The last two games we have seen one of the questions marks heading into the season manifest itself in a negative way. That question was could the Rangers young starters be relied upon to help this team through these first two months of the season. This month we have seen that the answer is no. Going into opening day the Rangers had 4 young starters in the rotation: Tanner Scheppers, Martin Perez, Robbie Ross Jr., and Nick Martinez. For the first 3 weeks they were good to great. Perez was great to start the season. He started 4-0, and had back-to-back complete game shutouts. Since then, he is 0-3 with higher than a 12.0 ERA. Then yesterday it was revealed that he has been suffering from elbow inflammation and will have to go on the DL. Nick Tepesch will be called upon to replace him when he takes his start on Wednesday. Then you have Robbie Ross Jr. who has not had a good start since April 25th against the Mariners, when he went 6.0 innings only giving up 2 runs. Since then, he has allowed 17 runs in his last 15.1 innings pitched. Overall, he is 1-4 with a 5.04 ERA. Finally, you have Tanner Scheppers who got injured in April, but who may have lost his rotation spot regardless. Tanner could not stay out of the big inning. The Rangers were taking a chance when they entrusted these guys with the keys to the rotation, and so far it just hasn’t worked out.

Out of the 3 I imagine Martin Perez will continue getting chances to start. He has a track record of success as a starter. He pitched well in the second half last year and pitched well for most of April. I imagine throwing the back-to-back complete game shutouts is what caused the elbow injury to flare up. Since those starts he clearly has not been the same. Hopefully they will give Perez as much time as he needs to recover and that when he does come back he will be able to have the same success he had in April. As far as Scheppers and Ross I imagine that they will be back in the bullpen very soon. Washington may have to make a decision and switch roles for Nick Martinez and Robbie Ross Jr. Martinez is stretched out and can easily slide into the starter role. Ross has experience in the bullpen and will be able to pick it up very quickly. Something needs to change. I loved the move to bring up Odor and Sardinas, now it might be time to shake up the rotation. Insert both Tepesch and Martinez. They just need to survive until Derek Holland and now Martin Perez can come back. They need to stop this slide. They are now right at .500 and 4 games back of the A’s. Thankfully the A’s are not playing much better or the deficit would be larger. The Rangers will be starting a 3 game series this week in Houston. The offense is starting to come back around, now it is the rotation’s turn to start pitching better.

Tonight it will be Colby Lewis for the Rangers and Brad Peacock for the Astros. Last time out Colby pitched against the Rockies and gave up 7 runs in 3.1 innings. He became the third starting pitcher to get hit hard in that series. He will be looking for better success tonight against the Astros. Game time is at 7:10.