Sloppy, undisciplined, ugly. That’s how to describe the 2017 Texas Rangers. Doesn’t anyone know how to play baseball? Yes, it is a difficult game. But that’s no excuse to play it so poorly. It’s hard for every team. Most of them aren’t committing the same sins over and over again. […]
Now that the first month of the season is in the books, as a public service, here is a glossary of common baseball terms which are appropriate to you as a fan of the 2017 Rangers. Advancing a runner: To move a runner ahead safely to another base, often […]
Rangers fans saw a lot of unique things last night. Angels second baseman Danny Espinosa taking a Shin-Soo Choo bad hop grounder off his face was the least of it. They saw Carlos Gomez hit for the cycle. His first hit was a double. About five feet from second, […]
In the first inning, for just the second time this season, the Rangers led off the game with two consecutive hits. (Their first two hitters have both reached base two other times but, in both of those, the first hitter was thrown out trying to steal, so last night […]
This next stretch of games is going to tell us a lot about the Rangers. After yesterday’s off day, they play seventeen in a row starting today, thirteen of which are in division. Three at home with the Angels, then the first series against the Astros, at Houston for […]
Due to some unforeseen mechanical failures, and a really bad GPS, the semis from Surprise, Arizona, finally arrived with the Rangers bats, nearly four weeks late. It was about time Many of the Rangers starters doubled their hit totals for the year in just one game. Shin-Soo Choo nearly […]
The Rangers woke up, scored a run in the fifth, then went back to sleep, like they always do. The Rangers are the small town America team. They roll up the tent after the seventh inning. In twenty-one games, the Rangers have scored a total of just fourteen runs from […]
There’s an old baseball axiom that good pitching beats good hitting. The Rangers proved last night that bad pitching beats bad hitting. The Twins’ Phil Hughes came into the game with a 5.40 ERA for the year and a 4.42 ERA for his ten-year career. But his bad was […]
Baseball is a 162-game season. But, really, it’s a series of mini-seasons where teams evolve through different ecosystems to see what they are all about. So far what we know about this Rangers team is Dyson isn’t the closer, the offense isn’t clicking yet, and, yesterday aside, it’s a […]
Offense is over-rated. The 1906 Chicago White Sox were dubbed the Hitless Wonders. Their entire team batting average for the year was .230. They won the World Series. For context, last season the Padres had the lowest team batting average in baseball at .235. In 2015, the Padres also had […]