BeltreRounding3rd.com.
On Sunday the Rangers blow a 5-0 lead. On Tuesday, they could not overcome a 4-0 deficit.
Oh, well. From here on out it’s just a numbers game.
It’s for the stats.
You always want your team to win. But the Rangers aren’t going to do that much, so all you can do is revel in another Joey Gallo home run. Can he get to 40? 45? There are fifty games left. He has 31 now. 40 seems pretty likely. What about 50? Palmeiro hit 47 twice, for the Rangers team record for a left-hander. Can Gallo set the clean pee record?
How many hits will Beltre get? Who will he end up passing? He has 3006. Al Kaline is next at 3007. Wade Boggs has 3010. That will be nice because then only one third baseman will be ahead of him—George Brett, who has 3154. Beltre will catch him next year. Beltre is number 30 all-time now. He should end the season passing Lou Brock (3,023) for 25. Next man up, Rod Carew, is thirty hits away at 3,053.
To reach Carew, Beltre will need to get 47 hits with exactly 50 games left. He has 62 hits this year in 59 games. Carew is attainable.
Can Elvis hit over .300? He’s already shattered his career home run record, which was 8, with 15 so far this season. (But the seams on the ball are not wound tighter.) He has 59 RBIs now. He should easily pass his career high of 69. Can he get 75? 80?
Then there’s the curious case of Rougned Odor and Nomar Mazara, baseball’s opposite of road warriors.
Odor is having a bad season all around. After finishing July on an encouraging 11-for-33 run with six home runs and eleven RBIs, looking like he might finally figure out something, he slipped back into his his season-long coma. In August he has one home run and two RBIs. He is 2-for-his-last-22. And just .202 in the second half.
It can’t get worse than that, right? Yes. On the road, Rougned Odor is batting .192. And even he can look down at Nomar Mazara, who’s hitting .187 on the road. Mazara can carry the team, he just can’t carry his luggage at the same time. At home, Mazara is hitting .301 with an OBP of .371 and an OPS of .844.
Speaking of numbers, the Rangers traveling secretary needs to lose Odor’s and Mazara’s. Don’t call them and tell them the team is going on a road trip.
Fortunately, Mazara is just twenty two and Odor twenty three. They are still really young. Still figuring it out. We are watching their growing pains.
That’s what the rest of 2017 is about.
Numbers. And pain.
Speaking of the latter, Martin Perez was named today’s starer.
*****
TODAY’S GAME:
Martin Perez (5-10, 5.46) vs. Rafael Montero (1-7, 5.78)
Game time: 11:10
How the Rangers hit against Montero.
How the Mets hit against Perez.