dave Bush)

These moves might not end up meaning anything, but who thought the trade for Matt Treanor would be worth anything last year? Tateyama has never pitched in the MLB and has a bit of a funky, ¾ delivery, so he could be a good novelty pitcher for a limited number of appearances this year (or he could develop into someone like Darren O’Day).

The best off-season moves made by Jon Daniels in 2009 were depth signings that gave the Rangers a lot of stability in the case of injury. Dave Bush is a good example of this same kind of thing in the 2010 off-season. He’s definitely not going to ever pitch like a top of the rotation guy, but he could be used in an injury pinch or some situation like that this year. Not a bad guy to have around.

So even with missing out on Cliff Lee, the Rangers had a pretty solid start to the off-season. In my next baseball post, I’ll look at how the Rangers made a signing and a trade that has sent many positive and negative ripples around the organization and the MLB as a whole.

Inspired to Blog/Where I'm at

Now Playing: By Your Side, Tenth Avenue North (I'm learning it on the guitar :0)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've seen a lot of friends blogging. Whether it's about things going on in their life or just about a topic that they are interested in, I have been really excited to read them all. It's cool to see what everyone else is doing in their college years, what they think about certain things and where they find themselves in this journey we call life.

After reading the musings of everyone else, I felt led to start writing about the things I am thinking about on a daily basis.

While I have had a ton of experience blogging in the last 4-6 years, I haven't really ever written about what is going on in my life, but instead about what is going on in the world of sports.

I'm a sports fanatic that loves to spend as much time as possible analyzing, debating and watching everything that is going on in baseball, basketball, football and hockey. That's the reason I came to Mizzou's journalism school: to become a sports writer.

With that said, I am trying to avoid this interest/career path from defining me. Yeah, people will probably still always come to me and ask "so what did you think of this random game last night?" and expect me to have an opinion (I probably will have one...), but I find myself wanting more depth in my life.

Honestly, it will be kind of awkward for me to write about my thoughts, feelings, etc. as I start this blog because I am naturally an introverted person when it comes to things like that, but I hope this can help me be more willing to talk about these things to people I care about.

So, I'm going to be using this blog mainly to discuss what's going on in my life. If you know me on any sort of level, I hope you know that I'm a Christian. I was thankfully raised that way and it's the thing in life that makes most sense to me.

When I went to college, I was confident in my relationship with God. I came to Mizzou excited to make friends, get a lot of experience in the journalism world and find a cool church to go to for my 4 years here.

I spent the first 2 years of my college career playing the part of a good Christian without making any real attempt to grow my relationship with Christ. Sure, I attended The Rock every once in a while, did some thinking about what was going on in my life, etc., but I was never fully committed to giving my life to God and letting him take me where he wanted.

This year, I've made a big effort to try and put more of my energy towards God and what he has to offer me rather than things that don't matter as much (school, work, sports, everything else). I'm more dedicated to spending time with my brothers and sisters in Christ and I'm spending more time with God himself while learning to trust Him and where he is leading me.

Whenever I used to hear people talk about "listening to what God is saying," I kind of just brushed it off because that didn't make too much sense to me. I knew God was there and that he helps guide your life, but I never just randomly heard a voice from above saying "Jason, you should go to Mizzou!"

Starting last semester, I finally started to figure out what it means to hear God's voice/see God's plan. I have been on the prowl for a sports writing internship for the upcoming summer for a couple of months. I have submitted a number of applications in the search of one, but still have gotten no responses.

I think I'm a good enough journalist to get one of these internships, but now I'm starting to think/realize God has a different plan for me this summer. Whether it is going to Colorado for LT with The Rock or it's just staying in Columbia to build up some finances for after college, I'm praying to get some clarity on this issue.

I could write so much more right now, but I guess I'll avoid writing a ridiculously long post (have I done that already? crap) and keep these thoughts for the future.

If you are in Texas, have fun with your stupid 2-3 inches of snow and we'll have fun in our 18-24 inches up here in Missouri!!!

P.S.

Like I said earlier, I don't want my interest in sports to define me, but I'll most likely use this blog to spout some opinions on Mizzou hoops, the Rangers, etc. Couldn't hurt, right?