Sounds weird to say, but I was glad he got to pitch at the final season of TBIA. He was such a big part of when they were good.
good to see hamels and yu are still frustrating as fuck no way the rangers should have won either of those games but i’m not complaining also the pitching is not great bob
So far, so good: the Rangers are striking out less, seeing more pitches and prospering Levi Weaver In the bottom of the second inning, Joey Gallo stepped to the plate to face Justin Verlander. Again. There might not be a single pitcher in baseball more responsible for Gallo’s batting-average woes than Verlander. Coming into play on Tuesday, he had held Gallo to an .095 batting average and a .208 on-base percentage. He is also the pitcher that Gallo has faced more than any other pitcher in baseball; 24 times before this moment. The first pitch was a called strike, a 93 mph fastball that split the plate in two, low in the zone. Pitch two probably should have been called a strike, another fastball that clicked the top outside corner of the zone. “Ball one” was the verdict from home plate umpire Jerry Meals. Pitch three was a curveball, just off the inside part of the plate. Ball two. Pitch four: a slider in the dirt. Ball three. Pitch five: another fastball in the zone. Gallo fouled it away. The sixth and final pitch of the at-bat was another 94 mph fastball. It was outside for ball four. The next hitter was Asdrúbal Cabrera. He, too, had faced Justin Verlander more than any other pitcher in his career, though with a .258 batting average and a .319 on-base percentage, his track record was notably better than Gallo’s. Eight pitches later, he blasted a two-run home run into the right field stands to tie the game. Gallo walked again in the third inning. It would be tempting to suggest Verlander just had an off night, and that might be true. But that sequence from Gallo and Cabrera is emblematic of an early trend from the Rangers; through five games, they have a reasonable 43 strikeouts; almost exactly in the middle of the MLB pack (though they were eighth-best before Tuesday’s game) and several late games on the west coast should bump them back up a few spots. Furthermore, it’s not insignificant to look at who they’ve been facing: of the five opposing starters, only two — Jon Lester (7.4) and Cole Hamels (8.9) — had fewer than ten strikeouts per nine innings in 2018. The other three measure up like so: Yu Darvish (11.0), Brad Peacock (13.3), and Verlander (12.2). Consider this: the Rangers saw a total of 24,572 pitches in 2018, or 151.67 per game. That’s actually not bad — ninth in all of baseball! Arrange the chart slightly differently, and you can see that they averaged 3.98 pitches per plate appearance — sixth in baseball. Even better! This year, they’re down slightly in the per-game number at 150.8, but keep in mind that three of their five games are home wins, so that’s three half-innings’ worth of pitches they haven’t seen. A more accurate number is pitches-per-plate appearance, and that number is up to 4.05. Why? It depends on who you ask, but the diversity of the answers don’t paint a contradiction so much as different sides of the same encouraging news. “There’s a belief already in three games,” Manager Chris Woodward said after the Rangers’ 11-10 win over the Cubs on Sunday. “It’s incredible for me to watch. I’m feeling it, but then it’s showing up in the results … The conversations and the talk throughout spring training led me to believe that this would be the type of team that would be resilient, that wouldn’t give in. The characters we have in that clubhouse are pretty special. There’s a togetherness, there’s a belief in there that you can’t measure, and it’s showing up on the field right now.” “I think guys really trust each other, trust the coaches,” says Delino DeShields. “We’ve bought into the message they’ve been preaching, because we started spring training with guys seeing results … We all pull for each other, we all support each other, we’re here to make each other great, and I think that makes it easier to go out there and fail, knowing that you have guys on your side that want to see you do great.” “It’s just chemistry,” concurs Gallo. “We’re really committed to winning as a team … there’s actually a belief now that it’s going to work if we do that. We just want to see everyone else succeed on our team, so it’s like, we don’t have a problem doing it. No one wants to be the hero; everyone wants the other guy to be the hero.” “I think as a team, we’re just sticking with our plan. Now, we’re going into every game with a plan. That’s what we’ve been trying to do … we’re looking for our pitch. We used to just go up there and hit, (but) now we go up there with something in our mind.” “I think the guys are making that transition, believing that if they stick to the approach we’re talking about, good things are going to happen,” Elvis Andrus said. “As an offense, the last two or three years, we’ve been chasing a lot, so that’s the way teams are going to approach us. I think what we’ve done is amazing; we made them throw strikes, and when we did that, we became dangerous again.” Chemistry, a lack of fear of failure, or just good old-fashioned belief, the fact remains: the Rangers are thus far much tougher outs in the young 2019 season than they were in the previous two years. In the bottom of the seventh, Gallo came to bat again, this time against left-handed pitcher Framber Valdez. Rougned Odor (bunt single) and Elvis Andrus (double) both reached base on the first pitch of their respective at-bats (so it’s not always about the number of pitches you see) and with one out and the score tied at 4-4, Gallo watched two curveballs miss the zone before the third tried to sneak past the bottom of the zone. Gallo swatted it through the shift and into right field for a two-run single. 6-4 Rangers. It’s their third win of the season, and Gallo has either driven in or scored the winning run in all three. Speaking of belief…
god they might be above average if they had starters that lasted longer than 3-4 innings winning the series with the cubs and looking halfway decent so far against the stros though
This has me thinking -- is this the worst starting rotation the Rangers have ever had? We're historically notorious for awful pitching (and big dick slugging), but this rotation is
i would say then you’d have to listen to sean bass, but here i am watching the postgame listening to evan grant talk
Hard to get excited about series wins over a current member of the inferior national league and one former member of the inferior national league but I guess I’ll take it