Baseball is weird. Angels starter Reid Detmers came into last night’s game having compiled an ERA over 10.00 in his last four starts. The Rangers have the best offense in the American League. Detmers shuts them out, throwing a no-hitter through seven innings. The last time Reid Detmers pitched and […]
We were taught in kindergarten to share. Sharing is good. Being stingy is bad. True when it comes to finger paints. Not true when it comes to pitching. This run the Rangers have been on, 12-2 in August, started when Chris Young acquired Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery to solidify […]
The Rangers finally have an ace. They’ve had a few bona fide number one starters. But they haven’t had a true shut-it-down, guaranteed-to-dominate, hand-him-the-ball ace in a long, long time. They thought they had that with Jacob deGrom. And Cole Hamels. And Yu Darvish. And Kenny Rodgers. What they had […]
The slider doesn’t have to be perfect. The fastball does. Will Smith isn’t the closer in the conventional sense that comes in and blows people away with speed, like Aroldis Chapman. He gets outs with his slider. That often requires going deeper into counts, which means throwing more pitches. Getting […]
The more the Rangers get into the Chris Young era, the more they leave behind the past. Perhaps that was exemplified best this week. As the Rangers remarkable turnaround from six long years of futility continues with another win over the Giants, 9-3, pushing them to 10-1 in August, which […]
Jon Gray pitched his best game of the season. He was almost unhittable, giving up two harmless singles in seven innings, retiring eleven straight Giants between those two hits, striking out seven and walking none. He was only at 87 pitches after seven innings. But baseball calls you to put […]
The Rangers have 47 games left. They have a 2.5-game lead over the Astros. And a 5.5 lead over the Mariners. The West is a three-team race. The Angels thought they could make a run for it and decided not to trade Shohei Ohtani. Since then, they’ve gone 2-7. Arte […]
The Rangers have won 68 games this year. That’s exactly how many they won last year. With 47 games remaining, there’s a good chance they will top last year’s record. Chances are great, though, that they won’t win that game by coming back the ninth inning. In fact, this entire […]
Eight in a row. The Texas Rangers have their longest winning streak since 2017, when they won ten in a row from May 9 to May 19. That was back when they had Yu Darvish, Cole Hamels, Andrew Cashner, AJ Griffin, and Martin Perez in their rotation. The team was […]
When Johan Heim went down with a wrist injury, it seemed like the Rangers were going to be left with a huge hole at catcher. Heim was, after all, the starting catcher for the American League All-Star team, earned mostly from his bat. He had racked up 70 RBIs, was […]
