A day after The Decision in San Jose, an auction for the Texas Rangers is expected to occur. The proceedings on August 4th are sure to be even more interesting, now that billionaire/Mavs owner Mark Cuban has been cleared to bid on the team.

If Cuban wins, I’ll officially be concerned for the A’s and the AL West. Cuban is already legendary for the perks he provides to the members of the Mavericks roster. Expect that and more with the Rangers. It’ll threaten to escalate the Rangers-Angels rivalry into something approaching Yankees-Red Sox. Now that’s scary.

Even worse, Cuban has spent the last several years crunching numbers, running proprietary algorithms, and measuring performance on everyone in the NBA, from players to coaches to referees to sportscasters. (Okay, maybe not sportscasters.) If there’s a guy who can and will hire enough of the right people to really crank up a team-building model based on sabermetrics, it’s Cuban.

At least Cuban can’t fix the oppressive August Texas heat. Then again, I wouldn’t put it past him to invest in a retractable roof of some kind.