It’s been a good run. 87 comments


With another disappointing start, giving up 5 ER in 3.2 IP, Martin Perez slipped to 2-6 on the year.

 

While everyone associated with the Rangers is preaching patience, that it’s just a matter of time for this team to gel, and as they drop further and further off the map and out of contention, it’s easy for fans to be disappointed and even disgusted by this team.

What had been, surprisingly, one of the top three rotations in the American League has come back to earth. Sure, it doesn’t help that Cole Hamels is injured.

Martin Perez had a nice early run, but this team has lost nine of his twelve starts, including his last three, in which he has given up thirteen earned runs in fifteen innings, proving unable to find that elusive corner he’s desperately trying to turn in his career.

Andrew Cashner has lost two of three, to see his ERA steadily move north, at 3.39, from a low of 2.43 five starts ago.

Even Yu Darvish has lost two in a row.

The offense is a series of black holes. It’s easy to blame the hitting coach, but he cannot wave a magic wand and get bad hitters to suddenly be good hitters. He has to work with what he was given, and it’s not much. Choo, Gomez, Odor, Napoli, Gallo, Rua, are always going to strike out a lot. They are too far along in their major league careers to change the approach that got them here. There’s nothing a hitting coach can do. The only way to chance this is with wholesale changes in the roster.

In the face of two monumentally disappointing playoff losses, and now a season in which the Rangers are crashing and burning in front of our eyes, it’s easy to forget this team has had a lot of success in the past five season. In fact, it is the third most winning team in the American League since 2012, following two straight World Series appearances.

Here are the combined won-loss totals for all American League teams since 2012, along with how many times they made it to the post-season, and the World Series. Nobody has made the post-season more than the Rangers and, in fact, only one team in that time has never had a losing record, and that’s the Yankees. The Rangers have had just one losing season in the past five.

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NO GAME TODAY: