By Martin Iheke
After having four days off due to the All-Star break, your Texas Rangers resumed the rest of the second half of their miserable season last Friday night at the Toronto Blue Jays. Before I get into the three-game series against the Blue Jays, the Rangers did make some news during the break. They traded veteran reliever Jason Frasor to the Kansas City Royals for minor league reliever Spencer Patton. Could this be the start of a fire sale as we had towards the July 31 MLB trade deadline? Rangers general manager Jon Daniels would not say so. “This is not necessarily related to anything else we may be doing,” Daniels said according to dallasnews.com. “We’re going to listen. The closer guys are to free agency, the more natural those conversations are. We’re looking to make good baseball trades at this point,” as he continued. Patton was assigned to Triple-A Round Rock and could see some time with the Rangers later on in the season.
Also, starting catcher Geovany Soto came off the disabled list before last Friday after missing a little more than the first half of the season after having knee surgery during spring training. The Rangers would take any type of good news at this point. Soto went 0 for 4 against the Blue Jays last Friday night but his offense was not needed as the Rangers won (yes a win), 5-1. Their ace Yu Darvish was terrific going 6 2/3 innings giving up a run on five hits striking out twelve. “We were able to get a win and hopefully we are able to show a lot of new baseball in this second half of the season,” Darvish said according to MLB.com. Not so fast, Darvish. The Rangers could not follow up your brilliant performance with another one as the Blue Jays won, 4-1, last Saturday afternoon. The offense had no answer for Blue Jays starting pitcher Marcus Stroman who shut them down for seven innings. “We created some opportunities for ourselves and we just couldn’t cash them in,” Rangers manager Ron Washington said according to MLB.com.
The offense was able to show up in the rubber match of the three-game series this past Sunday, but once again it was not enough as the Rangers would lose, 9-6. They are now 20 games below .500 for first time since 2003 and still hold the worst record in baseball. The Rangers will try to climb their way out of last place when they travel to New York for a four-game series against the Yankees starting on Monday night. After that, they will return home to take on the best team in baseball in the Oakland A’s for a three-game series starting on Friday night.
Upcoming Schedule
7/21 @Yankees 6:00 p.m.
7/22 @Yankees 6:05 p.m.
7/23 @Yankees 6:05 p.m.
7/24 @Yankees 12:05 p.m.
7/25 vs A’s 7:05 p.m.
7/26 vs A’s 7:05 p.m.
7/27 vs A’s 6:05 p.m.
