Reality check time.


Nathanial Lowe drives a two-run double in the third inning of a game the Rangers would lose 10-5.

Baseball has a way of bringing you back down to earth. After winning seven of their last ten games, including four in a row, the Rangers rolled into their customary house of horrors known as Oakland Coliseum with a bit of wind behind them and a small measure of swagger. That went away fast.

Oakland is a good team. Texas is not.

Texas got a reminder of what it means to play a good team. The seven-of-ten run they came into the Oakland series with was against the Rockies, Angels and Diamondbacks. They are not good teams either. While it was encouraging that the Rangers beat teams that were also bottom feeders, the real test of this new and reinvigorated roster will come during this brutal thirteen-game stretch of games. It will be a great test for the young pitching the Rangers are boasting about as well.

Game one was a nightmare.

Glenn Otto showed he was human. The brilliant control he displayed in his first two starts eluded him. That drop-dead slider he featured didn’t fool the Athletics like it did the Astros. Was it that his slider wasn’t as good? Or was it that major league baseball teams have a way of figuring out a guy?

This is just part of the maturation process for young pitchers. A.J. Alexy will encounter it. Taylor Hearn has lived it already and will certainly encounter it again. So has Dane Dunning.

The game humbles you fast. Last night it took just two innings for it to humble Glenn Otto.

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TODAY’S GAME: