Glossary of baseball terms. 302 comments


Delino DeShields feels the frustration of a team that lost 5-2, going just 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position, with fifteen strikeouts, and mired in a deep, prolonged offensive slump.

 

Now that the first month of the season is in the books, as a public service, here is a glossary of common baseball terms which are appropriate to you as a fan of the 2017 Rangers.

Advancing a runner:
To move a runner ahead safely to another base, often the conscious strategy of a team that plays small ball because they simply cannot score a run to save their butts. In certain situations, batters deliberately bunt for an out and thereby sacrifice themselves in order to advance a runner to second or third base. This is much more preferable to the getting-a-runner-on-and-then-striking-out-again-and-again-and-again-and-again method which produces nothing. The Rangers struck out fifteen times yesterday against the Angels, including Odor chasing a pitch in the dirt with the tying runs on in the eighth, and Texas getting the lead off runner on in the ninth before the next three batters meekly struck out.

AAAA player:
Four-A player is a term for a minor-league player who is consistently successful in the high minor leagues, but cannot translate that into success at the major-league level. Think Jurickson Profar, or Tanner Scheppers, or Chi Chi Gonzalez, or Nick Martinez, or Martin Perez, or any pitcher drafted by the Rangers, or name of Rangers prospect here.

Caught looking:
A term used when the third strike is called on a batter without the batter attempting to swing at the pitch. Or, what accounts for most of the team’s second-lowest batting average in baseball right now at .220, the third worst April in club history.

Complete game:
Six innings thrown by a major league starting pitcher.

Dead ball era:
The period between 1903 and 1918, just prior to the live ball era, when the composition of the baseball along with other rules tended to limit the offense. Then, the period between April 3, 2017, and the present.

Defensive indifference:
Indigenous to the north Texas region of North America, when batted balls are hit at Texas Rangers defenders and they seem to approach the ball in a nonchalant manner or act as if they have never played the game before, not knowing where to locate the cut off throw, or how to run a route to prevent a simple fly ball from falling in front of them, or make a throw across the diamond.

Hit with runners in scoring position:
Absolutely no idea what this means.

Hole in the lineup:
The numbers one through nine slots in the Texas Rangers lineup.

Insurance run:
The one run the Rangers score each game in Globe Life Park, named after an obscure insurance company.

Save:
The successful maintenance of a lead by relief pitcher, usually the closer, until the end of the game. A save is credited to a pitcher who fulfills the following two conditions:

  1. His name is not Sam Dyson.
  2. He doesn’t pitch for the Texas Rangers.

So far this season, the Rangers have just two saves, and five blown saves, the worst save percentage by far in baseball.

Seventh-inning stretch:
After the sixth inning of every game, the time when the other team starts stretching out its lead on the Rangers bullpen, and the Rangers hitters pack it up for the next game.

Two-thirds of an inning:
How long Martin Perez can pitch without giving up a run.

Winning streak:
What other teams are on when they leave Arlington.

*****
TODAY’S GAME:

Andrew Cashner (0-2, 2.93) vs. Lance McCullers Jr. (2-1, 4.34)
Game time: 7:10

How the Rangers hit against McCullers.
How the Astros hit against Cashner.