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The Rangers are 28-27

Sometimes, one swing of the bat is all it takes to also swing the momentum of an entire game.

It appeared early on that the Rangers might be able to get the best of Stephen Strasburg, and Colby Lewis looked sharp, even driving in the 2nd run for the Rangers.

However, in the 4th inning, a 3-run homer by Ian Desmond pretty much let the air out of the raft.

The final score of 9-2 wasn’t nearly as indicative of how the potential outcome looked to be early on, but the Rangers will need to recover and be ready to go for a day game tomorrow.

A Renewed Optimism

A little over a week ago, after a win against Seattle on May 21, the Rangers sat at 22-24, under .500, and a whopping 8.0 games back of Oakland in the AL West. Worse yet, they were also trailing the Angels by 4.0 games and Seattle by 0.5.

Which is guess is why, even though the season is still somewhat young, I’m amazed at how much things can change in a week.

Heading into a three-game set in Washington tonight, the Rangers now sit at 28-26 after a 6-2 start to what looked to be a daunting 11-game road trip. Now only 4.0 games back of Oakland in the AL West, I’m finding myself getting just a little greedy.

There’s been much talk that perhaps the Rangers could “sneak” into a Wild Card slot despite the injuries and misfortune. For many, a division race has been almost an afterthought. Yet, the Rangers have managed to stay afloat — for how long remains to be seen — and with a series against a struggling Washington ball club, have an opportunity to make up even more ground.

Oakland and the LA Angels will play a 3-game set this weekend, and the hope — at least I think — would be that both clubs just beat the hell out of one another. After that series, Oakland will face a tough stretch that includes six games against the New York Yankees and three more against the Angels before the Rangers come to town on the 16th of June. LA will face a slightly less daunting schedule before seeing Texas on the 20th of June.

So, with that said, forgive me if I’m being greedy in maintaining a renewed optimism that the Rangers can somehow still snag this division. You don’t always get to make up 4.0 games in the division in just 9 days, but the Rangers have managed that, and will get another 108 games to make up another 4.0, and that, more than anything, the underlying point I want to make today.

Thoughts on the Bullpen After 25 Games

We’re 25 games into the 2014 season, which represents roughly 16% of the games on the schedule. So with that, I figured now was as good of a time as any to take a look at the bullpen.

As of this morning, the Rangers rank 27th in baseball in terms of bullpen ERA, which sits at 4.93. That’s only ahead of Houston, Detroit, and Philadelphia. If we look based on SIERA — which attempts to account for a pitcher’s performance, including balls in play — the bullpen sits at 26th in baseball.

Of course, if we throw out the Hector Noesi performance against the Chicago White Sox from just over a week ago — a game in which he gave up 7 earned runs in an inning — things likely look a lot better. Yet, we can’t just do that.

Note: Apparently the White Sox were so impressed by Noesi’s outing that day that they claimed him off of waivers.

Now, rather than imply that Noesi is the cause of the bullpen being bad, I’d rather like to think of him as a symptom. As in, the fact that Hector Noesi was in the bullpen in the first place was probably a good sign that bullpen depth was already an issue.

Regardless, the whole reason I bring up the bullpen is due to the way in which Neal Cotts and Alexi Ogando lost two games for the Rangers over the weekend: Two games the Rangers should have won in Seattle.

Now, I understand the currently popular narrative that this team is doing better than we should expect, etc. To that, I say: phooey. You win the games in front of you, and while I’m certainly OK with a 15-10 record when looking at the bigger picture, that doesn’t stop me from wanting those wins in the short-term. Acknowledging that this team has, overall, been solid when we could have expected much worse doesn’t mean that I can’t bemoan the fact that the club just lost 2 of 3 instead of sweeping in Seattle.

Alexi Ogando is one of the most inconsistent pitcher’s in the Rangers bullpen. When he’s on, he’s blowing hitters away. When he isn’t, however, you get a 3-run, go-ahead home run from Kyle Seager. Ogando’s fastball velocity averaged 97mph as recently as 2012. Then, he topped out at 100. Probably due to being 30 now, his fastball velocity sits around 94, topping out at 96. That may not seem like much, but for a guy who spent the first part of his career as a reliever that just blew guys away, it can make a huge difference.

With that said, I didn’t necessarily blame Ogando for not being at his sharpest against Seattle on Sunday. For some reason, with Jason Frasor rested, Ron Washington chose to pitch Ogando for a third straight day. It’s easy to second-guess the manager after the fact, but if we simply look at the process by which the decision was made, this call didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

On Friday, Neal Cotts gave up 4 earned runs in the 8th inning to turn a 3-2 lead in to a 5-3 deficit. His ERA now sits at 7.27. Although his xFIP of 3.75 and SIERA of 3.25 would seem to suggest that he’s not all THAT bad, it’s still well off from where he was in 2013.

Note: I want to know if anyone has looked into the possibility that Neal Cotts is like Samson, and having cut his hair, he’s not as effective.

In 2013, Cotts tended to work the outer half of the plate against lefties, and he worked hard inside on righties. So far in 2014, that hasn’t been the case.

ESPN Stats & InformationAs you can see, Cotts is leaving a ton of pitches over the heart of the plate so far in 2014, and hitters are feasting on it. I had originally intended to split the heat map out between lefties and righties, but they actually looked virtually identical.

The good news? For Cotts, this is repairable. If he finds his command and starts locating better, then the bullpen will be better for it.

Unfortunately, for the rest of the bullpen, there don’t seem to be any prime candidates for a mid-season callup and domination from the bullpen. Michael Kirkman is getting hit hard in Round Rock, Cory Burns is, well, Cory Burns, and it would seem that the organization views Nick Tepesch as a starter, although his numbers have looked great thus far.

Bullpens are fickle as is, and it could be that two weeks from now, we’ll be praising them as a collective unit and wondering why we ever doubted. Until then, however, the prevailing hope will have to be that Tanner Scheppers is able to recover soon enough to come off of the DL and provide some help in the 8th-inning relief role. It’s a role he flourished in last season, and a role the Rangers have struggled to adequately fill 25 games into the season.

Tonight would be a really great night for Yu Darvish to go deep into a game against Oakland.

Series Outlook: Athletics (15-10) at Rangers (15-10), Part II

If there is such thing as disappointment after a 4-2 road trip, I’m sure — somehow, some way — there are fans out there who will still find a way to complain. After all, if it weren’t for implosions from Neal Cotts (on Friday) and Alexi Ogando (on Sunday), there was a real chance for Texas to complete their second consecutive road sweep this week. As it turned out, the Rangers essentially gave away to the Mariners two wins they themselves stole from the A’s earlier in the week, so the universe, in a sense, restored itself.

All told, injuries withstanding, the Rangers are tied for the best record in the American League (15-10) with the Yankees and division rival Athletics, the latter of which they are due to battle starting tomorrow.

On the season, Texas has a run differential of 0, while Oakland (+38) and the 11-13 Angels (+29) have been far more impressive on paper. Losing winnable games will forever frustrate the seasoned baseball fan, but as I take a step back — realizing the Rangers aren’t supposed to be this good, yet — I find it wholly unreasonable to begrudge my favorite club for blowing games they probably shouldn’t have been winning in the first place.

* * * * * *

It’s Josh Wilson’s world. We’re just living in it.

Monday — Sonny Gray (3-1, 2.25 ERA, 3.28 xFIP) vs. Yu Darvish (1-0, 1.61 ERA, 3.57 xFIP)

Darvish had his worst start of the season last week against the A’s, and the damage (6.0 IP, 3 runs, 4 walks, 6 strikeouts) still resulted in a quality start. It could be that he just isn’t all that comfortable on the mound in Oakland, or that the A’s see the ball better out of Yu’s hand than most other teams. Either way, it seems the Athletics are the kryptonite to Yu Darvish’s mastery. Tomorrow, however, Darvish is back in Arlington, where he has been more than comfortable during his career (231.0 IP, 3.07 ERA, 294 Ks).

Sonny Gray was effective on Wednesday against the Rangers, allowing 3 runs on 5 hits, striking out 8 in 7.0 innings of work. Unfortunately for him, the Oakland offense ran into the buzz saw that is Martín Perez, so Gray took the hard-luck 3-0 loss. 

Tuesday — Scott Kazmir (3-0, 1.62 ERA, 3.17 xFIP) vs. Martín (4-0, 1.42 ERA, 3.42 xFIP)

If Darvish-Gray is round one of this heavyweight series, fans of both these teams won’t have to wait very long for an encore.

Per FanGraphs, Perez and Kazmir rank 3rd and 4th in the AL with +1.2 fWAR and +1.1 fWAR, respectively. As last year Kazmir was getting his feet back underneath him (4.04 ERA in 158.0 IP in Cleveland), this season he’s fully off and running; in 33.0 innings he’s striking out almost a quarter (24.2%) of the hitters he’s facing, while slashing his 10% career walk rate down to just 4.7%. So far, the 2-year, $22 million contract he signed last offseason looks good for the A’s.

As for Martín Perez: What more is there I can say about him that you haven’t already heard or contemplated for yourself? I still consider myself to be pretty young (24), but at 23 years and less than a month’s worth of days, Perez makes me feel like I’m not doing ANYTHING significant with my life. He’s fresh off of back-to-back shutouts, and is quietly playing the part of a quality #2 starting pitcher in the Rangers rotation. It’s obvious his 1.42 ERA won’t stand the duration of an entire season — that goes for any starting pitcher — but as Martín comes back to earth we can all take solace in the fact that he’s still extremely young, and should only continue to get better from here. 

Wednesday — Jesse Chavez (1-0, 2.32 ERA, 2.74 xFIP) vs. Robbie Ross (1-1, 2.45 ERA, 3.63 xFIP)

It probably gets mentioned every season, but it’s still kind of weird to me that Jesse Chavez used to pitch in the Rangers organization. What’s even weirder, though, is he was traded to the Pirates back in 2008 so that Texas could get its hands on Kip Wells, of all people. It was the obscure summer where the Rangers were kind-of contenders, when Jon Daniels acquired Carlos Lee and Nelson Cruz from the Brewers, Wells, and Matt Stairs. There isn’t much carryover from that trade spree of ’08 — Cruz is now on the Orioles — but it will continue to be strange seeing Chavez pitch in a contending rotation. 

Robbie Ross was decent against the Mariners on Friday night… 6.0 innings, 2 runs, 6 hits, 0 walks and 5 strikeouts. I’m meh on the idea of Ross being a starter long-term, but at the very least he’s giving the Rangers quality replacement innings in the wake of the Derek Holland, Colby Lewis and Matt Harrison injuries. And there’s value to that. In five starts in 2014 (29.1 IP), Robbie has almost reached the halfway mark in his career-high for innings pitched (65.0 in 2012), so these next few weeks should be interesting in how he deals with the workload. 

He has passed the point where we are curious whether or not he can get big league hitters out consistently as a starting pitcher; he’s there. Now it’s a matter of maintaining. The 58.8% ground ball rate Ross has posted thus far is damn near elite. At worst, he’s a back-of-the-rotation pitcher, and the Rangers need such things. 

As for the big picture, the Rangers are right where they are supposed to be. There have been a handful of games that Texas could have won, but didn’t, and perhaps even more that the club shouldn’t have won, but did. It’s just baseball. 

The Rangers are 6th in the American League in runs scored, 7th in the league in runs allowed. They could be 10-15 right now just as easily as 15-10, which is where they currently are. From that perspective, it’s unfair to laud Ron Washington for the club over-achieving, while at the same time blaming him for the losses that have sporadically popped up. It’s clear — and it’s been clear for multiple seasons — that he isn’t even remotely close to being an average tactical manager. With the neo-concepts that have engulfed baseball over the last few years, whether it be platoons or managing the bullpen or constructing the lineup, it has been proven Washington gives the Rangers no advantages.

And yet, the team continues to win. It’s a testament to Washington, Jon Daniels, and the entire scouting and player development department that an injury-riddled roster… with little business being 15-10 and in first place… is, well, 15-10 and in first place.