When you have the worst team in franchise history, things happen you might not be too proud of.
Like this streak.
On July 10, the Rangers played the Oakland Athletics in The Shed. It was the Saturday before the All-Star break. It wasn’t a memorable game. Or even an important one. When you’re nearly 20 games under as the Rangers were then, no game matters. Except the last one. The one that ends the misery.
The Rangers ended up losing that game 8-4 in eleven innings. Adolis Garcia hit his twenty-second home run of the season. Joey Gallo, his twenty-fourth. It wasn’t memorable for that. Nor for the fact that Mike Folynewicz actually put up a quality start.
In that particular contest, those home runs by Garcia and Gallo came back-to-back. In the first inning. That particular contest was twenty-one games ago. It was the last time the Rangers scored a run in the first inning.
An offense simply can’t function if the top of the order isn’t producing. And any team that goes twenty straight games in a row without scoring a single run in the first inning has a top of the lineup that is, to put it bluntly, worthless.
It gets even worse. Please cover the eyes of anyone who is faint of heart. Or anyone who is still a fan of Jon Daniels.
In the past twenty games, the Rangers have scored zero runs in the first. A total of four second-inning runs. And zero runs in the third.
That’s sixty innings. Four runs.
Jon Daniels, the architect of two World Series teams ten years ago, is the master mind behind one of the feeblest offenses of all-time. A team that is furthest out of any team in the American League. A team that has won four of those twenty games. A team he painstakingly created. A team he will no dauntedly be rewarded with a long-term contract for.
If you are going to see a Rangers game and you don’t want to miss any action, get there about forty-five minutes late. You don’t need to get settled into your seat until the fourth inning. The second time around through the order is when it starts getting going.
This is the team Jon Daniels built. Calling it a train wreck would be incorrect. Train wrecks create impact. This team has none.
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TODAY’S GAME:
