Based on their performance the past two weeks, the Rangers believe they can win the American League West or the wildcard race so when Roy Halladay informed his General Manager on Thursday night, he didn't want to be traded to Texas, it didn't phase the Rangers much.

"It's not a secret, he was one of the more attractive names that was out there" said Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels.  "His club talked about him publicly and we certainly went down that path.  There's 30 clubs in baseball that would love to have him, whether they're in it as we are or if they are younger club, he fits in so many ways, but in the end of the day it wasn't meant to be" Daniels said.  "When we looked at it we said, who do we really want to take out of the starting rotation and who do we really want to bump out of this bullpen, who here deserves to lose their job unless it was an obvious upgrade.  We went after some of those obvious upgrades but when those didn't materialize , we didn't think it made a whole lot of sense to shuffle the deck and bring in guys that were materially better than our own."

The Rangers went into tonight's game against Seattle, three games behind the Los Angeles Angels in the AL West and just a game and a half behind Boston in the wildcard race, but Daniels didn't want to sacrifice too much of the future including pitchers Derek Holland and Neftali Feliz, especially when the club is playing it's best baseball of the year.

"In the end of the day we really like our club" Daniels said.  "We believe in these guys and have the chance to be better in the next two months than the previous two." 

Rangers Third Baseman Michael Young agreed. " We have a good team and we're getting better.  Any player would welcome a way for our club to improve, by any way possible. If that meant adding the best pitcher in the game, we were all down with it, without a doubt but you know for whatever reason it didn't happen, we're going to move on and we have a good club now and were going to continue to get better over the next two months" Young said.

One of the key pieces to many of the trades was young Rangers starting pitcher Derek Holland who had a no hitter going into the fifth inning last night before settling for a ten strikeout, two hit victory last night.  Holland's friends made sure to inform him that his name was being tossed out in these trade rumors but he said, it wasn't his motivation on the mound last night.  "I don't let that stuff get to me" said Holland.  My plan, is here to stay here. This is my home I want to be here in Texas."  And it's obvious that the Rangers feel the same way about the rookie.

"He's one of numerous players we were asked about, for good reason" said Daniels.  "We didn't want to trade him six months ago, six weeks ago or 24 hours ago and certainly don't want to do it now."

Holland is one of the many young players that has made the Rangers farm system ranked among the tops in baseball, which Daniels took much pride in on Friday.  "It was very encouraging to hear the players that other teams had interest in. It was third party reinforcement that we do have quality on the way."