One Strike Away

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The Rangers are 5-8

That's the kind of game the Rangers aren't supposed to lose.

  • Ross Detwiler was beyond awful again, failing to even complete 3 innings despite the Rangers handing him a 7-2 lead.
     
  • Seattle cut the margin to 7-5 before the Rangers got to 10 runs, making it 10-5 until the bottom of the 8th inning.
     
  • Tanner Scheppers, making his second appearance since coming off of the DL, was yet again erratic with his command, walking the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th inning.
     
  • The whole thing fell apart from there. The Mariners came back to win it in the bottom of the 9th, 11-10.
     
  • I mentioned this on Twitter, but I have yet to see any significant difference in the in-game tactics of Ron Washington and Jeff Banister. Some people didn't like that I said that, mentioning that Feliz never would have been brought into the game during the 8th inning with Wash. To me, that wasn't even the issue.

    For starters, Tanner Scheppers should have been given a very short leash, but apparently Banister has decided to go with the old "tried and true" process of having specific roles for specific guys, and Scheppers has been deemed to be the 8th inning guy. After the first walk, someone should have been warming up, and it shouldn't have taken until Scheppers walked the bases loaded for someone to be ready to come into the game. Not with Scheppers only recently coming off of the DL, and not with the players due up in the order.

    Furthermore, the continued insistence to bat Elvis Andrus 2nd baffles me. For all the talk before the season of the team getting away from the early sacrifice bunt, it's remained a staple of the offense. It makes absolutely not sense.

    I realize it's still early, but for a manager that was supposed to inject some change to the organization, we've simply reverted back to pretty much what Ron Washington was doing that drove us all crazy. And that bothers me.