Season in Review: June

Posted on October 22, 2015 by colonelsportsnation

Joey Gallo makes his Texas Rangers Debut on June 2nd.

May was a great month for the Rangers, but at the very end the team suffered losses off the field in losing Adrian Beltre to a thumb injury and Josh Hamilton to a hamstring injury. They were in good position in the standings, but could they remain there while these players recovered? The other question became who would replace Beltre at 3rd? Would it be Ed Lucas or Thomas Fields? Would they bring up Odor from AAA and shift Alberto to 3rd? The completely out of the box idea was to bring Joey Gallo up from AA and have him play 3rd, but the though with that was that he was not ready for MLB pitching. The Rangers started the month with an off day before continuing their homestand against the Chicago White Sox. Word started leaking out the Rangers were considering bringing up Joey Gallo. Then late Monday afternoon it became official that Rangers prospect Joey Gallo would make his long anticipated MLB debut on Tuesday night. We would be able to see if he could contribute and fill that hole left in the lineup by Beltre. Lot of debate on both sides of this, is this harming his long term development, is he ready, and the other side saying why not, it gives the lineup another power threat. Up to this point in the season that Tuesday night game was the most excited I have been about watching a Rangers game in 2015. No one knew what to expect. None of the experts, coaches, or anyone knew how he would perform. I was expecting maybe a hit and 3 strikeouts going up against Jeff Szmardija. That is not even close to what we got. I will just let the video do the talking.

He hit a home run, a double, and a single. He was magnificent and helped lead the Rangers to a 15-2 win. It was eye opening really and showed the potential that he has. As a fan I knew that he wouldn’t do that every night, but it was great to see in his debut. That went to show that the Rangers might be able to survive this stretch. It was not going to be easy and the schedule was filled with lose able games, but if the Rangers could play close to or at .500 ball for the month I thought they would be okay for the long run.

The first half of the month they played a lot better than that though. They ended up winning 2 of 3 against the White Sox, 2 of 3 against the Royals and that gave them a 7-3 homestand and I believe their first winning homestand of the season. The offense was clicking during this stretch, Prince Fielder cooled down from his red hot May, and the team as a whole was playing well. What also changed was that at the end of May Jeff Bannister instituted a no-roles bullpen meaning that he could bring in whoever he thought was best for the situation. That ended up turning back into a roles bullpen midway through June, but the new role that was most important was Shawn Tolleson had become the new closer. He took over for an ineffective Neftali Feliz, who became a setup pitcher. Feliz, the once dominant closer, still had not regained his form from 2010-2011. The velocity was not there which made the secondary pitches less effective. After a month and a half of rough outings Bannister made Tolleson the closer and never looked back. Tolleson captured that role and helped to solidify the back end of the bullpen. It allowed the Rangers to hold on to those close games that they were losing in April and May.

The team just kept rolling though despite the injuries, they did lose a series on the road to the A’s. The won the first game, but lost the next two. The bullpen blew one game and Scott Kazmir dominated them in the other. The good thing through this point was that Chi Chi Gonzalez was still pitching well. He had taken over Ross Detwiler’s spot in the rotation in late May and was living up to the hype. He had nearly made the team out of Spring Training. He was one of the last cuts, but he went down to AAA and still pitched well and so when the Rangers decided they had given Detwiler enough opportunities they decided to bring Gonzalez up and see what he could do. At this point the team was just trying to make it till guys like Martin Perez, Matt Harrison, and Derek Holland could come back. Wandy was starting to cool down by this point in this season and looked to be on his last legs, but they did not really have a great alternative. The pitcher who was throwing well was Yovanni Gallardo. This was his best month of the season and he helped to carry the Rangers through this difficult stretch. He gave up 2 earned runs the entire month of June, pitched at least 7 innings in 3 of the starts, and helped the team win 3 of his 5 starts. He was great.

The turning point of the month though was when Delino Deshields pulled up lame with a hamstring injury on June 14th. The Rangers had won the first two games against the Twins, but lost on this Sunday and lost Deshields to the DL after this injury. The Rangers at this point called Odor back up to majors. While in AAA he had hit for a .352 BA, 5 home runs, and slugged .639. He really played well and the Rangers thought he was ready. So they threw him out there and he was ready and looked like the old Roughned Odor. This Odor would help the Rangers win the next three games against the Dodgers. They won the first two at home and including a walk off win off the bat of Robinson Chirinos in the second game. Then the series shifted to Los Angeles for the next two games. They would face Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. Joey Gallo had another one of those moments in LA against Kershaw.

He hit a monster shot off of Kershaw. Left-handers don’t normally do that against him, and left handed rookies definitely don’t do that. It was like Vin Scully said “a marble”. Just unreal and helped this team who had struggled against left-handers all season long beat perhaps the best left handed pitcher in all of baseball and win this 4 game series against the Dodgers. They did lose against Zack Greinke in the finale of the series, but even then it was only a 1-0 loss and it ended with a walk-off balk by Keone Kela. Anthony Ranaudo had started the game and pitched very well. The Rangers would then go to Chicago to face another tough lefty in Chris Sale, and while they did not do anything against Sale except for strike out 12 times, Colby Lewis kept them in the game by holding the White Sox to just one run. Then in the 9th, Mitch Moreland was brought on as a pinch hitter to face David Robertson with two runners on base and he did this.

He gave the Rangers the lead and the win. Remarkably enough the Rangers had not only survived this stretch without Beltre, Hamilton, and Deshields now, but they were winning a lot of games. They were at their high point of 6 games over .500 at 37-31, in second place in the West, and only 2.5 games behind the Astros. Things were looking really good. At this point only a matter of a week or so till Beltre and Hamilton both came back. Ryan Rua had just come back from the heel injury, and so things were looking like they might be able to catch the Astros before the All Star Break. That is normally the time when things start to take a turn south and boy did they ever for the Rangers. The injuries and all the tough pitchers that they faced took a toll on the whole team. They had been winning games for about a week or so at this point with smoke and mirrors. They were not scoring a high amount of runs, but were pitching just well enough to win games. After beating Chris Sale and the White Sox that changed. The pitching was still good, but the offense kept just scoring 2 runs, while the pitching was allowing 3. That caused them to lose the next two games in Chicago. Then the team went back home to face the A’s in a 3 game series and lost all 3 games as the pitching got a lot worse. Adrian Beltre did come back during this homestand, but it would take him while to get his timing back as he was learning to play with his injured thumb. Beltre coming back though did not help the pitching. Wandy Rodriguez started to only throw well on the road and throw up clunkers at home. The league caught up to Chi Chi and he started to not be as effective and Joey Gallo started striking out a lot more and being less effective. Hanser Alberto who had filled in a 2nd and 3rd was also not hitting and Prince Fielder had massively cooled down without Beltre in the lineup. Roughned Odor had come back and was playing great, but unfortunately no one else was. It was hard to win games. All of this would lead to the A’s sweeping them at home and then the Blue Jays took the first game of the series to end what had become a 6 game losing streak and just like that they were back at .500 and 5.0 games back in the division. Thankfully it was Yovanni Gallardo’s turn in the rotation. He would go up against the Blue Jays on that Saturday and would shut them out and help the team end that long losing streak. That was a trend this season was Gallardo pitching well against the Blue Jays. His being right handed and being able to pitch on the corners allowed him to be able to stay away from the power zones of the Blue Jays hitters. They would go on to lose the next day, but Chi Chi pitched well other than just one inning, but the offense couldn’t get enough runs to win the game. Then to end the month the Rangers went to a Baltimore and since it was on the road Wandy pitched well. He was great in this start as he pitched 5 innings, giving up 1 run, and striking out 7 and the Rangers won 8-1. Then on the final day of the month the Rangers won again 8-6 this time behind a good start from Colby Lewis and great offensive production.

The Rangers had some great highs in this month with the debut of Joey Gallo, winning 3 games against the Dodgers, and getting up as high as 2nd place in the division. They also had some lows and that was losing Deshields and then losing 6 straight and 7 of 8 at the end of the month. It was clear by the mid of June the team was running out of steam. They did get Adrian Beltre and Josh Hamilton back by the end of the month and had survived June. They finished the month with an overall record of 40-38, 5 games back in the division, and 1 game behind the Angels for second place. Overall they went 14-13 for the month, which allowed them to stay in the race through what was a difficult month of June. It was also great to see Joey Gallo finally in a Rangers uniform and he had some great and some not so great moments. Hanser Alberto proved that he could hit on this level and Roughned Odor showed that he was not a flash in the pan either. Odor would be perhaps the Rangers best player from the time he came back up through the month of July. We will continue detailing his remarkable return next week. Chi Chi Gonzalez was great in the rotation as well, but did show some holes. He had issues putting hitters away as he was not able to get swings and misses as often as he needed to. The most important thing was that the Rangers were still in the race after this month. It could have very easily went very south with all the injuries, but Jeff Bannister and the team kept that from happening.

Next week I will come back and detail the month of July and the entire second half. July features the return of Delino Deshields, the return of Martin Perez and Matt Harrison, a 21-5 beatdown, and surprising trades that would completely turn around the fortunes of this team. May was the month that set them on the path to contending, June was about surviving, and July will be about becoming a true contender. That will be next Monday that I will write and continue with part 4 of the 2015 Season in Review.

Ranaudo doesn’t impress and the Rangers Lose to the Angels

Posted on April 16, 2015 by colonelsportsnation

Yesterday afternoon was Anthony Ranaudo’s first start with the Rangers and lets just say it did not go well at all. He last 1.2 innings, giving up 6 runs, and picking up the loss in what turned into a 10-2 shellacking by the Angels. He threw 62 pitches to get 5 outs. His problem was that he would get ahead of the hitters, but could not put them away. He has good stuff, but not great execution. As the pitcher he has to have an idea of how to get a guy out. Lets take the Erick Aybar at-bat that led off the game. He quickly got ahead of Aybar 1-2 just throwing fastballs, but it took him another 5 pitches to record the out. He tried to just get him out with his fastball, but Aybar kept fouling it off. In the at-bat he threw 6 fastballs, 1 curveball, and 1 slider. He did record the out on a flyball to center field. It was like that in the two innings he pitched. It is something that he is definitely going to need to work on. I doubt he will be back next week when the spot in the rotation comes up. He definitely put the Rangers behind the 8 ball and it led to the Rangers losing the game and dropping their record to 4-6.

Not a lot else happened in this game. The lineup that Banister likes to use against left-handers predictably stunk as did the team against Hector Santiago. Santiago gave up 1 run in his 7 innings of work to improve his record the last two seasons in Arlington to 4-0. The problem the Rangers have when they try to trout out the lineup with a lot of right-handers is that Deshields is not a major league hitter, Smolinksi is not hitting well enough this early in the season, and the lineup functions better with Choo and Moreland in it than not in it. At least that is what my eyes tell me watching the game.

I am sure the team is thankful that now they get a full day off for the first time this season. 4-6 is not too bad considering they had to go on the road for a 4 game series in Oakland and then come home and lose their staff ace after one inning. I would have liked to have seen them do better than 2-4 on the homestand. The game that they should have won was the extra inning affair against the Astros on Sunday. They had numerous opportunities and just could not bring it home. Now they go out on the road for an 8 game roadie against the Mariners, Diamondbacks, and Angels. Now game today and they will be back on Friday night at 9:05.

Rangers Stop Losing Streak Behind Martinez and Resurgent Offense

Posted on April 15, 2015 by colonelsportsnation

Nick Martinez collects his second win of the season in win against the Angels

The Rangers ended their first losing streak of the season with an 8-2 win over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and improved their record to 4-5. Nick Martinez picked up his second win of the season as he continued his strong start with 7 innings of 1 run baseball. Jeff Banister having changed up the lineup again saw his team score 8 runs and hit 2 home runs. I guess this says that he needs to be changing the lineup everyday. It was a good team win though. The pitching was solid, the offense was great, and the defense helped keep the Angels off the board in key situations. Jeff Banister could not ask for a better win in the given situation. Lets get to what actually happened in the game though.

It was Nick Martinez going up against Drew Rucinski, who was making his first major league start. Martinez got off to a tough start. He allowed Erick Aybar a sharp single into the right-field corner, but Choo came up firing and was able to throw Aybar out at second. Mike Trout followed with a double and Albert Pujols walked putting runners at first and second with 1 out. He was able to get out of it with a lineout from Matt Joyce and a ground out from Rangers nemesis David Freese. In the bottom of the first the new Rangers top of the order was able to produce a run. Roughned Odor walked, stole second, and Mitch Moreland singled up the middle to get him home. They functioned as the top two hitters should and I loved Moreland’s approach with two strikes in that at-bat. He shortened his stroke and was able to hit a sharp grounder up the middle. It was nice to see him thinking there about just getting a base hit, rather than continuing to try for the home run. It looked like the lead would be short-lived though in the bottom of the inning as the Angels once again put pressure on Martinez. They were able to load the bases with one-out and their fastest runner coming to the plate in Erick Aybar. I thought for sure it would be difficult to get a double play grounder, but sure enough they did. Aybar hit it sharp enough at Odor that he was able to turn it quick enough to get Aybar out at first. Through two innings Martinez was up to 38 pitches. As I am watching this I am thinking that he may only be able to make it through 5 innings. From there though he was able to calm down. It helped that the bats woke up in the bottom of the second inning.

The Rangers were able to put 3 more runs on the board all with two outs in the inning. They finally got a break to go their way when Mike Trout and Matt Joyce were converging on a drive to left center off the bat of Robinson Chirinos when neither one of them were able to catch it even though both were in position to catch it. That allowed two runs to score and allowed the Ranger players to be able to take a deep breath and just relax from that point forward. Odor followed up Chirinos’ double with one of his own that landed right in front of a dive from Mike Trout. That allowed the Rangers to be able to put 3 on the board that inning and extend the lead to 4-0. It was certainly an inning the team really needed and it allowed Martinez to settle in and pitch his game.

After the big second inning, Martinez retired 12 of the next 14 hitters from the third through the sixth inning and the score expanded from 4-0 to 8-0. The Angels didn’t even really pose another threat till the 7th inning. That is when the first two runners reached due to a single and throwing error from Adrian Beltre. After that though he was able to get out of the inning with only one run allowed. There could have been more, but Carlos Peguero was able to track down and catch Mike Trout’s drive to the wall. All in all Nick Martinez threw 7 innings. allowing 1 run, but 0 earned runs, 5 hits. 3 BB’s, 1 K. That makes it 14 innings he has thrown so far without giving up a single earned run. His ERA is still 0.00. He showed a lot of poise and maturity out there being able to get out of those first and second inning jams. Right now I feel decently confident about 3/5 of the rotation. I feel like Martinez is poised to be a really solid member of this rotation. He will have his bad starts from time to time, but he is continuing that success he had down the stretch of last season. The Rangers are going to need that if they have any dreams of competing. If they can get solid starts from Martinez every fifth day that will go a long way toward keeping that dream alive.

Other Game Notes

Robinson Chirinos had his first big game of the season. He caught a break in the second with that deep drive double to left center that landed between Trout and Joyce. The home run though was no joke. He drove that to deep left center field. It was a no doubter and gave him 5 rbi’s on the night. That was good for Robinson as he was in a 1-13 slump entering this game and had not had many quality plate appearances so far. He looked confident at the plate and the double in the second may be what he needed in order to get going. With it being a day game today I expect him to get the day off today and Carlos Corporan will be behind the plate.
Elvis Andrus has left the building. All Spring Training they talked about how Elvis had worked on changing his stance and tried to get stronger in order to be able to drive the ball into the gaps and into the outfield. In the past it looked like any hit he got was just a soft hit line drive. Last night he was driving the ball. He had two hits, but easily could have had 3 if not for Erick Aybar making a fantastic play with the infield drawn in. One of those two hits was a home run. It was Elvis’ first home run since May 21st of last year and snapped a string of 481 at-bats without a home run, the longest active drought in the major leagues. If he continues to get the bat behind the ball and driving it, the next drought will not be anywhere close to as long. The Rangers don’t need him to be a home run hitter though. They survived last season having Alex Rios hit 6th and only hit 4 home runs. What the Rangers need is for him to be getting on base, causing havoc on the bases, and helping to drive people in.
Prince Fielder strikes again with two more singles in his 4 at-bats, but he almost did hit a home run though. Jose Alvarez left one hanging in the fifth and Prince thought he had it, but he just got underneath it and flew out to right-fielder Collin Cowgill. He gets his average up to .405 though and for the first time this season, we did not see a massive shift from the Angels in his at-bats. Word is getting around that Prince is not pulling the ball anymore. That actually allowed him to get his second single when he hit it right back up the middle where the shortstop normally would have been.
And can we please calm down the talk on Carlos Peguero being like Nelson Cruz. Peguero has looked good so far, don’t get me wrong. I think he has been very solid and is filling in for Ryan Rua very nicely. He needs to do it longer than 5 games to be considered Nelson Cruz. Cruz even had to prove he could do it longer than 5 games. I remember back before he became the monster he is today that everytime the Rangers called him up he would hit two home runs in the first game he would play and then would go into a massive slump. Peguero is doing good, but lets calm down the Nellie Cruz talk until May or June. Lets see what he does over these next few weeks. For now I prefer the comparison to Kevin Kouzmanoff prior to his back injury from last season. A veteran who was given another shot and excelled until he got hurt.
It is an afternoon game today as it will be Anthony Ranaudo making his first start for the Rangers going up against the Angels Hector Santiago. Ranaudo was called up last night and Phil Klein was sent down after the game last night. Santiago will be looking to continue his success in Arlington from last season when he went 3-0 with a 2.22 ERA against the Rangers in their home ballpark. Ranaudo will be looking to make a good first impression on the Rangers coaches and management as he tries to keep in the rotation. Ranaudo will likely be given a short leash as Anthony Bass will be ready and waiting in the bullpen should Ranaudo falter. The game is today at 1:05 and will end this stretch of 10 straight days with games to open up the season. The Rangers get their first day off tomorrow before heading to Seattle to face the preseason division favorite Seattle Mariners. Go Rangers!!!!!!!!

Offense continues to be a lightweight in Loss to Angels

Posted on April 14, 2015 by colonelsportsnation

The Texas Rangers got off to a good start last night leading 3-0 after the first inning, but couldn’t build on it and the Angels came back to take the first game of this series 6-4. Ross Detweiler picked up his second loss of the season and the Rangers fell to 3-5. He was good the first time through the order in limiting the Angels to just no runs. After that though the Angels went 7-17, 2 home runs, and 2 BB’s to go from 3-0 to 5-3. He showed the same tendencies he showed last week against Oakland. He is going to have to pitch much better or they will banish him to middle relief. He has to show that he can control his fastball and throw it in the lower portion of the strike zone and be able to mix up his pitch selection in order to make it through a lineup 2 or 3 times without the hitters picking up on what he is doing. Right now, he is leaving his fastballs up and over the plate and American League hitters will make you pay for that. The Rangers want him to succeed and will give him every opportunity to succeed, because they don’t want to have to go to Anthony Ranaudo and Chi Chi Gonzalez this early in the season. If come Mid May or early June and he is still struggling they will certainly pull the trigger on a switch. Sometimes the team finds out that a player is just not meant to be a starter. Detweiler could be that type of pitcher, tantalizing stuff but just can’t control it enough to be a quality starting pitcher. The Nationals seemed to think the same thing as they went back and forth with him between the bullpen and the rotation. It will be up to Jeff Banister and management to make a determination down the line on Detweiler on if he can be a starting pitcher for this team.

He was not the only reason they lost though. The offense continues to struggle. They did score 3 runs in the first, but after that could not get any other rallies going. Right now they are a soft hitting singles team. They have hit 4 home runs on the season and they all came last Thursday against the A’s. No home runs in the other 7 games. They don’t have a lot of power, but you would figure a lineup with Prince Fielder, Adrian Beltre, and Mitch Moreland would be able to generate more than 4 home runs. Right now, Prince Fielder has become the $24 million dollar singles hitter. He is hitting for a high average at .394, and getting on base at a .444 clip, but he only has two extra base hits and is not even getting close to hitting home runs. The Rangers need some boom to their lineup and Fielder isn’t really providing it. He only hit 1 home run in Spring Training too and so it could just be a matter of him trying to regain his timing coming back from neck surgery and as he gets more comfortable the power swing will return. If not this offense will be in trouble because they are expecting I would figure at least 30 home runs from this guy. That is where the problems lie is that they have to work so hard to get any runs. It is not a bloop and a blast. It is a hit, followed, by another hit, and followed by another hit to get a run in. Right now they don’t have 3 guys in a row who are hitting well enough to consistently produce runs. 6 of the 9 starters in the lineup are hitting below .200 and Mitch Moreland is trending that way hitting .217 right now. The offense will continue to struggle every night until they either start producing home runs or players like Martin, Choo, Andrus, Moreland, and Odor can get hits at a more consistent rate than they are right now. Hopefully that will start tonight, if not the Rangers could be in for a 3rd straight loss.

Other Game Notes

Man do I hate David Freese. It seems like everytime we face the Angels now he does something to the Rangers. Last night it was hitting a solo home run. Its just like Game 6 wasn’t enough for him, he just has to continue to torture Ranger fans and remind them of Game 6 everytime he steps to the plate. Why couldn’t the Cardinals have traded him to somebody in the National League. I would have much preferred that.
Something else to watch, Chirinos has gotten off to a very slow start offensively this season and was even pinch hit for in the 9th inning. He is another one who could be in danger of losing his starting spot. Carlos Corporan has been hitting very well in his starts behind the plate and if he keeps it up they might make him the starter. Chirinos is 1-13 on the season with 4 strikeouts. I am sure with the way the offense is struggling 1-9 that Banister might want to put the more offensively gifted catcher Corporan behind the plate. Jorge Alfaro does wait in the wings for probably next season to get his shot at starting.
Stolmy Pimentel made his first appearance for the Rangers last night as well. The bullpen really needed a guy to come in and take innings and he certainly did last night. He pitched from the end of the 6th inning into the 9th inning before he tired out and had to be relieved by Roman Mendez. That allowed Feliz, Tolleson, and Kela to all get a day off. Now there is two games left in this series then the whole team gets a day off. Tanner Scheppers should also be returning either tonight or tomorrow. That will give the bullpen more depth and allow guys to get more rest.
Tonight it will be Nick Martinez going for his second win of the season against the Angels starter Drew Rucinski. Martinez is trying to build on his strong start against the A’s last Thursday and help to end the first losing streak of the season. Go Rangers!!!!!