Monday Evening Rangers Notes

A couple of quick things out there on a relatively quiet off day:

● One scout who watched Yu Darvish's start against the Twins on Saturday came away unimpressed, saying, "A lot of his fastballs are very straight. The guy is supposed to throw hard. But he basically pitched at 89 to 92, touching 93-94. That’s pretty good in Japan. It’s not very good here. He has a good cutter, a good curveball. But when he gets in trouble, he turns into a breaking-ball guy – nibble, nibble, he won’t let it go. He reminded me of Dice-K." (Ken Rosenthal, FOXSports.com)

● Nolan Ryan confirmed that the Rangers engaged Josh Hamilton and his representative in "very preliminary" contract talks (though the timeline of the discussions has not been disclosed), but cautioned that nothing was imminent, and further stated, "It’s getting a feel for what their expectations are, where they feel like this should go and then it falls back on us discussing what we think is in our best interest and realistic. It’s very preliminary. There aren’t strong negotiations where something’s going to get done in a short period of time.” (Richard Durrett, ESPNDallas.com)