Stuff just has a way of accumulating. You buy new stuff to replace the old stuff that’s broken. You buy new stuff to replace the old stuff that’s obsolete. You buy new stuff to replace the old stuff that’s out of style, or just not working for you anymore.

All that stuff you bought when you were broke or drunk or you’re not even sure why. Then, one day, you look up and all the old stuff is cluttering up your house. It’s like you’re a hoarder.

Time to get rid of your old stuff. But instead of just throwing it away, what if someone out there wants to pay you to take it off your hands?

Time for a garage sale.

That’s where the Rangers are now. In a season of evaluation, conclusions are drawn. And at the eighty percent mark, conclusions say it’s time to clean house.

It’s time to move on from so many mediocre players if the Rangers have any aspirations of respectability. 

What 2019 proved was that there are a lot of very average major leaguers clogging the Rangers 25-man roster, and no amount of polishing will make them anything but.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Rougned Odor and Delino DeShields are, at best, bench players. Nomar Mazara is a fourth outfielder. Ronald Guzman is a defensive replacement. Jeff Mathis should be put on the curb for pickup but if someone is willing to give you a quarter for him, take it. Adrian Sampson and Ariel Jurado won’t get you where you want to go. Logan Forsythe doesn’t fit in anymore.

They are all expendable because the future offers a lot of hope, as last night showed.

Jon Daniels had a pretty amazing trade deadline, picking up Kolby Allard and Nick Solak. That, on the heals of picking up Brock Burke before the season for former Rangers mediocrity Jurickson Profar.

The sample size on all three is much too small to start printing up their Rangers Hall of Fame plaques. But it’s time to let the new kids play and put the old ones in the “for sale” box in the garage.

And even if Allard and Solak end up being average, even if Burke and Calhoun, and Heineman and Clase do as well, and even if Montero and Tevino turn out to be just another new crop of Delinos and Rougneds and Nomars and Juricksons, at least the new stuff isn’t the old stuff.

As the Rangers move into their new house, leave the clutter from the old house behind. 

That old stuff served its purpose. See if someone else wants it.

*****

TODAY’S GAME:

Brock Burke (0-1, 1.50) vs. Dylan Bundy (6-13, 4.96)

Game time: 6:05