As this season gets more and more lost, players like Cole Hamels will find themselves prime trade bait. He might be having a rough season but his playoff success is huge and a change of scenery to a better environment would do wonders.

Thursday was an off day for the Rangers. A cynic would suggest they have had ten off days so far.

The Rangers were the only team to have not had an off day yet. They desperately needed yesterday to take a breath. But mostly to hide.

After fourteen games, the Rangers sit at the bottom of the West, at 4-10. It’s bad. They have lost two series, tied one, and been swept in one.

Surprisingly though, for now at least, they aren’t the worst team in the league. Kansas City is 3-8 and Tampa Bay is 3-9.

But that’s splitting hairs.

The Rangers are barely better than the Miami Marlins, who stripped their team of all worthy players before the season started and declared they giving up for the next few years.

At 3-9, they only a game worse than Texas.

Trouble is, the Rangers publicly declare they weren’t starting over, that they would be competitive. They they went ahead and did it anyway by assembling a starting rotation sponsored by AARP.

The ERA of Rangers starters is 5.64. Dead last in the American League. The bullpen hasn’t been stellar, their ERA is right in the middle of the pack.

Rangers pitching has given up the highest batting average in the league and has the worst WHIP (walks plus hits per innings, or, in other words, runner put on).

I bring this up at a time like this for one reason.

This season was lost long before DeShields, Odor, Andrus, and Fister went down. Make no mistake about it. Those injuries just make a bad situation worse.

The real injury to this franchise is going to happen when Jon Daniels is let off the hook for this disaster. He will credit the awful season to injuries, and not to the fact that he has systematically depleted this roster of talent and has assembled a roster of mediocrity at premium cost, and in the meanwhile has left the system so depleted of talent that there is nobody who they can bring up to plug in holes.

Injuries happen to every team. Rarely does a team have talent in the system as good as the talent on the major league roster that went on the D.L. But most successful franchises have talent good enough to full in competently for the time being. Two years ago the Dodgers had more injuries than anyone in baseball history. They won the N.L. West.

Daniels has created a bad major league roster and a bad farm system.

Injuries have nothing to do with this 4-10.

Don’t buy it.

The front office is going to use this as a mulligan for this year and a rational for deserving more years.

While ownership might buy it, every empty seat is proof that fans certainly aren’t.

*****
TODAY’S GAME:

Cole Hamels (1-2, 5.06) vs. Gerrit Cole (1-0, 0.64)
Game time: 7:10

How the Rangers hit against Cole.
How the Astros hit against Hamels.