Kela congratulated by teammates after escaping 7th inning jam in Oakland.

The 2015 season came to an end last week for the Texas Rangers as they lost in 5 games to the Toronto Blue Jays. It was disappointing in how it ended but it doesn’t erase the good memories that were made this season. Wheras 2014 was a season on sadness, 2015 was a season of excitement and rejuvenation for the team and for the fans. Today I am kicking off a 6 part series that takes a look back at the 2015 season month-by-month. In this series we will look at the high points, low points, and turning points of each month. I feel like we can’t really move forward into the offseason and into 2016 before we look back and remember what made 2015 so great. Today we will be starting off with April.

Heading into the season there were no expectations for the season. I thought they would be lucky to finish 3rd in the division. They had not made any big offseason moves other than trade for Yovanni Gallardo and Ross Detwiler to fill out their rotation. They had picked up a guy with a famous name in the Rule V Draft, Delino Deshields Jr, and he made the team because the team did not want to lose him back to the Astros. Before Opening Day it did not look like Deshields would be anything other than a really good pinch runner. They had a rookie manager in Jeff Bannister who had been a baseball-lifer but had never gotten a chance at the big job. He was previously bench coach for Clint Hurdle in Pittsburgh. Who knew how he would handle the responsibilities and the bullpen. In Spring Training we had also learned that Yu Darvish would be out for the whole season with Tommy John surgery. Things were not looking good as the Rangers headed out of Surprise and headed to Oakland to begin the season. The Opening Day rotation looked like this: Yovanni Gallardo, Colby Lewis, Ross Detwiler, Nick Martinez, and Derek Holland. Holland missed most of Spring Training and was held back until the home opener. The bullpen was a bunch of right handed pitchers who threw hard, but didn’t have great control. The bullpen began with no left handers. The Rangers had decided against including Alex Claudio and Sam Freeman in the bullpen to begin with. They kicked off the season by splitting a 4 game series with the A’s. The highlight of that series was Keone Kela making his first MLB appearance in a tight situation in the second game and getting Marcus Semien to ground into a double play in order to preserve a 2-run lead in the 7th. It is funny to look back on now that we have seen how good Kela could be, but he wouldn’t have even been in that situation had Tanner Scheppers and Kyuji Fujikawa not been hurt. Kela, Shawn Tolleson, and Neftali Feliz were able to close out the first win of the season. Kela and Tolleson would go on as we now know to play very important roles in the bullpen. In April though Tolleson was the 8th inning guy and right hander who could also get lefties out.

They moved on from Oakland and came home for their home opener. The fans came out to pack the park for a beautiful Friday afternoon game. The plane flyover was there, the flag was extended across the field, and all the pomp and circumstance for Opening Day was brought out. Then the game started and it became a nightmare for the Rangers and the fans. Derek Holland started the game and pitched an inning, but his velocity was way down. He got through the inning, but did not come back for the second. It was later revealed that he had a shoulder strain. It was thought to just keep him out 4-6 weeks, but Holland did not make his return until mid-August. Ryan Rua, who started the season as the left-fielder, also sustained an injury. He broke his heel in that game and would be out till June. Shin Soo Choo sustained back spasms and had to be taken out of the game. Thankfully his did not require a DL trip. It was I called it at the time the worst home opener in Rangers history. As you would imagine they did lose the game 5-1, but that was not as important as who they lost. Wandy Rodriguez was brought up to replace Derek Holland in the rotation and Carlos Peguero replaced Ryan Rua as a corner outfielder. Both of these players would have their moments with the team such as Peguero in his second game with the Rangers as they finished up the home opening series with the Astros nearly had a walk off home run, but George Springer went back on the ball and slammed into the wall and stole what would have been a walk off home run. Rodriguez also was one of the Rangers better starters through the rest of April and May. He had that curveball dancing like it was 2010 and it was baffling hitters.

That was not enough to sustain the team as they only split two series and lost 5 series. The main culprit was not pitching but offense. They could not get hits with runners in scoring position(RISP), could not hit for power, and could not hit for average. Prince Fielder was hitting well over .300 for the entire month and was actually leading the league in hitting for most of the month, but everyone else was hitting at .200 or below. The team just struggled to score runs and when they had leads the bullpen could not hold the lead. The low point of the month had to be when the team was in Seattle trying to win their first series of the season. They had a 10-5 heading into the bottom of the 7th. The Mariners scored one run in the 7th, 3 runs in the 8th against Scheppers, Kela, and Feliz, and 2 runs in the 9th to win it. It was a demoralizing loss, but thankfully Nick Martinez was starting the next game. For some reason when Nick Martinez started games in April they won. The Rangers won every game Nick Martinez started in April. He was pitching well, locating his fastball on the corners, and the team was scoring runs for him. Looking back on it this season could have went farther south than it did, but guys like Nick Martinez and Wandy Rodriguez helped to stabilize the rotation for the first couple of months. It was not sustainable for an entire season, but without their performances in April and May they would have stood no shot at contending in September. In April though the team was just looking for a spark offensively. It happened near the end of the month in an extra inning game in Anaheim.

Leonys Martin hit a go ahead home run in Anaheim to help the Rangers walk out with a win. The Rangers had lost 5 out of 6 prior to that were not looking good. Martin hit that home run and helped to right the ship. Unfortunately they would go on to lose the next three against the Mariners, but it looked like the team was right on the verge of breaking out. The pitching was still really good, they were holding opponents down, the bullpen was pitching somewhat better, but they just needed to score runs. At the end of the month a surprising trade was announced that sent Josh Hamilton back home to Texas. Anaheim was ready to get rid of him after his shoulder surgery and his tumultuous offseason that saw him fail a drug test. MLB could not suspend him though is what an arbitrator ruled, but the Angels did not want him in Spring Training or on the team. Texas facilitated a trade that allowed Hamilton to come back to Texas and for Anaheim to pay a large majority of the remainder of his contract. The team was excited to see what Josh could bring. They needed to figure themselves out first before Josh came in. By the end of April there were signs that it was getting better, but they kept losing games. It was hard to see the progress.

The month of April ended with the record standing at 7-14 and they were 7.5 games behind the first place Houston Astros. Houston ran off to a surprising 15-7 start that saw them tied with defending AL Champion Royals for best record in the AL. The Rangers weren’t winning games but they had not given up hope. They looked at their team and saw a good starting rotation, a bullpen that needed work, and an offense that was ready to break out and start scoring loads of runs. All of that would not matter if they could not start winning games. Tomorrow we will look at the month that turned it around for the Rangers and that is May. That is when the fortunes of the team turned.