Happy Fourth of July. Today marks my seventh year of running Rangers Rounding 3rd. It’s been wonderful in here. It’s been mostly bad baseball out there in The Ballpark and then The Shed.
It’s so much more enjoyable to write about the Rangers when they are good and winning, like in 2015 and 2016. It’s difficult to remain positive or to stay constructive when they are losing, like in 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and in 2021.
It’s a franchise that should never have an excuse or appetite for losing. But, as the Dallas Cowboys have proven the past 25 years, Dallas-Fort Worth fans aren’t concerned with winning. So, the owners of their sports teams aren’t either. Winning is expensive. Why build a winner when you don’t have to?
It’s a shame.
The Rangers are staring down the trade deadline with a bad team but a few really good players. That usually spells garage sale. Trade those few bona fide assets for a whole lot of potential. It’s a never-ending carrot on a stick.
You find the occasional good player, you trade him away for a package of minor leaguers, hoping one of those makes it. It’s a numbers game that the Rangers franchise has been losing since 2013. That constant churn of turning major league talent into minor league potential has yielded two winning years in the past seven seasons, and mostly bad baseball.
This churn offers a lot of hope that is perpetually two years away. Help is always two levels away. The future of the Rangers is always just beyond that horizon.
Until it isn’t. Then it is again.
There is a glimmer of hope, though, now that the Rangers have brought in Chris Young as their General Manager. But only if he is allowed to rebuild the wreckage without much interference from the captain who steered the ship directly into the iceberg. Time will tell how much influence, and success, Young is able or allowed to have.
But the trade deadline is coming up. Maybe Kyle Gibson and Joey Gallo and Ian Kennedy will be dealt. For prospects. Once again. And hope. Once again.
And a future to be named later.
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Thanks to everyone here who contributes here on a regular basis, or even only occasionally in those rare seasons when the Rangers are good. Here’s hoping the next seven years of Rangers Rounding 3rd will see a return to the playoffs for the Texas Rangers.
That day is two years away. Always.
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TODAY’S GAME:
