Hank Blalock (pictured) smashes a two-run home run on Wednesday, February 25th.Major League Baseball's spring exhibition season has never been so much about the teams actually winning games and compiling quality win-loss records as it has been about the players adequately preparing, training, and tuning up for the arduous six-month regular season ahead while ensuring that they don't push their bodies too hard too fast.

That obligatory "Cactus League records mean absolutely nothing" spring disclaimer out of the way, winning sure is a lot more fun than losing -- even if it technically doesn't count yet.

No February momentum the Texas Rangers manage to forge is going to carry all the way over into April, and the process of instilling a winning culture on an organizational level probably doesn't begin quite this early, but I couldn't help but smile as I absorbed my first inning of live Rangers play-by-play commentary since September 30th, 2008, and listened intently as the patented Texas offensive attack commenced with a barrage of hits against Royals left-hander Horacio Ramirez, then successfully dealt the knockout blow after just two-thirds of an inning, with six runs (three of which were earned) affixed to his Cactus League dossier.

Ian Kinsler, Chris Davis, Greg Golson, Justin Smoak, Hank Blalock, Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz? Money. All tallied multi-hit efforts, and each of the latter three accounted for one of the Rangers' three home runs during the 12-7 victory on Wednesday afternoon, with Blalock's two-run shot soaring beyond the right field grass berm at Surprise Stadium (this picture should give you some degree of perspective as to how far it actually travelled), and Hamilton's landing somewhere beyond the outfield wall in left-center field.

It's obviously impossible for me to say which of the nine Rangers pitchers that made cameo appearances appeared the most impressive on the hill, but right-hander Thomas Diamond and his reportedly reconfigured repertoire -- which evidently now boasts a "hard slider" in lieu of his customary looping 12-to-6 curveball, according to Mike Hindman of the Dallas Morning News -- responded impressively in the face of adversity in his lone frame of work, going strikeout-strikeout-popout after a walk and single put Royals on first and second base with nobody out in the top of the fourth inning.

Michael Young, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Andruw Jones collectively went 0-for-7 with a walk and three strikeouts, but that doesn't mean I expect to see any of them absent from the Opening Day lineup as things currently stand, and if what Blalock told MLB.com's T.R. Sullivan -- that hitting off live pitching (live batting practice is, of course, one of the central tenets of pitching coach Mike Maddux's new philosophy) has rendered the offense "a little more ready this year than in the past" -- remains applicable going into the Rangers' inaugural radio broadcast on KRLD 105.3 FM on Thursday afternoon, another 20-hit onslaught may well be nigh.

We'll be hosting our first-ever live chat session here at Baseball Time in Arlington concurrently with Thursday afternoon's 2:05 p.m. Royals-Rangers rematch, and I hope you'll join us for the fun.

● Industry publication Baseball America's decision to exclude right-hander Michael Main entirely from its 2009 Top 100 Prospects list didn't constitute a reckless omission, but it understandably confused Jason Parks and I in light of our designation of Main as the top prospect in the Rangers' system last October, and did not at all jibe with Keith Law's Top 100 assessment at ESPN.com (in which Main placed at No. 64). Very odd.

The seven Rangers that placed in the BA Top 100, not including outfielder Engel Beltre (who was literally No. 101): Neftali Feliz (No. 10), Justin Smoak (No. 23), Derek Holland (No. 31), Elvis Andrus (No. 37), Taylor Teagarden (No. 73), Max Ramirez (No. 84) and Martin Perez (No. 86).

● The Rangers announced on Wednesday that they had come to terms with the following non-arbitration-eligible players, placing all 39 players currently on the 40-man roster under contract for the 2009 season: catchers Max Ramirez ($402,000) and Taylor Teagarden ($401,000), infielders Chris Davis ($406,620), German Duran ($403,940) and Travis Metcalf ($403,220), outfielder Josh Hamilton ($555,000), and right-handers Thomas Diamond ($400,000), Eric Hurley ($401,000), Warner Madrigal ($404,730) and Guillermo Moscoso ($400,000).

Texas has not yet initiated formal discussions with Hamilton and his agent, Michael Moye, with regard to hammering out a long-term contract extension, but you can bet the organization's decision to go above and beyond what they would have offered a player with comparable major league service time was intended as a gesture of goodwill to Hamilton's camp, designed to reward his tremendous 2008 campaign and facilitate further discussions.

● The worldwide economic crisis that has extended its reach into baseball's talent market has placed middle-tier relievers on particularly precarious footing with respect to actually being able to secure major league deals (though Damaso Marte and Jeremy Affeldt managed to sidestep that fate by signing early on), and while free-agent southpaw Joe Beimel's decision to spurn the Rangers' offer of a minor league deal last month may have looked like a slam dunk at the time, no team has yet stepped forward with a contract proposal within his boundaries of acceptability -- which, according to his agent, could entail as little as "a low base salary with incentives."

Eddie Guardado, the presumptive No. 2 left-hander in the Rangers' bullpen behind C.J. Wilson, reached a preliminary agreement with Texas on February 2nd, from which I suppose we can reasonably infer that, from a value standpoint, the idea of acquiring Beimel on a minor league deal was more attractive to Texas than the idea of acquiring Guardado on a minor league deal -- and why not? Beimel is six years younger, is equipped with marginally better velocity and a better ground-to-fly ball ratio, and generates more swinging strikes than his veteran counterpart, though those aren't enormous considerations when your squad is more likely than not the third-best team in the division and probably isn't going to miss out on the playoffs by a mere one or two games.

What's my point? I'm not entirely sure. But the fact that Texas wasn't willing to even slightly improve their offer to Beimel -- a higher-grade pitcher than Guardado in most respects, if not a similarly compelling clubhouse presence -- only lends further credence to the notion that the Rangers possess little interest in throwing guaranteed money at the free-agent relief market, which is largely comprised of pitchers notorious for their year-to-year volatility and perhaps a handful of known quantities. 

● And finally, it turns out that the recently uncovered Esmailyn Gonzalez public relations nightmare was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg for a Washington Nationals front office that now finds itself enveloped in utter chaos and disarray, as the termination of general manager Jim Bowden's special assistant, Jose Rijo, is apparently impending, and SI.com's Jon Heyman reported late Wednesday evening that Bowden's job is also in serious jeopardy.

Coincidentally, Bowden is evidently the man that saved the Rangers from themselves; Texas reportedly submitted the top bid ($700,000) for Gonzalez during the summer months of 2006, but Bowden "pressed his bosses to sign Gonzalez" and ultimately won out with what was perceived at the time as an over-the-top $1.4 million signing bonus.

Welcome back, baseball. It's been a while.

Quick Hits: Owner Tom Hicks stated on Wednesday that he "feels better about where the organization is overall today than [he has] since [he's] been owner," and declared that the Rangers' best signing of the off-season was Mike Maddux ... Kris Benson, Wednesday's starter, threw two innings of one-run baseball and reportedly hit 91 mph with his heater; he can reportedly make approximately $2 million if he attains all of the performance bonuses in his minor league deal, and can opt out of his contract on May 5th ... Jason Jennings will toss a simulated game on Sunday and embark on a schedule that will get him into a live game sometime next week ... Derrick Turnbow threw a simulated game on Wednesday and is ready to pitch in a live game ... John Bannister (right forearm soreness) will throw a simulated game on Friday ... Kason Gabbard is not yet ready to pitch in a game.