It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it WAS the spring of hope...

No, we aren't so disillusioned that we turned this into a literature blog overnight. Fear not, Rangers fans. This is still merely A Tale of ONE shitty Rangers team...

Haha. Alright that might be a bit harsh, but somewhere during Ian Kinsler's wave to our dugout (thus waving goodbye to our chances this season)

^ this guy

...and betwixt Leo robbing Nelly Cruz of his 27th HR (goddamn!).

...this team pretty much hit rock bottom.

About a month ago, I said June would be a make or break month. Well, unfortunately it turned out to be the latter. A 3-6 homestand to begin the month saw the Rangers lose 3 of 4 against the lowly Cleveland Indians, the lowlight there being a 17-7 beating. What about that mid-month 9 game AL West road trip we deemed so important? Well, it began promising enough at 3-1 against the M's and a single 14-8 slugfest victory at Oakland, but that was pretty much all she wrote for June. An 8 game losing streak ensued...

At the time of this post the Rangers have lost 13 of their last 15 games. They have one of the worst run differentials in all the majors. They're terrible at home. They're terrible on the road. They're 11 games under .500 for the first time since September of 2007. They went 9-17 in the month of June; their worst June since 2003 when they went a sad 7-20...

Oh and those 9 games they won? Yu Darvish started 4 of them...

Even Yu himself faltered at Oakland and at Anaheim during our losing streak (taking the loss in both starts) though, but what more can you really ask from the guy? To be perfect every time out? It pretty much appears that way the way this year's going. After all, here's a pitching staff has given up 6 or more runs in 13 of the last 28 games. The rest of the numbers aren't much better; being dead last in BAA (.281) and team ERA (4.62). They're, of course, still fielding terribly with 60 errors. Compare that with last year when the Rangers posted 86 errors the entire year and 85 the year prior.



The news isn't all bad, Rangers fans. We have definitely seen signs of improvement/encouragement in the 2 Nicks. If nothing else, we're getting a basic idea in what we have in Tepesch and Martinez going forward. Here's a couple of guys that shouldn't even be pitching at this level if we're being honest with ourselves.



Joe Saunders was becoming more and more painful to watch on the bump start after start, and you'd much rather see a youngster get those opportunities since Saunders just continued to get rocked. So, to say we're happy to see him go is an understatement. There's a reason guys like him are just sitting around waiting in March. I'd also go further and say half the reason the Rangers stretch out guys like Ross and Scheppers, and stretched out Feliz, Ogando, and Wilson in the past was purely from a monetary standpoint. I mean, you can sign a veteran guy like Saunders to an incentive laden contract just hoping he helps your club, but instead he goes 0-5 with a 6 point ERA, gets DFAed in June, and you paid the clown a million dollars...

Of course looking internally can and will work out for your team like in the case of C.J Wilson. His inevitable pay day certainly came in 2011 with Anaheim to the tune of 5 years and 75 million though...

Colby is one of Wash's "guys" and I, myself, give him the benefit of the doubt as well. The guy is a postseason hero around these parts, but I'm not sure how much longer they can stick with him...

He pitched game 6 though!! Haha

Now, as for this Rangers offense I'm pretty much sounding like a broken record describing them. They're still not hitting the ball out of the park and are pretty mediocre as a team overall. Again, if we're being honest with ourselves we know many of these guys shouldn't be at this level either...or at the very least not practically playing everyday (Choice). Elvis is struggling at the plate and also uncharacteristically in the field (10 errors). Though he can still do this when he wants to...

Beltre is enjoying another great season and trade bait Alex Rios is having a solid 2014. Shin Soo Choo is still playing as advertised and 'chuggin' along...

Turn down for what?!?

Leonys Martin has been up and down and Michael Choice is really, really struggling. Now, Ron Washington will tell you that ANYTHING he gets out of the catcher position offensively is a premium. I'll say it is. One's hitting close to .300 and the other has given you 7 HRs. Sooo, for now the tandem of Gimenez/Chirinos has allowed us to not miss Geovany Soto too much. Chirinos gunning down 21 base runners behind the dish doesn't hurt either...

Or the occasional napping baserunner...

Adam Rosales recently got the call up since presumably Luis Sardinas would be better served playing everyday at Round Rock. Rougned Odor has more or less played everyday at 2nd for the Rangers and played pretty well. The Rangers brought in the struggling Carlos Pena to be their 6th first baseman this season. SIXTH! Again, there's a reason guys like him are sitting around at home in May...

So, there's plenty of bad and the bright spots are few. There's really nothing you can say about this team right now given the expectations. We're not where we thought we would be for sure. They've fallen way out of the Division and Wild Card races and you could make a case that we were never really in either race. They've failed to win 40 games this season to this point, a feat which they've typically accomplished by mid-June in this, the greatest era of Rangers baseball. I even hear Rangers fans trying to put this on Wash, but is that fair?

The reality is that this decimated Rangers club finally, mercifully succumbed to the dog days of summer. Name me a manager that could have kept this mess afloat as long as Wash did...

Don't worry. I'll wait...

Last month I also said something (else) would have to go horribly wrong for this team to be sellers at the deadline, but the reality is that they should probably should be. Now JD says they're listening to any and all offers, but if we think logically and use our 'GM decoder' we realize only a few guys really lift out (Cotts, Soria, Rios). You know what 'sleazeball' JD would say to us though...

Haha. Anyway. Though I'm hoping the return of guys like Kevin Kouzmanoff, Derek Holland, Jim Adduci and Geovany Soto give this team a boost in the coming months, for the short term it looks like we'll be fending off the last place Astros. That makes the 3 games in Arlington next week against them, the anti-World Series. Think about that. If I told you in March that as we approached the deadline the Astros would be trailing us by 2 games you'd think Houston had some monumental, earth shaking turnaround (which they kinda have relatively speaking)...

Yeah...those Astros.

Now if we lose that series it would finally be the damn fatality this season has been begging for...

I don't want to kid myself about this team and the potential it still has to be really bad, but how can these Rangers AND the 2015 Rangers be recalled to life? After all that's the reason we're not outright sellers at the deadline, correct? We believe that health and a little luck will get us back to the postseason and beyond. If I think about those 2 great Rangers pennant winning teams, they always seemed to have a 'Superman' (I also previously described this guy as a He-Man haha); be it Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz or to a lesser extent, Mike Napoli. I suppose you can make a case that Prince could still be that guy for us even after his disastrous 2014 season. Prince played with such a guy in Detroit in Miguel Cabrera, by the way. Sure there are great teams like the A's and the Giants that don't necessarily have that prototypical type of guy, but look around the league and I promise you, you'll find this guy on a winning team more often than not. We just have to look...

Much like early last season when this team needed a guy to emerge as an Ace and Yu Darvish did just that; I think he's here somewhere in the system, and it really shouldn't take much searching. A Ranger resurrection may depend on it...

Now, I know it's a long season and even longer when you know you're out of it, but lets all try and stay the course, Rangers fans...

YOU be cool.

I know we've seen better days, but we've definitely seen worse days...

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss...

...in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come...

A Bastille the Ballpark is not! We need not storm it! Haha. For now we continue our (losing) east coast road trip with 3 over the weekend in interleague play at the lowly Mets and once again these Rangers will be on the national stage on Saturday. As bad as this season has been, hey...at least we're not the Mets...

Haha...







Bring on the Mets, I guess...