102 down, only 60 to go

The Rangers are 40-62, leaving just 60 games remaining in this miserable 2014 campaign. 

The recent four-game series in New York was one of the stranger baseball weeks in recent memory. Texas surrendered just 10 runs in four games (2.5 runs/per), and still somehow managed to lose three of them. Games one and four each went went 9 innings, with each team winning 4-2; game two went 14 innings with the Yankees winning 2-1, and game three went only five innings... with New York again winning 2-1. 

Rangers starters -- Miles Mikolas, Nick Martinez, Yu Darvish and Colby Lewis, mind you -- allowed just 7 runs on 15 hits in 23.1 IP; we can't get production much better than that. Of course, when your team is throwing out its #1, #5, #9 and #14 starting pitchers, winning one out of four sounds reasonable. They obviously deserved better, but who really cares either way. 

On Wednesday night, the Rangers traded Joakim Soria to the Tigers for a couple minor league pitchers, a move Keith Law believes Texas will come out on top of in the long run. It might appear counterintuitive on the Rangers end, given their flagrant inability to produce on the offensive end in 2014 (they are 9th in the AL in runs scored and only Houston (+4.1 fWAR) have generated fewer WAR than Texas's +4.9), that they acquired two pitchers instead of a bat. 

But the end goal is still 2015 -- the true all-in season for Texas -- and the idea is Prince Fielder will return to play first base, Jurickson Profar will be back to play second, and Joey Gallo will make his first big league cameo at the beginning of the summer. The team's struggles on the offensive end aren't going unnoticed this year, but there is still a strong nucleus in place looking forward. It's not being realized right now so it's hard to appreciate that fact, but so it is.