Looking around the landscape of major league baseball, it’s not fair to say nobody can hit. Yes, this is the lowest average batting average in fifty years. But not everyone is struggling. There are players on other teams that are doing fine. But what’s happening is, MLB has created two tiers of hitters.

Elite hitters that can hit no matter how hard it’s become. 

And everyone else.

The Rangers don’t have an elite hitter. They don’t have a Mike Trout or a Manny Machado or a Freddie Freeman. Guys like that can hit anyone, anytime, anywhere.

What the Rangers have are a lot of solid hitters. But solid hitters are not cutting it right now in baseball. Solid hitters are second tier. Velocity and increased spin on breaking pitches and a deadened ball have combined to make this the hardest time ever to hit a baseball. 

The Rangers are now near the bottom of every offensive category. But it’s a bunched up group of ineptitude. Out of thirty major league teams, they are twenty-second in runs scored, twenty-eighth in hits, twenty-eighth in batting average, twenty-eighth in on-base percentage, and twenty-seventh in OPS. Texas is hitting .216 as a team. And even they are looking up at Arizona’s .203 and Oakland’s .199.

Hitting is missing all up and down the league.

The Rangers simply don’t have an elite hitter. The last one of those they had was Adrian Beltre. He would be raking right now. But Texas doesn’t have a Beltre. They don’t have a pure, bona fide, honest to goodness, roll-out-of-bed-and-hit hitter. 

Thankfully, the pitching has, other than last night, been pretty strong. It needs to be. Until the Rangers get a couple real hitters.

*****

TONIGHT’S GAME:

Rich Hill (0-1, 2.86) vs Glenn Otto (1-0, 3.14)

GAME TIME: 6:05