Programming advisory: The third and final installment of "The Ten Longest Texas Rangers Home Runs Of 2008" series -- the first two parts can be viewed here and here, respectively -- is now slated to drop on Sunday morning. Apologies for the unexpected schedule revision; hopefully the below column will somewhat whet your baseball appetite until then.

Thanks again for making Thursday afternoon's live gameday chat session such a rousing success.

● Right-hander Kevin Millwood's two sharp frames of one-hit baseball against a subpar Royals lineup on Thursday afternoon may ultimately be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they constituted a refreshing deviation from the 2008 iteration of Kevin Millwood that was seemingly out of sync from the get-go last spring and logged a grand total of 40 days on the 15-day disabled list as a result of recurring soreness in his right groin muscle:

"I'm excited about it," Millwood said. "I felt strong. I think my velocity will get better as the spring goes on, but as far as locating the ball and throwing a good breaking ball, I was extremely happy with it."

Talk is cheap, of course; Millwood similarly proclaimed that he "[felt] healthy ... and strong" on March 20th of last year after tossing five shutout innings against the Diamondbacks in his 2008 Cactus League debut, an assessment with which then-pitching coach Mark Connor concurred. Subsequent physical issues unfortunately begat season-long inconsistency after three above-average starts out of the gates, so perhaps the best thing we can take away from his latest promising performance is that nothing has gone awry ... yet.

Southpaw Derek Holland -- whom industry publication Baseball America recognized as the game's fifth-best left-handed pitching prospect on Wednesday, just behind Baltimore's Brian Matusz and well ahead of Chicago's Aaron Poreda in terms of placement in the publication's Top 100 Prospect rankings -- both shone and struggled, yielding a pair of solo shots and free passes but ratcheting up his game in the face of enormous spring adversity to punch out Mike Jacobs swinging with two outs in the bottom of the third inning.

Allowing copious walks and home runs has never been Holland's modus operandi at any point in his two-year professional career; it was a blip on the radar, but a necessary blip for his long-term development nevertheless in that new challenges will only impel him to further improve and refine his repertoire and approach on the hill.

Willie Eyre -- who, at one point, hit 93 mph on the Surprise Stadium radar gun -- and Joe Torres? Perfect. Eddie Guardado and Doug Mathis? Not so much. Josh Hamilton? Ridiculous, as usual.

And the new radio tandem of Eric Nadel and Dave Barnett? Awesome.

● The David Murphy love train is chugging along full steam, and it is increasingly beginning to sound as though Marlon Byrd has been relegated to a slot no higher than fourth in the Rangers' major league outfield depth chart behind Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, and Murphy, with Andruw Jones still embodying the big wild card of the spring.

There's a sort of philosophical dissonance between the assorted merits of Murphy -- who has relative youth, upside and service time in his corner -- and Byrd, still a superior performer with both the bat and the glove based on his work over the last two seasons, and from the standpoint that Texas wants to determine what Murphy actually is once and for all, giving him ample playing time in 2009 is wise.

Texas currently finds itself in that tricky transitional stage, however, where the urgency of player development has to be properly balanced with the need to field a competitive major league product and fuel ticket sales at a time when disposable income is increasingly drying up. Perhaps that's why Jeff Wilson's implication in the Thursday morning edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the lefty-hitting troika of Hank Blalock, David Murphy and Chris Davis would likely occupy the fifth, sixth and seventh spots in the Opening Day batting order against reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee confused me to such an extent.

Lee was admittedly tougher on right-handed batters in 2008 than those that he enjoyed a same-side advantage against (left-handed batters enjoyed an additional 20 points of both on-base and slugging percentage, albeit still amounting to just .272/.299/.362 in 254 plate appearances, and perhaps that reverse advantage was the product of his most frequently utilized off-speed pitch -- the change-up), and I'm not going to be the one to brazenly proclaim, "Well, Murphy never has been any good against southpaws, so therefore he absolutely never will be any good against southpaws." Look, stuff happens. Adjustments happen. Progress happens. Perhaps this is the year that he proves himself competent against that segment of the major league population. I just don't think it's all that likely.

The point is that if Byrd's worth in the Rangers' eyes has fallen to such depths that he's not even going to be employed in a situation that absolutely screams for a platoon advantage, the Rangers might as well deal him now before his value begins to plummet like the post-World War I German mark. In fact, I'll go ahead and record my prediction now, and if it doesn't pan out I'll make fun of it later: Byrd will be playing for another organization on May 1st.

Now, if only Matt Murton were available ...

● Finally, thanks to popular Cardinals blog Viva El Birdos for inspiring this Win Value-driven comparison of each of the AL West's four tentative 2009 starting rotations:

The methodology I used was similar to the one used at Viva El Birdos; I plugged Baseball Prospectus's playing time-weighted innings projections into Sky Kalkman's wins above replacement spreadsheet, then utilized the ERA projections from two popular player forecasting systems -- Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA and Sean Smith's CHONE -- and tallied the

Of course, the problems with this sort of simplistic snapshot analysis are multifold. Dustin Nippert is, for whatever reason, projected as the Rangers' No. 3 starter, and Baseball Prospectus forecasts the Rangers to receive fewer innings from their tentative starting five than any of their divisional counterparts; additionally, CHONE calculated ERA projections for Scott Feldman, Brandon Morrow and Ryan Rowland-Smith as if they were all going to be full-time relievers in 2009, which is obviously advantageous to their ERA projections, and Matt Harrison would be yanked from the Rangers' starting rotation long before he could amass 140 innings if he fulfilled PECOTA's dire forecast of a 6.31 ERA.

The above graph is not at all scientific, and shouldn't be viewed as a indicator of major league pitching talent so much as a reflection of the level of production each club is projected to receive from the starting five it breaks camp with; in that regard, the Rangers clearly lag behind their competition, and some very pleasant surprises will be required if the Rangers are to legitimately entertain the notion of hanging around in the post-season discussion beyond the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline.

Kevin Millwood living up to his contract would be a strong first step in the right direction.

Quick Hits: Marlon Byrd (microfracture surgery, left knee) ran at 95 percent without difficulty earlier this week, and could be medically cleared to play by team physician Dr. Keith Meister as early as today ... Manager Ron Washington on Josh Hamilton: "Josh really needs to be monitored, health-wise, meaning he gets some time at DH, which he initially balked at last year, and occasionally getting him out of center field [to a corner spot] when he’s playing the outfield. The more ABs [at bats] the more we will benefit as a team" ... Texas will send a representative to watch free-agent right-hander Chad Cordero throw off a mound today, but has no interest in free-agent left-hander Odalis Perez ... The MLB Network will air a one-hour documentary entitled Josh Hamilton: Resurrecting the Dream at 8:00 p.m. CST tonight.