I’m Back From Texas as Rangers Return Home

It was a good trip, it was a long trip. The Cali to Texas I-40 jaunt is not for the faint of heart for sure. I’m back at my desk with the Rangers getting home from a west coast swing that saw the offense revert to its July ways. Lots of runners in scoring position, most of them not scoring. Except for Scott Feldman, most of our pitchers had decent trips though and they say that’s what wins championships. Now comes the hard part. Trying to get our offense on track against a very stingy Oakland staff.

Usually when I am checking the Rangers on MLB.com, I close the window right on the last out. Yesterday there was so much going on in here I listened to Eric Nadel and for whatever reason, I listened through the post game show. I agree with what Eric said and hope we are both right. Most times after a road trip when we struggle, we come home and whoop somebody’s ass. (those weren’t Nadel’s words). I have had a real hard time excepting a magic number this year. This is a four game set and I will either be more comfortable with it or terrified by the time this series is over.

Bottom line, we have games with two teams with everything on the line through game 162. We need to face the fact that we are one of those teams too.

Rangers Win, Increase Lead

This is when I need to tap the breaks as a fan. Because the Angels and A’s both lost today, we now lead the A’s by 6.5 games and the Angels by 8. Significant for the Angels because they ran Jered Weaver out to face the Mariners and they snapped his personal 13 game win streak.  So now even the most dependable Angel is had an issue or two. The question I have asked my Angel fan friends is whether they think Mike Scoscia is gone IF the Angels miss the playoffs. I mean Arte Moreno spent a ton of money in the off-season and by all accounts they seemed as much a lock for the playoffs and most picked them to end the Rangers reign atop the AL West. I know, it’s not over yet.

As far as our game went, Yu Darvish had some success today. He still had problems, but was a better pitcher than he has been his last several outings. Darvish relied on his breaking ball a lot today and the problem with it is it is just too wicked. He has to learn how to control that better. He walked five but one was intentional. He struck out six. It was a quality start, only the second in his last six tries. If he figures it out and Derek Holland found himself again last night we could finish the year strong. Because our hitting is starting to come around. Robbie Ross got back on track with a key out in the 7th inning.

Josh Hamilton has two settings this season. On and off. He is back on again and had his 32nd homer and four RBI’s. Two of our runs were gifts from the Tigers on wild pitches. Honestly probable one was an outright gift. the other was vintage Elvis Andrus not slowing down on his way to third as the ball got to the backstop. Andrus is quietly having a career year and Ian Kinsler should start working on which outfield position he would like to play if Profar makes it up next year.

Off to New York to face the other “best” AL team. If Ryan Dempster wanted the opportunity to play a role in important games, tomorrow night will be his first opportunity.

 

 

For Now….

I will follow-up on today’s 8-3 win over the Tigers. But for now I have this…

 

If You’re Not Hitting Anyway, King Felix Will Own You

Felix Hernandez more than handled the Texas Rangers tonight. We managed just three singles off of Hernandez, while the lowly Mariners blew up Yu Darvish in the first inning. Darvish has been nowhere near the pitcher he was to start the season and seems very uncomfortable on the mound. He no longer has that “new Yu smell”.  The silver lining is that the Angels dropped another to the Yankees today and have lost two straight after the break. I say again that getting all of our pitchers healthy again is not going to help our anemic bats. Leonys Martin is hitting .176 and Yorvit Torrealba .216. Michael Young has shown signs of life, but there have been no big innings, no fireworks.

What’s worse, it appears to me (I watch almost every game) that they are missing a pep in their step that they have had for almost two seasons now. Would a Justin Upton and or Cole Hamels fix this? Sometimes a team gets picked up by getting re-enforcements and love from the front office. But with Nolan and Jon Daniels there, you could hardly accuse them of being passive. I know they say “it’s just one game” but there have been quite a few “just one games” in the last 30 days.

It just appears to me (and others if you read Tweets and Message boards)that something ain’t right. Sorry Wash, “funks” don’t last for over a month. Earlier this season the Angels fired batting coach (and former Ranger) Mickey Tettleton. Maybe it’s time to move Scott Coolbaugh elsewhere in the organization. Like that? I didn’t say fire. Rudy Jaramillo is available again. Remember he left the Rangers for more money. Maybe it’s as simple as that.

Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!

More of the Same…or Was It?

Thanks to a shaky outing by Joe Nathan last night, the game was much closer than it should have been. That’s because Derek Holland had his best outing of the year last night. Dutch allowed only four hits to the weak Mariner lineup. It was one down five to go in getting our pitching staff all the way back. That was the good news.

The bad news was that the offense appeared to be struggling as much as they did before the break. Thanks to a two-run bomb from Adrian Beltre, we managed to do just enough. Mike
Napoli bruised a quad in a mini-collision at home plate, trying to score. He had walked which was his high point of the night. He swung and missed on a strike three earlier and it appeared he didn’t even see the ball.

So the rumor mill continues to swirl and while there had been so much chatter about Grienke and Hamels, the Justin Upton talks seem to be picking up steam. Because the offense has been so bad, I am now seeing that as more of a possibility than getting a pitcher. I did just read that the Phillies are cueing up a big offer for Hamels and a story just a bit ago that the Brewers may do the same with Grienke.

Only 17 days and counting to the trade deadline.

A Night to Forget

When I committed to doing this blog, the last thing I thought about was having to blog after seeing half our pitching staff disemboweled.  Letting the lowly Mariners hang 21 runs on us.  Especially on the heels of what had been our worst loss of the year the previous night.  How in the world could I even make sense of this?

The answer happened just a couple of hours later. In the Rangers next destination, Anaheim. The Angels dropped the final game of their three game set with the Yankees. What does that mean? It means tonight didn’t happen in the GB column. It keeps last night as the worst loss to date, if for no other reason than the Angels picked up a game to move within 5 1/2 of the Rangers. So that sets up the weekend series to be about as big as a series can be in late may. We will either be 2 1/2 up, 8 1/2 up, or somewhere in between.

Colby Lewis Vs. Jerome Williams

Yu Darvish Vs. C.J. Wilson

Matt Harrison Vs Undecided

Thank God for the day off. Our bullpen needs the rest. Not sure if we will make any moves but Tateyama actually had a line worse than Derek Holland. Wonder if he might be headed to Round Rock. I have no idea who they would call up. But as I said to start things off. Except for some bruised egos and a couple of tired arms, tonight didn’t really matter. Because that’s how baseball go.

A Tale of Two Streaks

How would you like to win seven games in a row, including number 7, a walk-off win over the Yankees and still be 6 1/2 games out of first place? Yeah, that would be the Angels. Because the Rangers have a little streak of their own going on. It’s a modest four games, but included a solid 4-2 win over the Mariners tonight. The best news about that win was 8 solid innings from one Matt Harrison. But, as noted here earlier today, Harrison seems to won the Mariners. That matters little for someone who had lost their way a bit in their previous few starts.

Another encouraging sign tonight would be Mike Napoli going yard for the second day in a row. The best part of his 3-run shot in the 7th was it was clutch. It gave us the win. Bringing us full circle would be the fact that Mike Napoli also made a stellar play at the plate (the end of two ridiculous throws from Cruz and Kinsler) by blocking the plate from the speedy Brendon Ryan, who was trying to finish an inside-the-park home run. That would be the Mike Napoli deemed not a good enough catcher by Mike Scioscia of the Angels. For the record, Napoli said he is starting to feel good at the plate.

Tomorrow Scooter Feldman is back on the mound. The Mariners will run out a lefty, Jason Vargas.  Vargas has been good this season, but we put up four runs on him back in April. Feldman will be trying to make Roy Oswalt a non-issue.

Seattle Comes to Town

Some notes heading into the game tonight, courtesy of texasrangers.com.

We know when he’s healthy he’s dangerous, but did you know Adrian Beltre has 22 HR since Sept. 1, 2011, 2nd-most in the majors in that span behind only Hamilton (26)? The Rangers have the second best home record in the AL behind the Tampa Bay Rays….We are 4-3 against Seattle so far this season….they are coming off being swept in a four game series vs. the Angels. We beat them more than any other opponent last season (15-4). Om 2011 we were 11-2 against the Mariners in Arlington however and took 3 out of 4 in April this season. A stat that needs to get better: We are 7-5 vs. the AL West. 6-3 at home. We don’t want that to come back and bite us in the ass. Congrats to Nolan and crew for already having the second most sellouts in club history. We also have hit the million mark in attendance earlier than we ever have…Matt Harrison has won 7 in a row vs. the Mariners, tied for the 2nd longest streak in club history…Lifetime he is 7-1 with a 2.54 ERA….one last pitching note. Our starters have gone less than 6 innings in 7 out of the last 10 games and our ERA in the last 6 is 4.02. We still have the best team ERA in the AL and 4th best in all of baseball.

Josh is out tonight with an upper respiratory thing.  Here’s the lineup…

Gameday Lineups
Seattle                                       Texas
1. J. Jaso, DH                          I. Kinsler, 2B
2. C. Figgins, LF                     E. Andrus, SS
3. I. Suzuki, RF                      M. Young, DH
4. J. Montero, C                    A. Beltre, 3B
5. J. Smoak, 1B                      D. Murphy, LF
6. K. Seager, 2B                     N. Cruz, RF
7. A. Liddi, 3B                       M. Napoli, C
8. M. Saunders, CF              M. Moreland, 1B
9. B. Ryan, SS                        C. Gentry, CF

We’ve hit the ball the last 3 games. Let’s see if we can get a little better on the mound.

By the way, I have linked to this page before, but these game notes from the front office are one of the coolest things if you are a fan. They release them a couple of hours before the game starts and all members of the media can get a hard copy in the press box.

Maybe a Bigger Catcher’s Mitt?

Something is going on with Ranger pitching right now. Especially with the starting staff. More often than not, they are missing their spots.  I don’t know what’s going on. It started with Matt Harrison, then Colby Lewis, a start or two by Derek Holland, Neffi Feliz (but that’s been all year) and tonight Yu Darvish. The thing that gets my goat about Darvish is that the narrative was already going to be about Darvish and his second time to face teams. That had zero to do with his success in Seattle last night and everything to do with getting his pitches where he wanted them to go. None of his pitches were really working and he looked more like he did in game one, inning one against the Mariners than any of his other starts since then. So we have gone from having a staff that was hitting their spots most of the time to now almost never. I am not sure what causes this, other than it is akin to a pitcher losing his timing and slipping into a slump. It ends up being an elbow dropping in the swing a quarter of an inch or barely lifting their front foot when they weren’t before. The thing that makes it difficult so far is that I haven’t seen it happen with an entire starting staff at the same time.

But hold on Ranger fans, there’s another fly in our pitching ointment.  Neftali Feliz is on the DL with and elbow snafu.  They are saying at least six weeks. For now Scott Feldman is the man. The upside of Feldman? He proved he was all the way back last fall and has been decent as a spot starter this season. Only two starts though. There are no starting pitching options on the farm. If anything Ramirez and Perez have regressed this season. Roy Oswalt seems an obvious choice but he will be costly and wants to know he will be a starter for the rest of the year after being signed.  The upside of the oft injured starter is he throws strikes. Lots of them.  While not being our number one starter, he has a lot of experience in that role and would be great for Holland and Harrison. And for that he gets my vote. Plus, any success from him without getting hurt, we might be able to move one of the other starters before the deadline for some outfield help.

Rangers Take Series in Houston

The sluggish Ranger offense fired on all cylinders in the first inning Sunday, including a two-run single by starting pitcher Colby Lewis, who hadn’t even taken the mound yet. It was a 6-1 win over the Houston Astros and a nice way to make the long trip to Seattle. There was the still the issue of leaving 11 runners stranded during the game. When you win, that seems glutinous, when you lose it’s a sticking point. We were 2 for 6 with runners in scoring position, which is right at our .302 average. The biggest difference Sunday was Colby Lewis the pitcher. Even admitting after the game his slider wasn’t great, he still found a way to get it done and until the 9th inning kept the ball in the park. The win also snapped a personal three game skid for Lewis.

We are off to Seattle and a few other items….As we talked about yesterday, this will be the first time Yu Darvish faces a team for the second time. He probably has a personal ax to grind because his single worst inning this year was his very first one, against these same Mariners….the downside of the Monday game is we face Felix Hernandez, the ace of the Mariners staff…Hernandez is coming off an ugly start against the Indians that saw him knocked out in the 4th inning….Felix is pitching lights out at home though….Michael Young is showing signs of life at the plate, going 5 for 12 against the ‘Stros this weekend….Josh Hamilton is 3 for his last 13 and hasn’t homered in his last 28 at bats. Significant only in that he hit a ton before that….Safeco Field in Seattle is a pitcher’s park.