Colby throwing last night against the Angels

An MLB season is full of peaks and valleys. Every team goes has them. The difference between the good and bad teams is that the good teams are able to stay on their peaks longer and able to not be stay too long in the valley. The Rangers this past week have been in the valley. They lost two winnable games last weekend in Seattle and then got obliterated in 3 games at home against Oakland. Heading into this series they had lost 5 of their last 6 games to fall 3 games back in the division. The whole team was struggling. The pitching was very poor in Oakland and the hitting was not much better. They had not hit a single home run in their last 6 games. Fortunately they had a day off on Thursday to get their heads straight. Last night they began a 3 game series against division rival Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. It was Colby Lewis against Hector Santiago. In this game the Rangers would be counting on Lewis to help end this losing streak and he delivered.

The key to getting this win though would be for the offense to start coming through, specifically Elvis Andrus and the middle of the order. Elvis was in the middle of a 3-36 slump and so yesterday he had a 1-on-1 meeting with Ron Washington to see where his head was at. Washington said that the meeting was about Elvis’ energy or lack thereof, “He hasn’t been playing with that energy lately, and I think he’s accepted that energy is a part of it. I think he knows we’ve been hurting, and he may be trying to do too much.” The thinking is that when Adrian Beltre went down he tried to be more of a run producer rather than a guy who creates havoc on the bases and tries to score runs. That has led to him hitting way too many ground balls. His ground ball percentage is 89.4 and that leads the major leagues. Washington is trying to get him back to driving the ball to the opposite field and being the spark plug of the offense. That is the game inside the game that was going on last night. The meeting seemed to help as Elvis as he did have an RBI single in the 7th inning. It will be something to watch though over the next few days to see if Elvis can continue to break out of that slump.

Colby Lewis though was the main story. He continues to work his way back from his hip injury that kept him out all last season. Last night was his 4th start and with each start he is looking better and better. He showed a greater command of his fastball last night as well as velocity, and better control of his breaking pitches. That was clearly shown by how many swings and misses he was getting. The Angels were late all night on his sneaky fastball and were not expecting the sharp break from his curveball. There were some things he still needs to work on though and that is holding runners on. Twice in last night’s game after getting a runner on first base the Angels stole second. They were able to get great jumps due to Colby’s deliberate delivery. After the game Colby said that was by design, “I was already 0-and-1 both times and the batter ended up taking the fastball to get me to 0-and-2.I thought my job at that point was just to focus on the hitter at the plate.” Overall though it was another step forward. He ended up pitching 5.2 innings, allowing 2 runs, striking out 6, and walking one. The only reason he did not pitch deeper into the game was Washington felt like he wanted to go lefty-lefty with a one run lead and be able to hold the runner on first base. The Rangers were able to get out of the 6th and then eventually they won 5-2 to break their 4 game losing streak.

The other story of the game was the offense coming through. For the first 5 innings it looked like a repeat of what we saw in Oakland. It was a lot of swinging early in counts and weak popups. That changed in the 6th inning when Shin Shoo Choo hit one out of in deep center field past a jumping Mike Trout. Then 4 batters late after a Prince Fielder infield single, yes I said a Prince Fielder infield single, Alex Rios yanked one out to left center field to give the Rangers a 1-run lead. The Rangers tacked two more on in the 7th with a Choo single and an Andrus fielder’s choice. Choo was getting things done last night, he went 3-4 with 2 RBI’s, and a run scored in the game. He was taken out of the game last night in the bottom of the 7th with renewed ankle soreness. It is the same ankle that has been bothering him for about 10 days now. He is day-to-day at this point and might play in today’s game. Last night was his first game back in the field since the injury and so I am sure that they are just being cautious with him.

It was a good win and one that the Rangers needed. There will be other valleys during this season, but they responded to this one with perseverance. They just kept doing what they do and eventually it worked out. Today it will be Matt Harrison in his second start of the season going up against Garrett Richards. Harrison will be trying to continue the success he had against Seattle on Sunday. In that start he pitched 6 innings and allowed only two runs. He looked like the Matt Harrison from 2012 that won 18 games. If the Rangers can continue to get that they will be in good shape over the long run. The start time for tonight’s game is 8:05